The Jerry Springer Show, which ran for a whopping 27 seasons from 1991 to 2018, was a ratings behemoth, consistently ranked among the most-watched talk shows in America, particularly during its peak popularity in the mid-to-late '90s (in 1998, it was averaging up to 8 million viewers per episode).
Despite being hosted by a former politician and news anchor (that would be Springer), the program was famous for its sensational topics—episodes included "I Married a Horse" and "Black Supremacists vs. White Supremacists!"—chair-throwing fights and questionable ethics. But the mastermind behind the whole operation wasn't really Springer—it was a man named Richard Dominick.
In the new Netflix docuseries Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, which charts the rise of the iconic talk show and takes viewers inside some of its darker moments, Dominick is both an interview subject and a central figure to the story being told. Painted as a Svengali type, he played a key role in shaping Jerry Springer's controversial format and ushering in an era of confrontational talk programs.
“You gotta grab your audience, and you gotta hold them," he says at the start of the two-part docuseries. "And that’s what we tried to do.”
Keep reading for more about Jerry Springer mastermind Richard Dominick.
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Richard Dominick is a TV producer best known for his work as the executive producer of The Jerry Springer Show, which he rescued from a ratings abyss in 1994, when he became executive producer, through extreme attention-grabbing, arguably exploitive means.
"I thought the show was terrible," he said of Jerry Springer's beginnings, in an interview for Fights, Camera, Action. "It was just boring. You had a terrible host, a terrible show. The audience is 90. So when I took over the show and became executive producer, the vision that I had, that I wanted everybody to fall into was, 'Let's take a talk show, and let's turn it upside down. Let's make it wild, let's make it sexy,' because that's what I was known for."
Under his leadership, the show became known for its over-the-top confrontations, shocking revelations and hair-pulling physical altercations between guests (according to one producer interviewed in Fights, Camera, Action, some guests actually lost chunks of scalp).
"There's no line to draw," Dominick said in a past interview clipped for the docuseries. "If I could kill someone on television, I would execute 'em on television."
Related: Honor Jerry Springer's Memory by Watching Him Host 10 Outrageous, In-Studio, Knock-Down, Drag-Out, Hair-Pulling, Face-Slapping Fights
How did Richard Dominick get his start?
Dominick started out in tabloid journalism, working for the outlets Weekly World News and Sun, turning out sensationalistic articles like "Toaster Possessed by the Devil."
He was a frequent guest on Late Night with David Letterman, where he (perhaps facetiously) defended the veracity of his work.
In the realm of TV, The Jerry Springer Show was Dominick's big break.
Dominick served as executive producer from 1994 to 2008.
The Jerry Springer Show?
In September 2008, an NBC Universal rep announced that Dominick would be leaving his post as EP of The Jerry Springer Show and The Steve Wilkos Show, a Springer spinoff focused on the talk-show host's former security guard, which Dominick had also been producing for the network.
Dominick said he was leaving for new opportunities outside of Chicago, but it was apparent that the show was moving in a new, less circus-like direction, and that the longtime producer was, therefore, on the outs.
Rachelle Consiglio, who had been with the show for 14 years (and was married to Steve Wilkos), took over the EP role.
“We’re just kind of getting back to focusing on Jerry,” she said of the change. “Jerry has never been more popular. We were making the show visual but we decided it took the focus off what was important. What drives the show is Jerry Springer and the stories of the guests.”
Aside from Springer (and Springer-related projects), Dominick has produced a season of The Steve Wilkos Show, which centered around Springer's former bodyguard, as well as Hardcore Pawn, which followed a family pawn shop in Detroit, and the truTV police series Bait Car.
It appears Dominick still works as a producer through his own company, Richard Dominick Productions, but Springer remains his most successful work to date.
Did Jerry Springer and Richard Dominick get along?
The docuseries suggests that Springer and Dominick had a good working relationship and depicts them as somewhat on-top-of-the-world together; if the talk-show host ever pushed back on his producer, it wasn't shown in the doc.
But Chicago media critic Robert Feder, who covered The Jerry Springer Show at the time it was on and appeared in Fights, Cameras, Action, suggests a complicated dynamic.
"To say Richard corrupted him I think absolves Jerry of too much responsibility," Feder says. "But would Jerry Springer have become the Jerry Springer we know without Richard Dominick? I would say absolutely not.”
Towards the end of the doc, he adds, "The pact that Jerry made with Richard Dominick was a bargain that really caused him to sell his soul. And I believe that he knew every day of his life that what he was doing was really beneath him and beneath his dignity."
Related: Jerry Springer Laid to Rest in Intimate Ceremony
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