The following post contains discussions of domestic violence and sexual assault.
TV Guide Magazine, TV Insider’s sibling publication, once named The Jerry Springer Show the worst TV show of all time in its July 2002 ranking of the 50 worst shows ever put to screen. That very ranking is mentioned in the second of two episodes in the documentary Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, which is streaming now on Netflix. And seeing the history of the riotous and controversial daytime talk show laid out by its creators, it’s hard to disagree with the show getting that top spot. Even the executive producer who created its wild format, Richard Dominick, says in the docuseries that he believes they’re responsible for the normalization of violence on reality TV. The program ushered in the sense of “anything goes” we see on TV today, and Fights, Camera, Action shows the extensive manipulative efforts producers took to make this show that was unlike anything anyone had ever seen.
Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action chronicles the show’s torrid history with first-hand testimony from Dominick and three of his producers, a former guest, and — in the documentary’s most upsetting segment — the son of the woman was who murdered by her abusive ex-husband the night their Springer episode aired. The interviews reveal the darker truth behind the curtain of the outrageous daytime talk show that made history as the first show to ever dethrone the ratings juggernaut that was The Oprah Winfrey Show. Fights, Camera, Action paints a picture of the destruction caused by the series primarily to its guests, raising renewed questions about who was responsible and how far things should go in the name of entertainment.
Here are some of the most shocking revelations from the documentary, in no particular order.
1. The producers seemingly didn’t care about the guests’ wellbeing
The show’s only goal was to get people to come onto the show, tell their “crazy” stories, throw in some verbal and/or physical assaults while they did it, and leave. Guests, meanwhile, believed they were coming onto the show because host Jerry Springer wanted to help them solve their serious problems. The producers say in the documentary that this was always shocking to them, as they claim they never expressed any intention to help these people. From their POV, all they were offering was a stage to tell their story, nothing more. This highlights the exploitative nature of the talk show.
Richard Dominick in ‘Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action’ (Netflix)
2. The details of getting “Springered” are wilder than the show itself
Getting “Springered” was the show’s term for the behind-the-scenes work producers put in to get guests riled up before walking onstage. The show “did everything in their power to get us as crazy as possible,” one former guest named Melanie says in an episode. This included sending limos to take them to and from the airports, paying for all of their travel, lodging, and food expenses (but these were conditional perks — more on that later), as well as copious drink tickets. As Melanie recalls, she partied all night on the show’s dime the night before filming, and then once she arrived to the set, it was time to get “Springered.”
“You’re starting a sh*t fight,” producer Toby Yoshimura (son of Saturday Night Live‘s longtime production designer Akira Yoshimura) says in the doc. “You rev them up to tornado level and then you send them out onstage.”
It’s perhaps unsurprising to learn that the show was intentionally stirring the pot with its guests before sending them out to see Jerry, but it’s still shocking to see footage of the producers riling guests up to the point of anger for the sole purpose of producing violence onscreen. Melanie was on the show to confront infidelity in her relationship. She says, “They weren’t treating me sensitively. They weren’t interested in what kind of impact it was going to have on you. It was all for the show.” Getting “Springered” put people in already high-stakes emotional situations into even higher risk, and this eventually had deadly consequences.
Yoshimura says in the doc that the show was “basically the Stanford Prison Experiment” in that they were “playing with people’s psyche until you get a result.”
3. A woman was killed by her ex-husband after appearing on the show under allegedly false pretenses
Jeffrey Campbell in ‘Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action’ (Netflix)
The show’s biggest controversy of all time was the murder of Nancy Campbell that took place the night her Springer episode aired in July 2000. Campbell was killed by her ex-husband, Ralf Panitz, with whom she was hoping to reconcile when going on the show. Campbell’s son, Jeffrey Campbell, took part in the documentary and said he was shocked that his mother went on the show in the first place, but he believes she was manipulated by the producers and operating under a false belief that the program was helping Panitz’s immigration status so they could be together. In reality, she had been recruited for an episode about “secret mistresses,” and she had no idea she was the alleged mistress.
Campbell and Panitz had divorced in 1999 after a domestic violence incident, but they got back together. Panitz, however, had married his new wife, Eleanor, in March of 2000 unbeknownst to Campbell.
