The Jerry Springer Show

The Jerry Springer Show premiered September 30, 1991, as a serious, issues-oriented talk program. Host Springer had briefly served as mayor of Cincinnati in the late 1970s, and early episodes featured politicians and activists discussing substantive topics. Facing cancellation over poor ratings, producer Richard Dominick orchestrated a radical overhaul in late 1994, steering the show toward sex, conflict, and confrontation. On-stage fights appeared by December 1994, and the transformation was complete.

The circus peak arrived in February 1998, when Springer became the first show in over a decade to dethrone The Oprah Winfrey Show as the most-watched daytime talk show, drawing at least eight million viewers an episode during 1998. The dominance slipped by June 1999, but the rituals had already calcified into legend: the "JERRY! JERRY!" chant, the bleeped brawls, security director Steve Wilkos — an off-duty Chicago cop — separating combatants with professional calm, and Springer's trademark closing, an earnest "Final Thought" that gently moralized about the chaos that preceded it, always ending "Till next time, take care of yourselves and each other."

TV Guide named it the worst TV show of all time in 2002 — a designation Springer and his audience wore proudly. Wilkos became a celebrity in his own right and left after the 2006–07 season to launch The Steve Wilkos Show. The original kept swinging chairs for another decade: NBCUniversal pulled the plug in June 2018, and the final first-run episode aired July 26, 2018 — 27 seasons and 3,891 episodes after the earnest political talk show it began as.