And here's a Springer-ism few know. The disgraced former mayor hosted the first US pilot for \"Fear Factor\"!
The show had the working title \"Now or Never - Face Your Fears\". International reality TV mogul John DeMol (Endemol Prods.) was present with his UK posse, as was the pilot's US producer Phil Gurin and staff. Jerry Springer made sense as a host by virtue of his well-known name, but was out of his element.
We taped at Hollywood Center Studios one evening in January, 2000 (I did warm-up). We were next door to that short-lived Dick Clark hosted CBS thing... that was \"Winning Lines\", wasn't it?
The format had the fearful folks sitting in the audience having been brought to the taping by a relative or friend, but unaware that they were to be part of the show. As I remember, some of the fears being faced included some woman being buried alive in a coffin, a guy who was phobic about dentists having his teeth (almost) worked on, a lady in the middle of a big fire, and some fool crawling through a maze filled with rats.
Come to think of it, that last stunt sounds like my career!
Randy
tvrandywest.com