The Steve Wilkos Show

The Steve Wilkos Show
Genre	Tabloid talk show
Created by	Steve Wilkos
Presented by	Steve Wilkos
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	11
No. of episodes	1,200+[1]
Production
Executive producer(s)	Richard Dominick (2007-2008) Rachelle Wilkos (2008-present) Steve Wilkos (2018-present) Jerry Springer (co-executive producer) Selina Santos (co-executive producer)
Camera setup	Multiple
Running time	42 minutes
Production company(s)	Stamford Media Center Productions (2011-present) (season 5-present) Richard Dominick Productions (2007-2008) (season 1)
Distributor	NBCUniversal Television Distribution
Release
Original network	Syndication
Picture format	480i (4:3 SDTV) (2007-2012) 1080i (16:9 HDTV) (2012-present)
Audio format	Stereo
Original release	September 10, 2007 (2007-09-10) – present
Chronology
Related shows	The Jerry Springer Show
External links
Website

The Steve Wilkos Show is a syndicated American tabloid talk show hosted by Steve Wilkos. The show debuted on September 10, 2007, two months after Wilkos' departure as director of security on The Jerry Springer Show.

History

The show has Wilkos expanding on his "Steve to the Rescue" shows that he did while serving as a co-host for Jerry Springer whenever Springer took breaks or was doing other projects, such as Dancing with the Stars.^[2][3] The idea of Wilkos having his own show came as a result of this approach, which proved to be so popular with viewers that the producers of Springer pitched the idea of giving Wilkos his own show to NBCUniversal, which proved successful.^[4] On his show, each episode of the show focuses on the topics usually addressed by this type of talk show, mainly involving adultery, domestic abuse, paternity, disrespectful children and teenage pregnancy, with other topics of the same genre also covered often.

As noted, Wilkos' show takes a darker tone and deals with more serious topics than Springer's usually covers, most involving criminal justice issues. Wilkos will often refuse to allow guests accused of excessively heinous misbehavior, such as being convicted of certain crimes (especially sex offenses and spousal/child abuse) to sit down in the chairs on his soundstage. Wilkos will sometimes toss these chairs aside when he is angry (and at times he has also thrown the chairs, thereby breaking them). He often notes in his show that the reason he does so is because when the accused committed the crime against the victim, they weren't making them "comfortable" and as such, they don't deserve to be "comfortable" while on his show.^[5] Irrespective of any heinous behavior, Wilkos typically lets pregnant women^[6] and teenagers^[7] sit on his stage.

Wilkos often bullies guests by not letting them sit if he has decided, nearly always without proof, that they have done wrong, yelling in their faces, telling them to shut up, physically intimidating them, and even challenging them to hit him, but avoids physical contact with them unless necessary to defend himself or other guests.^[8] He claims to have an innate, almost psychic sense of who is a criminal and who is not, based on his prior experience as a police officer and Marine. When an innocent guest begins to explain their actions in greater detail, Wilkos will often ignore and shout over the top of them and tell them to shut up.^[9] When guests get aggressive, Wilkos has threatened them with arrest.^[10] When guests flee backstage to try to get away from Wilkos, he often follows them and continues the confrontations.^[11] Almost always, when Wilkos has had enough of a particular guest's antics, he will eject the guest off the stage by yelling "Get the hell off my stage!," "Get off my stage!," "Get your ass off my stage!," or a bleeped "Get the fuck off my stage!", and with increasing frequency, will have them forcibly removed from the studio as well. On rare occasions, Wilkos would even throw guests out of the building.^[12] At times, when Wilkos is at his calmest depending on how the guests conduct themselves on the show, he will kindly ask the guests to "walk off the stage."

