The verdict is in: Stern-faced, no-nonsense judges are the new stars of daytime TV. And that means more of them will soon be coming to a small screen near you.
But the question is: What's the appeal? What is it about the cranky Judge Judy that suddenly makes her more popular than the empathetic Oprah? And why is Judge Mills Lane, who looks and sounds like an angry Elmer Fudd, now challenging the likes of "Jerry Springer"?
"I think it's a combination of factors," said Emerson Coleman, vice president of programming for the Hearst-Argyle station group. "They all offer a satisfying kind of formula for viewers with a clearly defined beginning, middle and end that provides the kind of closure you rarely get in your real life.
"The other constant in all the shows is the sense of authority that the judges have -- this idea that right is right and wrong is wrong. I think viewers find satisfaction in that."
The best measure of TV heat is ratings, and the ratings for "Judge Judy," featuring a retired New York City judge named Judy Sheindlin, are up 76 percent over last year. "Judge Judy," which premiered in 1996, now averages almost 9 million viewers a day, making it the most-watched show on daytime television -- more popular than "Oprah" or "Jerry Springer."
Such ratings always lead to imitation in the world of television. The early success of "Judge Judy" led to the revival in 1997 of "The People's Court" with Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York, on the bench. That show now averages 3.2 million viewers a day, which is not bad at all.
But not good enough in a genre this hot. Last week, the producers announced that Koch would be replaced next fall by Jerry Sheindlin, a New York Supreme Court judge who just happens to be the husband of Judge Judy.
"The People's Court" is not even the second most popular courtroom show, according to Marc Berman, a TV analyst for Sentel, a firm that specializes in media buying. There are two others ahead of it in the ratings -- "Judge Mills Lane" and "Judge Joe Brown." And getting to second place is going to be even tougher for Judge Judy's husband next fall, because two more shows are joining the lineup -- "Judge Greg Mathis" and a revival of "Divorce Court."
"The court show is an extremely successful formula right now, and you can definitely say that Baltimore viewers have really taken to it," said Coleman, whose Hearst-Argyle group runs 26 network affiliates including WBAL in Baltimore, making him one of the more important buyers of such syndicated programs nationwide.
Four of the court shows are seen weekdays in Baltimore: "Judge Joe Brown" on WUTB (Channel 24), "The People's Court" on WMAR (Channel 2), and "Judge Judy" and "Judge Mills Lane" on WNUV (Channel 54). In February, "Judge Judy" beat the early news on WMAR (Channel 2), a remarkable performance for any syndicated program to beat a major newscast on a network affiliate.
"Judge Joe Brown," meanwhile, made newcomer WUTB competitive in its time period overnight, beating WMAR's "Montel Williams" in February -- another pretty impressive performance. WMAR recently realigned its weekday schedule, moving Williams to 9 a.m. and bringing "The People's Court" to the 4 p.m. time slot to compete with "Judge Joe Brown" -- an indication of the kind of impact court shows are already having on local lineups and viewing patterns.
Each of the shows opens with a reporter or announcer laying out the facts of a case. Many of the cases deal with relationships gone bad and disputes over money spent, lent or borrowed during the relationship. Some of the people standing before the bench are pretty pathetic -- pathetic enough that we can feel superior to them, just as we do the combatants on shows like "Jerry Springer."
Last week on "Judy Judy," a 31-year-old guy was suing his 29-year-old ex-girlfriend and co-worker for a $500 car loan, lost wages and getting fired from his job. She counter-sued for harassment. The guy kept saying how much he still loved her, as he told the world what a tramp she was for sleeping with other men.
This week, a woman was suing her sister for a $3,000 unpaid car loan. The sister's defense was that she was poor, her sister was rich and everyone else in the family called the lending sister "Hitler."
On "The People's Court" this week, two women who said they had been friends for 17 years were fighting over a cheap carpet one of their cats had ruined. Before it was over, each told America about the other's addictions to pills and alcohol. One of the women seemed utterly shattered by the experience.
