‘Springer’ Ratings Up As Fights Return

Since the smacks came back, ratings for “The Jerry Springer Show” have gone up 15 percent, according to the latest Nielsen ratings. For the second straight week, the show’s audience was up from the previous week, growing 1 percent for the week ending July 19. A week earlier, viewership was up 13 percent.

“Springer’s” increase coincides with the early-July return of fights to the daily talk show. In April, show producer Studios USA vowed to edit out the fights that had become a trademark for the show. The first of the edited shows aired June 8.

However, at the start of the July sweeps, a ratings period used by local stations to set future advertising rates, producers started slipping in the fights again. It worked.

From the time the fights were edited out to when they returned, “Springer” lost 14 percent of its audience. The show has since fought its way back to regain the lost crowd and added some.

For the week, the show averaged a 7.1 rating (percentage of the nation’s 98 million TV homes), with 9,410,000 viewers, to be the No. 1 show in daytime, a streak that started in mid-February. The runner-up, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” averaged a 6.3 rating, with 7,400,000 viewers, up 3 percent from the previous week.