THE HERO OF THE DAY!
Name: Jerry Springer
Age: 74
Occupation: TV talk show host
Last Seen: ??
Awarded For: twenty-seven years of great television
Age: 74
Occupation: TV talk show host
Last Seen: ??
Awarded For: twenty-seven years of great television
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When The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended its run 41 years ago, the program ended with Mary closing the door to the now-shuttered office of WJM-TV.
When MASH left the air in 1983, it ended with Hawkeye seeing that BJ left a message written using stones, reading "GOODBYE".
On Cheers' last episode, Sam tells a man knocking at the door that the bar was closed. After straightening a crooked picture of Geronimo, he heads to the back.
Next season will be the last for yet another long-running program, The Jerry Springer Show. After 27 years and almost 4,000 episodes, production will end for the long-running program that critics and TV Guide long-proclaimed as the "worst program ever in the history of television".
Well, sorta.
What's really going on is that Springer is moving to The CW come next fall, replacing The Robert Irvine Show. Most episodes of the show will be repeats, though according to Springer himself, there's already many episodes shot and unaired that will be aired on its new home. If ratings are good enough, they will ask for new episodes.
So in other words, Springer ain't dead yet, though the media wants to report on his demise. Simply put, after 27 years of being syndicated, it's moving to a network, albeit with mostly repeats. If the move to The CW is successful, then it lives. If not, well, the last episode will end just like all other episodes with Springer himself reading his Final Thought, ending with the line, "take care of yourself... and each other".
When he was a guest on the MTV series Ridiculousness, Springer once said about that closer that it's his way of hoping that he can go to Heaven. This, of course, is from a man who some claim hosted a show that, well, wasn't quite all that heavenly. When the show debuted in 1992, it was simply a clone of then-sister show Donohue. It was co-produced with Sally Jessy Raphael and all three programs seemed to have the same format. With low ratings killing the show, a new production staff led by former tabloid writer Richard Dominick came in. Gone were the political talk, the father-son reunions and such and in were family feuds, strippers and KKK assholes wanting to rip Jerry apart. The ratings improved and by the late 90s, Jerry was neck-and-neck with Oprah in the ratings.
Of course, despite great ratings, the program received major lacklash from media groups, station owners, sponsors and even the program's then-syndicator, Studios USA. Some stations even demoted Springer to the overnight hours (in my case in northern Michigan, WPBN-TV 7&4 demoted it to 2 a.m. in the morning and replaced it with the beyond-abhorrent Crook and Chase program). The infamous Jenny Jones incident where a man shot and killed a gay man for outing him on the show further hurt the show's image.
To some, the news of Springer's "cancellation" was good news. For others, the response was "he's still on?" The majority of stations that carry his show are either Fox, CW or MyNetworkTV-affiliated and in the most-recent ratings books, the show's not even in the top 25 among all syndicated fare. In the past 20 or so years, the show has moved from its long-time base in Chicago to an old movie theater in Stamford, CT (ironically the home of the WWE). Also, long-time cue-balled security guard Steve Wilkos ended up with a show of his own and his wife, Michigan-born Rachelle Consiglio replaced Dominick as the producer of both shows after he was allegedly fired for telling Wilkos to beat up a guest on his show. Oh, and there's still plenty of fighting and transvestites, though the KKK freaks have nary been seen for ages.
If this is indeed the end of Springer, well, it was a good run. Jerry did well for a kid from England born in a subway tunnel to Holocaust survivors. He has lived the American dream, hosting a crazy TV show and even being the mayor of a major US city. True, he's had his faults, but he's only human. True, the show ain't Oprah, but then again, he doesn't need to cook a nice roast dinner like Rachael Ray, chat with a bunch of old ladies like on The View or even be a quack like Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil. After all, science proved that people who watch shows like Jerry's tend to lead happier lives. Maybe it's because some people have worse problems than the rest of us. After a long day at work, some simply don't want to watch a show whose audience is mostly made up of older women. They want to see a man exposed for cheating on his pretty wife with a fat, ugly woman or in the case of another of Jerry's sister shows, Maury, they want to know who the baby daddy is. Even though Springer will live on at least in reruns on The CW and NBCUniversal's Nosey digital channel, daytime TV will simply never be the same without new, fresh episodes of Springer.
And as Jerry himself says, "take care of yourself, and each other." There. Up to Heaven I go!