On all the shows, each case ends with the plaintiff and defendant walking out into the lobby, where they are interviewed about their feelings. The more they talk, the more pathetic they often seem.
But the most striking thing about the shows is the way the judges regularly bully and sometimes insult the people standing before them -- again, allowing audience members to feel superior. In this regard, Judge Brown is the nicest of the TV judges, while Koch and Sheindlin are the worst. Lane is in the middle with his "el gono" threats.
"Hey, one more time and you are el gono," he yelled at one female defendant this week. "And if I say el gono, that means you are el gono."
Usually, Judge Judy gives a fierce "shhhhhushhhh," like an angry librarian, to the people standing before her who talk too much. But last week, she went way beyond the shush and shrieked at one particularly obnoxious defendant, "Are you trying to speak over me?" That same day she lit into a man who had paid his wife only $7.49 last month in child support: "Seven dollars and forty-nine cents is an outrage. You can't just have children if you can't pay for them. What do you think this is? Are we supposed to pay for your kids? Listen, right is right and wrong is wrong. I'm sorry."
Lawrence E. Mintz, an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, said Judge Judy's "right is right" language is key to understanding the appeal of the shows.
"What the TV judges can do is focus on right and wrong, not legal technicalities, and that alone can make them heroes to a public sick and tired of focusing on procedure, definitions of terms, complex application of appropriate laws and precedent ad infinitum, ad nauseam, like in the Clinton impeachment process," said Mintz, who teaches classes in popular culture and television.
"Isn't it much better to be able to say, 'You are right, you are wrong, pay up'? Actually, most of the times that I've seen Judge Judy or Ed Koch, both sides are for one or more reasons less than admirable, and they're called on it by the judges. But, at the end of the show, a clean ruling is made, and it can't be appealed," Mintz added.
Judges are not new to TV. The first daytime court show was "Divorce Court" in 1957, which told viewers at the start of each show that its purpose was "to stem the rising tide of divorces." The series was remade in the 1980s after the success of daytime TV's most famous jurist, Judge Joseph A. Wapner, who ruled in "The People's Court" from 1981 to 1993.
But there have never been as many TV judges as there are today, and there does seem to be a connection between their current popularity and the impeachment of Clinton and the O.J. Simpson case. Not only is no one allowed to answer a question before these judges by wondering what "the definition of is is," as Clinton did in his famous televised deposition, there are no Johnny Cochrans standing alongside as there was with Simpson.
In fact, there are no lawyers, period, which is its own kind of pleasure. When Judge Judy says, "Answer the question right now," you answer the question right now, or you get berated by the mean lady looking down her nose at you over her half-moon glasses. There is no attorney there to intercede on your behalf or insist that "if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit."
In that sense, these shows might really be anti-courtroom in a way -- or, at least, anti-what-the-legal-system-has-become. And, if that's true, the many attorneys advertising during these shows might want to reconsider how they're spending their money.
Some viewers might also want to reconsider how they're investing their emotional capital in the litigants who come before the TV judges. While all the programs claim or imply that the people standing before the judges will be punished by having to pay the judgment rendered against them, the fine print tells a different story.
On "The People's Court," this disclaimer flashes by at the end of each installment too quickly to be read without a freeze frame: "Both the plaintiff and the defendant have been paid from a fund for their appearance. The amount, if any, awarded in the case is deducted from this fund, and the remainder is divided equally between both litigants. The amount of the fund is dependent upon the size of the judgment."
Translation: Both plaintiff and defendant go home richer than they arrived -- a capitalist version of a show trial.
In the end, the TV judge genre is yet another case of television turning an important realm of American life, the judicial system, into show business and empty spectacle. But, before you get too upset about it, ask yourself whether watching Judge Judy can possibly be any worse for the soul than Jenny Jones or Jerry Springer.
If we, the American TV viewing people, were ever to be judged by our taste in daytime television, we would all be el gono.
Pub Date: 4/14/99