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“My mother believed that Ralf had been deported to Germany and that the show was going to pay for his travel back to America, and that they would reconcile, and that he would tell his new girlfriend that he wanted to be with my mother,” Jeffrey says in the second episode. Instead, Campbell was confronted by Eleanor on the episode, who was shocked to learn that Campbell and Panitz had slept together the night before filming. Rather than lean into the fighting, Campbell walked off set and told Eleanor she could have Panitz to herself. What Jeffrey says happened after she walked off is deeply upsetting.
According to Jeffrey, the show’s producers threatened Campbell after she walked off, saying that if she didn’t return to stage to film the episode’s final segment, they wouldn’t pay for her travel home. This was apparently standard practice for the series. If guests didn’t comply with all of the show’s wishes, they would lose their perks, even if it meant being left with no way home. And that’s what Jeffrey says happened to his mother. She refused to film more, and she was left in Chicago, where the show filmed, without enough money to get back home. Jeffrey says she was walking the streets of the city crying and visibly upset. Eventually, a good samaritan saw her in distress and helped buy her bus ticket home.
A few months later, the night the episode aired in 2000, Panitz was reportedly watching the 2 a.m. airing of their episode in a bar and got very angry. Campbell was found choked and beaten to death in her home later that night, and Panitz was eventually convicted for her murder and sentenced to life in jail. Campbell’s lawyer makes an appearance in the documentary to give further context.
4. One producer believes a longstanding rumor about Richard Dominick is true
Following Campbell’s murder, there were reports that people from The Jerry Springer Show were going to be subpoenaed. It was around that time that Dominick planned for a special episode to be filmed in Jamaica, which required everyone on the staff to travel for the production. Dominick and the show deny that they planned this in order to avoid being subpoenaed, but Yoshimura says in the doc that he sees a connection between this Jamaica episode and them not facing legal action. That’s just his personal speculation, but it’s illuminating.
5. One producer quit after a very upsetting encounter
Yoshimura was one of the show’s main producers for its entire run, but in 2004 he was producing a story that broke him. It involved a sex worker and her father who kept on ordering her services online. Yoshimura says that the show brought them to Chicago for filming and put them up in two different hotels under aliases, but when he knocked on the woman’s door to check on her, her father answered wearing only a towel. He says it was clear to him that the father and daughter had just finished having sex. Yoshimura walked away from the show with no notice and didn’t come back for two years after that. He returned in 2006 before quitting permanently in 2008.
Toby Yoshimura in ‘Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action’ (Netflix)
6. The show wanted to teach Oprah “a lesson”
Oprah Winfrey was open about her dislike of the show once it started encroaching on her ratings. For years, her talk show was the one that was impossible to beat, but the sensationalist Springer was the first show to do it. Oprah called the show “appalling” in interviews, which angered the producers. Dominick says in the doc that he wanted to teach her “a lesson” for her “inappropriate” behavior, which is rich coming from a man who openly said that he would execute someone on live TV if he could.
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“Oprah pissed me off, especially because Jerry was so nice,” Dominick says of Springer, who died in April 2023, in the doc.
All that talk about Oprah disrespecting the show, and it was followed by their most shocking episode that got taken off the air: the “I Married a Horse” episode. Dominick calls the bestiality episode, which featured a man who married a Shetland pony that he kissed onscreen, “the perfect show.” “It was everything I ever wanted it to be,” he says. And Oprah was inappropriate?
7. Jerry Springer’s eventual regret was too little and too late
The documentary could’ve gone deeper into its analysis of Springer’s complicity in the show’s creation, but that’s admittedly hard to do without Springer available to speak for himself.
Springer wasn’t generating the ideas, and he wasn’t controlling the producers, but he was profiting from all of it. Springer did eventually openly hate the program, telling Larry King and others that he was ashamed of what they made. But through every controversy, there are clips of Springer defending the show in the press. Many of these clips are featured in the doc. Even when Campbell was murdered the night her episode aired, Springer maintained that the show had nothing to do with the tragedy. His willingness to justify the show’s every decision — from platforming actual members of the KKK and neo-Nazis despite him being the descendant of Holocaust survivors and more — paints a grim picture of the late host.
Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, Available Now, Netflix
If you or someone you know is the victim of domestic abuse, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.
If you or someone you know is the victim of child abuse, contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual assault, contact the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network‘s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
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