---
When The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended its run 41 years ago, the program ended with Mary closing the door to the now-shuttered office of WJM-TV.
When MASH left the air in 1983, it ended with Hawkeye seeing that BJ left a message written using stones, reading "GOODBYE".
On Cheers' last episode, Sam tells a man knocking at the door that the bar was closed. After straightening a crooked picture of Geronimo, he heads to the back.
Next season will be the last for yet another long-running program, The Jerry Springer Show. After 27 years and almost 4,000 episodes, production will end for the long-running program that critics and TV Guide long-proclaimed as the "worst program ever in the history of television".
Well, sorta.
What's really going on is that Springer is moving to The CW come next fall, replacing The Robert Irvine Show. Most episodes of the show will be repeats, though according to Springer himself, there's already many episodes shot and unaired that will be aired on its new home. If ratings are good enough, they will ask for new episodes.
So in other words, Springer ain't dead yet, though the media wants to report on his demise. Simply put, after 27 years of being syndicated, it's moving to a network, albeit with mostly repeats. If the move to The CW is successful, then it lives. If not, well, the last episode will end just like all other episodes with Springer himself reading his Final Thought, ending with the line, "take care of yourself... and each other".
When he was a guest on the MTV series Ridiculousness, Springer once said about that closer that it's his way of hoping that he can go to Heaven. This, of course, is from a man who some claim hosted a show that, well, wasn't quite all that heavenly. When the show debuted in 1992, it was simply a clone of then-sister show Donohue. It was co-produced with Sally Jessy Raphael and all three programs seemed to have the same format. With low ratings killing the show, a new production staff led by former tabloid writer Richard Dominick came in. Gone were the political talk, the father-son reunions and such and in were family feuds, strippers and KKK assholes wanting to rip Jerry apart. The ratings improved and by the late 90s, Jerry was neck-and-neck with Oprah in the ratings.
Of course, despite great ratings, the program received major lacklash from media groups, station owners, sponsors and even the program's then-syndicator, Studios USA. Some stations even demoted Springer to the overnight hours (in my case in northern Michigan, WPBN-TV 7&4 demoted it to 2 a.m. in the morning and replaced it with the beyond-abhorrent Crook and Chase program). The infamous Jenny Jones incident where a man shot and killed a gay man for outing him on the show further hurt the show's image.
To some, the news of Springer's "cancellation" was good news. For others, the response was "he's still on?" The majority of stations that carry his show are either Fox, CW or MyNetworkTV-affiliated and in the most-recent ratings books, the show's not even in the top 25 among all syndicated fare. In the past 20 or so years, the show has moved from its long-time base in Chicago to an old movie theater in Stamford, CT (ironically the home of the WWE). Also, long-time cue-balled security guard Steve Wilkos ended up with a show of his own and his wife, Michigan-born Rachelle Consiglio replaced Dominick as the producer of both shows after he was allegedly fired for telling Wilkos to beat up a guest on his show. Oh, and there's still plenty of fighting and transvestites, though the KKK freaks have nary been seen for ages.
If this is indeed the end of Springer, well, it was a good run. Jerry did well for a kid from England born in a subway tunnel to Holocaust survivors. He has lived the American dream, hosting a crazy TV show and even being the mayor of a major US city. True, he's had his faults, but he's only human. True, the show ain't Oprah, but then again, he doesn't need to cook a nice roast dinner like Rachael Ray, chat with a bunch of old ladies like on The View or even be a quack like Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil. After all, science proved that people who watch shows like Jerry's tend to lead happier lives. Maybe it's because some people have worse problems than the rest of us. After a long day at work, some simply don't want to watch a show whose audience is mostly made up of older women. They want to see a man exposed for cheating on his pretty wife with a fat, ugly woman or in the case of another of Jerry's sister shows, Maury, they want to know who the baby daddy is. Even though Springer will live on at least in reruns on The CW and NBCUniversal's Nosey digital channel, daytime TV will simply never be the same without new, fresh episodes of Springer.
And as Jerry himself says, "take care of yourself, and each other." There. Up to Heaven I go!
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Bee-otch of the Day is a production of Chuck69.com, Grand Rapids' site for Stern, politics and more!
Bee-otch of the Day Archives can be seen on http://beeotchoftheday.blogspot.com
Bee-otch of the Day is a production of Chuck69.com, Grand Rapids' site for Stern, politics and more!
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