Jerry Springer is back with Judge Jerry

Jerry Springer’s eponymous talk show ran for almost 4,000 episodes, but he’s traded his lie detector tests for a gavel. On Monday,Judge Jerry launched across the country on NBC. Springer has a J.D. degree from Northwestern and worked for two firms before transitioning to politics and TV. He tells Deadline of his decision to don judge’s robes on TV: “I was getting ready to stop because we’d been doing it for 27 years… it was time to wind it down. Then [NBCUniversal Domestic Television Distribution’s EVP & General Sales Manager]Sean O’Boyle came in to the office about a month before we stopped taping and said ‘I’ve got this idea; you’re a lawyer, why don’t we do Judge Jerry’. Just like that. It does roll off the tongue. I can see from a television point of view, why that makes sense, it’s a daytime audience, it’s conflict, it’s my background so I could see it.”