- There is one more after this, and they’re all good.
If you haven’t read The Best of the Worst of Trash TV: Part One and The Best of the Worst of Trash TV: Part Two, follow the links to them. This is part three.
Producers tell guests, this is your show. You’re the star of the show. Between that and the studio lights, stage cameras, and live audience, it was a situation most had never found themselves in prior.
Most of these people have never been on television or the stage. And why would people come on the show? To be listened to and to share their story. Those were the best guests.
Also, the more animated, the better you’ll be received by the audience and the host.
Daytime talk was the highest high or the lowest low, when the show was good nothing was better. Shows went off high on adrenaline, with the host on fire, fantastic guests and an enthusiastic audience. 
They were doing everything they could to steal each others viewers and have the best ratings. And it turned to trash.
The shows got louder, crazier, and there was more drama.
Producers say they tried to keep the quality good and to keep the dignity. But it slipped away from them. And if we’re being honest, it slipped away from the a lot.
Springer started doing lots of shows of women with huge boobs. It was morally challenging to choose topics but this was the turn of a lot more outrageous things to come.
They did shows on transexuals and the “800 pound guy.” Talk shows were going for sensation turned trash. This led to more big boobs, KKK members, nude people 100 pound babies, you name it.
Ratings went up but it was stressful for the people on the show. Them were working and competing, thinking it’s ok. And a lot of the time it was ok.
But then it was really not ok. And it happened on Jenny Jones.
Jenny Jones
She was known for ambushing guests and the aftermath of an ambush went awry. Here’s what happened.
In 1995, Jenny Jones did a standard show topic, secret crush. She brought on a man named Scott and he came on the show and expressed all the things he wanted to do to Jonathon, his secret crush. Everything Scott said was in all in good fun.
And then she brought out Jonathon Schmitz. 
When Schmitz was booked on the “secret crush” show, he was told it could be a man or it could be a woman. Jonathan said that afterwards he was so humiliated that it ate away at him.
Two days later, Jonathan went over to Scott’s house and shot and killed him. The situation on the show went from shocking to disaster.
Jonathan says the staff hid the fact that it was a same sex attraction. The victim’s family blames both the show and host. There was a civil suit with the victim’s family suing the show for their part in the murder.
Jenny Jones was on trial and possibly the whole industry was on trial. She was doing what everyone else was and it led to murder.
The tv show was on trial for creating the scenario that led to the killing. And the show was found liable and fined $25 million dollars. Though this was later overturned.
The Beginning of the End of Trash TV
Everyone changed their trash show. They were terrified.
But not Jerry Springer though. He didn’t have the deception because guests always knew there was something coming. It became almost a bad adult cartoon.
There was constant escalated fighting, bashing, punching, and violence. 
Jerry Springer took the conflict version of tv talk shows and consistently added to it. Humans are drawn to watching raw aggression and the audience only pumped up the action.
People fought in shows before Jerry Springer but with this show was a new level of it all. People watched it in the way that they watched wrestling, for the exaggerated fakeness, if you will.
Jerry said, “It’s not your traditional talk show, it’s not exactly a sporting event, and it’s not exactly theater, It’s a circus.”
The Jerry Springer show blew up. It was everywhere. You saw it in other tv shows like Roseanne and The Simpsons. It became a phenomenon in 1998 and then suddenly, they were beating Oprah.
When Jerry beat out Oprah in ratings, it changed the genre again. The Jerry Springer shows stayed in the top spot for 57-58 weeks in a row. How, with that trash?
The show became more and more outrageous. For the last of these articles, follow the link to The Best of the Worst of Trash TV: Part Four.
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