Key Takeaways
- Maury Povich says the 1995 killing of Jenny Jones guest Scott Amedure by fellow guest Jonathan Schmitz “changed everything” for daytime TV, forcing shows like Maury to adopt lengthy legal waivers, stricter pre-interviews, and on-staff attorneys.
- The murder, which followed Amedure’s on-air revelation of a same-sex crush on Schmitz, became a symbol of ’90s talk-show excess and led to a (later overturned) multimillion-dollar civil judgment against The Jenny Jones Show and its owners.
- Povich and Montel Williams recall a hyper-competitive era in which roughly 14 talk shows chased Oprah-level ratings with ever more provocative reveals, arguing they were simply delivering what millions of viewers clearly wanted.
Maury Povich remembers the exact moment the anything-goes era of daytime television hit a wall. The 1995 murder of Jenny Jones Show guest Scott Amedure, who was killed by fellow guest Jonathan Schmitz three days after revealing his attraction to him during a taping, sent shockwaves through the talk-show business. According to Povich, it also forced shows like Maury to overhaul how they dealt with guests almost overnight.
“That changed everything,” Povich told Entertainment Weekly. Suddenly, appearing on a daytime talk show required a lot more than agreeing to sit onstage.
“We had 10, 12 pages of legal documents that each guest had to sign,” Povich said. “We had to make sure that there were never questions that were going to be asked that they weren’t prepared for. And every single show, all of a sudden, had an attorney that was attached to the show.”
The changes followed a killing that became inseparable from the excesses of '90s daytime TV. According to All That’s Interesting, Amedure, an openly gay 32-year-old, appeared on a March 1995 episode of Jenny Jones titled “Revealing Same Sex Secret Crush.” He disclosed his feelings for Schmitz, his 24-year-old straight friend, to the studio audience. Schmitz initially laughed and clapped after learning Amedure was his secret admirer. The episode never made it to television.
Three days later, Schmitz shot Amedure to death at his Michigan home. “Apparently, it was terribly embarrassing,” Povich recalled. “After the show, days after the show, one of the guys was killed. It changed the whole viewing of daytime TV.”
Schmitz later told a 911 operator that he had killed Amedure because “he put me on national TV.” He was convicted of second-degree murder, retried after his first conviction was overturned, convicted again, and eventually paroled in 2017.
The killing came as daytime television was locked in a brutal fight for viewers. Povich and Jenny Jones had both debuted their shows in 1991, joining a field that included Oprah Winfrey, Phil Donahue, Geraldo Rivera, Montel Williams and Jerry Springer, with Ricki Lake joining the fray in 1993.
Povich recently admitted just how competitive things got. “We tried to poach each other's guests,” he told Williams on On Par with Maury Povich.
Williams remembered producers studying competitors minute by minute, asking, “Why did your 15-minute segment outperform my 15-minute segment?”
And there were enormous audiences at stake. Williams recalled a stretch when roughly 14 talk shows were competing simultaneously and pulling millions of viewers apiece. “We were doing what clearly the public wanted,” he said. “If the people didn't want to see it, we wouldn't have been there.” Oprah remained the target everyone chased, while shows increasingly fought for attention with more provocative topics, confrontations, and made-for-TV reveals.
Amedure's death exposed just how serious the consequences of that race could become. His family later won a multimillion-dollar civil judgment against The Jenny Jones Show and its corporate owners, though it was overturned on appeal.