A trademark of the show is Wilkos' chair throwing. When angry, he often picks up and throws chairs, usually breaking them (in one notable instance, rather than breaking, a chair he threw got wedged into the wall), and often stating that he would like to do the same to his guests.^[13]

Polygraph exams are commonly used on the show, as means for resolving issues. Often guests are polygraphed in regards to cases of physical abuse, child molestation, rape, murder, and infidelity. When the results of a polygraph are disputed by an accused guest, Wilkos brings out the production's polygraph expert, Daniel Ribacoff (who has been on the show since the third season) to explicate the results and clarify how a polygraph works. Guests usually take the polygraph exam three times or more to ensure accuracy of the results.^[14][15]

The show also focuses on clearing the names of those who are wrongfully accused and/or convicted of serious offenses such as rape, abuse, murder, and other offenses of that nature. If the accused passes their lie detector test, Steve often turns his anger towards the accusers the same way he expresses anger at those who are guilty of committing those offenses.

In earlier seasons, Wilkos would often make jokes about prison rape to unnerve or upset abusers and rapists, but this practice is almost completely unseen in recent seasons. Wilkos doesn't yell or get in the accused guests' faces as often as he did in the first season, unless if need be for a greater cause, depending on how the guests take the heat on his stage.

Wilkos has appeared twice on Maury; once in 2008,^[16] and participated in the 2,500th episode in 2013.^[17]

On November 22, 2013, The Steve Wilkos Show celebrated their 1000th episode, along with Jerry Springer and Rachelle Wilkos as special guests. The 1,000th episode took a look back on the first seven of the ten seasons of the show.^[18]

The Steve Wilkos Show celebrated its tenth anniversary in September 2016. Steve Wilkos and Rachelle Wilkos, as well as the producers hosted a series of tributes entitled "A Decade of Steve" looking back on the first nine seasons of the show.

Changes

In the show's first season, Wilkos frequently closed episodes with readings of both positive and negative e-mails he received from viewers. He would preface the readings by saying, "If I read your letter, and if you're not a knucklehead, moron or belly-rubber, I'll send you a free t-shirt." He also proclaimed his show to be "Moron-Free TV", and declared that those who sent him negative e-mails were "not allowed to watch". Since the second season, these readings were less frequent, Wilkos no longer used the "knucklehead," "moron," "belly-rubber" or "Moron-Free TV" labels (most likely to avoid offense and/or legal issues), and everyone who had their e-mail read gets the free T-shirt. This segment ended when Wilkos' show was moved to the Stamford Center for the Arts in Stamford, Connecticut. Nowadays, the readings of positive and negative e-mails from viewers are very infrequent.

For much of the first season, Wilkos would read lie detector results as "you have told the entire truth / you have not told the entire truth". From the February 2008 episodes onward, he has excluded "entire truth" from this catchphrase. After that, Wilkos would read lie detector results as "the results of your lie detector test is that you told the truth/did not tell the truth."^[19] Since midway through the fifth season, Wilkos would begin reading lie detector results as "The results of your lie detector test came back the same to each question, and they came back that (subject, accused and the accusers, mostly the accused) told the truth/did not tell the truth."^[20]

Also in the second season, Wilkos began dividing some episodes into two segments, each one dealing with different guests and issues. In rare cases, there can be three segments on one episode. Additionally, paternity tests and infidelity were added as topics to the show. As time went on with the paternity and infidelity stories, Wilkos would often make jokes with guests just to get laughs from himself, his guests and the audience, since paternity and infidelity aren't as serious an offense as abuse of any kind.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, executive producer Richard Dominick was forced from the program by Springer and NBCU Domestic Television after encouraging Wilkos to become extremely physical with a guest. Rachelle Consiglio, Wilkos's wife and a long time Springer crew member, became the program's executive producer.^[21][22]

Wilkos' third season premiered September 14, 2009, originating from the Stamford Media Center in Stamford, Connecticut complete with a new studio. Fellow NBC-Universal talkers Maury and Springer made the move, as well.^[23]

In June 2018, it was announced that the show had been renewed through 2020.^[24]

See also

• Kenny Easterday
• Jerry Springer: The Opera
• The Jeremy Kyle Show (UK version)
• The Jeremy Kyle Show (U.S. TV series)
• Face to Face

References

External links

• Official website
• The Steve Wilkos Show on IMDb