Richard Dominick Is the Puppeteer of ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ — Did He Get Rich off the Drama?
"I thought the show was terrible."
Published Jan. 8 2025, 1:18 p.m. ET
In September 2008, Richard Dominick was fired from his job as executive producer of both The Jerry Springer Show and The Steve Wilkos Show, reported the Chicago Sun-Times. Fans of Springer's controversial talk show will know Steve as the bald bodyguard who spent most of his days breaking up fights on the oft-heated daytime show.
Dominick was pulling double duty at the time but was forced out by Springer and NBC Universal Domestic Television. This went down after they discovered he had encouraged Wilkos, a former Chicago cop, to get physical with a guest. The result was Wilkos putting the guest in a chokehold, per the outlet. By that time, Dominick was already making a ton of money. Let's take a look at his net worth.
Richard Dominick's net worth is enough to chant over.
When The Jerry Springer Show first aired in 1991, it was essentially a knockoff of The Phil Donahue Show. It was filmed in Cincinnati and was hosted by a virtual unknown. Unfortunately, the show's ratings reflected that. Dominick was promoted to executive producer in 1994, and that's when he decided to focus on real people with real problems. He pulled from his previous experience as a reporter for tabloid magazines like the Weekly World News and the Sun.
Richard Dominick
Television producer
Net worth: $15 million
Richard Dominick is a television producer best known for his time as executive producer on The Jerry Springer Show.
Birth date: May 21, 1952
Birth place: Elizabeth, N.J.
Birth name: Richard Dominick
Children: 2
By the time he was let go from both The Jerry Springer Show and The Steve Wilkos Show, Dominick was probably making around $1 million per episode for the former. He only lasted one season on the latter. According to some estimates, Dominick's net worth is somewhere around $15 million. This is partially due to the fact that his time in television didn't end with his abrupt departure from the show he helped build.
Richard Dominick initially thought Jerry Springer was a bad host.
In January 2025, Netflix released a documentary about The Jerry Springer Show titled Fights, Camera, Action. Dominick was of course interviewed for the series and like the show he helped create, didn't hold back.
When asked about its humble beginnings, before he took over, Dominick said, "I thought the show was terrible." He continued, "It was just boring. You had a terrible host, a terrible show. The audience is 90." The former executive producer wanted something sexy.
After he was fired, he posted on a now-defunct Springer message board, writing, "I gave Jerry and Steve, my staff and my crew everything I had inside me for 18 years. I had a great time doing Jerry, but I sure missed a lot in my own life." What he did was team up with truTV to create Hardcore Pawn in 2010, a year after The History Channel's Pawn Stars premiered.
Unlike the extremely popular Pawn Stars, Hardcore Pawn only lasted until 2014. He could never quite recreate the lightning in the bottle that was The Jerry Springer Show. It's one heck of a career high to chase.