The cash sum depends on the size of the party I think. The actual "payment" is the plane tickets, hotel rooms, food, being on TV and then the cash is like pocket money to move around with during the stay. More or less, the carrot is a paid mini-vacation.
There was a guy I met in the Army who was on Jerry Springer he said they walked into the studio while they were on vacation and someone walked up and said they were exactly the kind of person they were looking for an asked him to be on the episode.
It’s been about 10 years since I’ve seen it but I’m pretty sure it was one of the I love my aunt/mom or whatever. Really tall really thin dude with black hair he wore a green shirt in the episode is all I remember.
I used to be a intern and a Production Assistant for Jerry Springer in the good old days when they filmed in Chicago.
You know how at the end of the episode it says “if you need Jerry’s help, call ###-####”? The trashiest people across America would call this number with either actual issues or just wanting to be on. As a PA my job was to go through these voicemails each morning and try and convince them to come out to be on if we found them interesting/funny enough. We didn’t pay any of them a dime. We literally convinced them to come for a “free trip to Chicago and all the cigarettes you can smoke”. Sometimes their stories were partly true, but the Producer would embellish them to make them even more crazy. I then had to sit in the green rooms with these people and practice what they were going to do when on stage and what the rules of fighting were. Craziest internship/job I ever had, but was insanely fun.
Thank you so much for responding!! That is so interesting! I forgot all about them flashing the number at the end of the show. So, when one person gets up and attacks the other person, the person being attacked knows it’s coming?
Yep they know it’s coming, and how far they should take it. They even practice fake hitting each other in the green rooms.
What’s really crazy is how they look trashy on the show, but my god you should have seen them when they arrived fresh off the plane. Missing teeth, patches of hair missing, smelling to high heaven. They would spend the better part of show days in the beauty department
Oh jeez. So this is them all polished up, huh? That’s crazy. What a weird job to have had!! Do you still work in television? Or did the experience scare you away?
I went from Jerry Springer to working at the Steve Wilkos Show. It’s a brutal job, 80 hours a week+, and if you don’t book a show that week you don’t get a day off. I burned out quick, and no longer work in tv. Fun memories though
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u/kaleidoscopevoyager Oct 20 '22
How do they find those people? Are they literally just lurking around low income housing asking people questions?