Jerry Springer's talk show becomes reality show

For the past several months, cameras have been secretly recording the behind-the-scenes goings-on at The Jerry Springer Show for a new VH1 reality series. Tentatively-titled The Springer Hustle, the show focuses on the producers who bring all that messed-up humanity to the screen.

This raises all kinds of questions for me. Did you know that Jerry Springer still had a TV show? I thought he was busy running for office or something. More importantly, can you make a reality show about a show that pretends to examine reality and uses "real" people but is largely staged much in the way, say, professional wrestling is staged? And, since we all know that reality programming is also hyper-edited, written and sometimes staged, will my head explode when I try to decode what's real, what's fake, who's pre-op, who's post-op and who's my baby's daddy? I'm already confused.

Fortunately, this isn't VH1's only new offering. You can also expect to see Andrew Dice Clay and Tom Sizemore vehicles. So much to look forward to in 2007.