RIP Jerry Springer.

[Alex]

I never cared much for his tv show myself, but it seems it had plenty of people who did like it.

[ER]

He was my aunt's neighbor after he was mayor, while he was news anchor on WLWT in the eighties. Well, down the street. Kind of a jerk, to be honest.
It's also true he was very supportive of his special needs daughter, and he never hid her disability or acted ashamed of her at a time when that behavior was not always a given, so due praise there.
It puzzled a lot of locals when he turned his show into trash TV because he had a certain level of decorum as a news anchor, and many saw him as stepping in to replace Phil Donahue after his retirement. Instead he went low.

[Rev. Powell]

He was not a good person or a good influence on our culture. I imagine he had loved ones, though, who knew a different person who had some good qualities. People can say nice things about him today, tomorrow may he go back to being forgotten.

[RCMerchant]

Bye Jerry. Good riddance.

[ER]

^ But he did so much for civil rights. Marched for blacks, fought anti-Semitism, financially supported sex workers, and you wish such a fine soul away? Well, I am offended. 

[chainsaw midget]

Ah.  Jerry Springer.  What can you say about a man like that? 

That's it. 

That's all I had to say.

[lester1/2jr]

daytime tv is trash and he was it's king.

[FatFreddysCat]

Jerrrr-eeee! Jerrrr-eeee! Jerrrr-eeee!

Springer's show was the textbook definition of "trash TV." Yet if I happened on it while channel surfing I always had to stop and watch for at least a few minutes. It had that irresistible, passing-a-car-crash-on-the-highway vibe. You HAD to look.

...though I gotta say, his episode on "Shock Rock" which featured GWAR and El Duce (of the Mentors) is quite possibly the greatest thing ever broadcast on television.

After his talk show ended he also hosted a "Dating Game" style show on Game Show Network called "Baggage," which was actually pretty fun to watch. I think they still air re-runs of that on their Game Show Central sub-channel.

[Trevor]

He also made a little seen movie in South Africa called "Citizen Verdict".

[Alex]

Just some food for thought. Shows like this really should have made entire societies look at themselves and have a long hard think about what the hell they were doing and how they should start fixing them. He might have made money out of it, but ultimately he didn't create the situation or people, he just exploited something that already existed. Any of us (I admit I'd seen a few episodes of various incarnations) who watched his show (or the others of the same ilk) contributed to that exploitation.

[RCMerchant]

Sure. People were stupid long before Jerry made it a TV show.