Jerry Springer on his daytime TV exit: ‘I was competing against myself’

Jerry Springer has left the studio … for now.

The cancellation of “Judge Jerry” after three seasons leaves Springer without a small-screen home for the first time since “The Jerry Springer Show” launched in 1991 — its host “The Ringmaster” of his raucous daytime circus for the next 27 years.

“Right now I’m just taking a little bit of time to try out this retirement thing,” Springer told The Post. “I’m 78 and NBC/Universal has been so great to me. I’ve been on TV for 40 years now, 10 [years] in news and then 31 years with our shows.

“It would be embarrassing for me to say, ‘Why can’t I do another year or two?’ I’ll see how much I adjust [to retirement] and, if not, I’ll do other projects … I keep getting calls, ‘Would you consider doing this?’ But, right now, I’m really take a time out for the next month.”

Springer continues to host “The Jerry Springer Podcast” — his commentary runs as a column in the Cincinnati Enquirer (he was the city’s mayor from 1977-78 and a news anchor on its NBC affiliate, WLWT, for 10 years) — and, starting next month, he will contribute to “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” Morgan’s new streaming talk show.

“I may expand the podcast, because that’s clearly something I have to do every week,” he said. “I just don’t know, at this point, that I want to start a full-time job. I’m not saying I won’t — if some wonderful offer comes along I might say, ‘Gosh, this would be great’ — but right now I’m spending as much time as possible with my grandson, Richard. He’s down here [in Florida] for two weeks and then he goes to IMG, the baseball camp [in Bradenton]. He’s 13 going on 20. He’s already 6 feet tall and he’s an exceptional baseball player, so he’s going to pursue that as long as he wants to and we’ll obviously be backing him up.”

He said he family has been waiting for him to take this kind of break.

“We joke, but for several years now, they were saying ‘What’s the point of doing all of this?’ he said. “Now clearly we can go and see all of Richard’s games, we can travel together … there really are some wonderful advantages if you stay healthy — otherwise it’s depressing.”

“The Jerry Springer Show” ended its run of originals in 2018 — its popular syndicated repeats will continue to air for the foreseeable future — and, in 2019, Springer launched “Judge Jerry,” a courtroom show taped in Stamford, Ct. (in the same studio as “Maury,” which also just ended its run after 31 years). After a strong start, “Judge Jerry” began to run out of steam.

“The first year was wonderful, and the last two years, when the pandemic hit and we weren’t allowed to have an audience and couldn’t have the plaintiff and defendant in the courtroom … we were trying to force something that didn’t naturally flow,” he said. “I was talking to parties that were thousands of miles away — wherever the suits were filed was where we put the cameras — and you’ve got that delay, no audience and [me] sitting in front of a green screen. It wasn’t what I first imagined.

“But also the reality was that I was competing against myself,” he said. “In most markets they still run ‘The Jerry Springer Show,’ that’s been holding on, and there’s only so much of me that a normal human being can take. It was a containment issue; if I was going to be so crazy on that show, how can I suddenly be serious on the bench?

“People could be well-done with me after 31 years,” he said. “I enjoyed doing [‘Judge Jerry’], no question, but the industry isn’t based on, ‘Gee, are you having fun doing it?’ It wasn’t making the money it was making in the beginning. I totally get it. Honestly, I think what I’ll miss the most are the people I was working with in Stamford. We had a great camaraderie and every Monday night I would take them out to dinner.

“So they’re going hungry now because I don’t buy them dinner anymore,” he said. “They keep sending me texts: ‘I’m losing weight. Come back!’”

Springer said he knows how he’ll be remembered in the history of daytime television.

“If a legacy is what you’re best-known for, obviously I’m best-known for the crazy show,” he said, alluding to “The Jerry Springer Show.” “In a sense, I’ve become an adjective in the English language when people say ‘I’m having a Jerry Springer moment’ or when they say ‘Don’t go Jerry Springer on me now.’ Everyone knows instantly what they’re talking about.

“The greatest job I ever had was being mayor of Cincinnati, and if God came to me and said, ‘You can do one thing and you can do it for your lifetime,’ I would have chosen that,” he said. “The question with ‘legacy’ is that it’s just self-indulgent — the truth is, none of us will be remembered 20 years past our lifetime for the rest of eternity, unless we were a president or someone like that. If you ask people what was the maiden name of their great-grandmother, less than 1 percent of the population will know — and that’s your own family.

“The important thing is to be remembered by your kids and your grandkids. If they love me and remember me and I’ve been a good role model for them, that’s all that matters,” he said. “Everything else is just conceit. It’s embarrassing to say ‘my legacy.’ It’s not like, 50 years from now, people are going to be talking about, ‘Boy, thank God we had Jerry Springer.’

“As long as the crazy show keeps going, I’ll be a part of the fabric of the memories of our culture.”