During a commercial break, Jerry Springer is acquainting his studio audience in Chicago`s NBC Tower with a new member of the Talk Show Class of 1992-1993.
”Now who has questions?” asks Springer, former Cincinnati mayor whose national ”Jerry Springer” show premieres Monday on Ch. 5 (10 a.m.) and on 92 other stations.
Before anyone can raise a hand, Springer adds sternly: ”If you would have paid attention, you wouldn`t have any questions.”
The audience laughs politely at the antic, and Springer turns contrite.
”I don`t have a future in this, let`s be honest,” he said.
Springer`s shrewd self-deprecating sense of humor has sprung him to the top twice in Cincinnati-as a city councilman and ”boy mayor” in the 1970s, and as the top-rated TV anchorman and commentator since the late 1980s.
Now he`s using it to try to win over Chicago, telling viewers in Channel 5 promotions that his Northwestern University Law School professors ”kept telling me, `Jerry, you`ll never make it as a lawyer.` Well, they were right. So I got this talk show, and I hope you come and see it.”
”Jerry Springer” moved into the NBC Tower in August after a year in Cincinnati. The one-hour daily talk show is a cross between Sally Jessy Raphael and Phil Donahue, which is no accident. Multimedia owns Sally, Phil and Springer, as well as Springer`s WLWT-TV in Cincinnati. Emmy winner Burt Dubrow produces ”Sally” and ”Springer.”
He`s taping five shows a week here (including two on Saturday), and sometimes commuting daily from Chicago`s Channel 5 to Cincinnati`s Channel 5 to handle his nightly TV news anchor and commentary job.
Life would have been simpler had Springer, 48, stuck with law, but he didn`t give it much practice. His first love was politics, working as a regional campus co-ordinator for Bobby Kennedy`s 1968 presidential campaign.
After graduating from Northwestern in 1968, and surviving the Democratic National Convention riots in Grant Park, he passed the Ohio bar exam and joined a Cincinnati law firm, where he had clerked the previous summer.
That Springer became hugely successful in conservative, Catholic Cincinnati is proof of his disarming charisma and impish charm-or something.
It certainly wasn`t his New York accent, liberal Democratic politics, Jewish faith, big nose or favorite baseball team, the Yankees.
Whatever it was, Springer-born in London, raised in New York City, and educated at Tulane and Northwestern-became Cincinnati`s most-watched newsmaker and news reader.
A Cincinnati favorite
Just three years after arriving in Cincinnati, Springer was elected at age 27 to one of nine at-large seats on Cincinnati`s City Council.
His first act? Submit a motion that it should be illegal for Cincinnati residents to be drafted into the Vietnam War.
Through the 1970s, the popular populist won re-election by redefining the term ”public servant.” One day he drove a public bus; he spent another night in the city`s Civil War-era jail. He borrowed a van and took his ”mobile city hall” into city neighborhoods; he sought limits on noisy air-conditioners;
and he fought the city`s ban on rock concerts at Riverfront Stadium.
Or maybe it was that time he wrestled Victor the Bear at the Sports and Boat Show, or played folk guitar with pro football player-turned-country-singer Mike Reid at Bogart`s nightclub near the University of Cincinnati.
Cincinnati loved him even more after a sex scandal, when Kentucky vice officers found Vice Mayor Springer`s personal check for a prostitute in 1974. He resigned his council seat-only to be elected again in 1975, and re-elected in 1977 to the largest plurality in city history and named mayor.
He left the council for what was an unsuccessful campaign in 1982 for Ohio governor, during which he promised upstate Cleveland crowds: ”You elect me governor, and I`ll turn this state around. Then you`ll be next to Kentucky!”
Out of work, out of politics, that`s how Springer wound up in TV news. He began by reading a nightly WLWT-TV news commentary, and moved into the anchor chair in 1984 without relinquishing his nightly editorial opinion. His thought-provoking ”Jerry Springer Commentary” propelled WLWT-TV into first place from 1987-92.
Tom Kuelbs, Springer`s news director at WLWT and a former news executive for 13 years at Chicago`s WBBM-Ch. 2 and WLS-Ch. 7, said that Walter Jacobsen`s success as a TV anchor and commentator inspired him to put Springer on the anchor desk.
”I thought it could work for Jerry because it worked for Walter,” said Kuelbs, son of a Chicago firefighter.
”Jerry really could be Walter Jacobsen`s brother. Walter is liberal and a Democrat, and one of the few anchors in America who was also a
commentator.”
Something different
With Springer established as Cincinnati`s No. 1 anchorman, and with seemingly nowhere to go, Multimedia gave him a daily talk show which started last September in five cities. Although he promised to take the high road, and not compromise his news image, by May he was dancing with male strippers and interviewing topless maids.
But one thing that sets ”Jerry Springer” apart from Sally, Phil, Oprah and others is his closing ”commentary,” an eloquent essay which helps legitimize even the seamiest sweeps topic.
”They help me focus. I like every show to have a point, even the lighter ones,” said Springer, who scribbles his summation on the jet hop from Cincinnati, which is often quicker (55 minutes) than the trip in from O`Hare on the Kennedy Expressway.
”In terms of show subject matter, I`m probably closer to Phil than Sally,” Springer said. ”I think our shows are more issue-related than necessarily sexy.”
His top-rated Cincinnati programs were ”I Want My Wife To Look Sexier,” ”Police Psychics Look For Missing Children,” ”Street Kids,” ”How To Spice Up Your Love Life” and ”What I Did For Revenge.”
His personal favorites were interviews with Oliver North and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. They were also practically the only big name guests he could attract to Cincinnati. Thus the move to Chicago, which was part of NBC`s four- year, $75 million deal to acquire ”Donahue,” ”Sally” and ”Springer”
for its owned-and-operated stations.
”Even more so than the fact that we`re in Chicago, it`s now that we`re legitimately a national show,” Springer said. ”As we`re making calls now, it`s not: `Who? What`s his name?` ”
`I`m really lucky`
Now it`s Chicago viewers who are asking: Who? What`s his name?
”Once you`ve got the show on the air,” he said, ”I don`t think getting an audience will be a problem.”
Still, he may find himself occasionally needing to solicit people to be in the audience. It`s not a problem confronted by the unrivaled queen of the Chicago talk show scene, Oprah Winfrey. When it comes to his talk show competition at 10 a.m., he`ll be up against Joan Rivers on WGN-Ch. 9 and reruns of Montel Williams on WPWR-Ch. 50.
Springer, who lived and died with the campaign polls long before overnight Nielsen ratings, knows that anything won`t last forever.
”I know that one day-unless you`re Phil Donahue-that one day this ends. I pray it`s 10 years from now. But I never take anything for granted. I know this business: Today they`ll love me; tomorrow I`m a bum.
”I know I`m really lucky. I`ve got a national talk show, and tonight I`m getting on a plane to do the news. I keep thinking: `Boy, one day, I`m really going to pay for all of this.` ”
