Raunch! Sex! Danger! Here!

“Jerry Springer,” with episodes like “Sexy Scenes Caught on Tape” and “Guests Reveal Their Secret Lovers,” now ranks near the top of the syndicated talk-show standings. Fox attracted its biggest Tuesday night audience in months with the video mayhem specials “World’s Scariest Police Chases” and “World’s Deadliest Swarms.”

Home Box Office wins Emmys for tony original movies such as “Miss Evers’ Boys” and “Gotti,” but the premium channel scores some of its biggest ratings with late-night programs designed to titillate, just as rival Showtime has with sexually explicit programming such as the long-running “Red Shoe Diaries.”

Those within the entertainment industry often duck for cover when asked to discuss such fare, which might be called “World’s Most Embarrassing Programs.” Some critics link shows like those hosted by Springer, Sally Jessy Raphael and Jenny Jones to declining morality, if not the end of civilization as we know it.

Despite such criticism, the popular allure of risque material is hardly new. Though nearly six in 10 respondents to a recent Los Angeles Times poll indicated that current television standards are too lax, radio host Larry Elder articulated a more cynical view on his KABC-AM (790) talk show earlier this week, suggesting people say they want the airwaves rid of sex and violence “until you put it in front of them.”

Moreover, while the appetite for racier programming has remained consistent, the manner in which that appetite is being fed continues to change.

Several programs that some viewers might find objectionable are currently flourishing. A half-hour version of Howard Stern’s at-times controversial radio show, for example, is the most popular offering on cable’s E! Entertainment Television, while “South Park”--an animated series whose raunchiness has earned a rare “mature audiences” rating--has quickly become the highest-rated program in Comedy Central’s history.

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The mere existence of such shows demonstrates increased competition brought about by an explosion of cable channels, making a wider variety of programming available while contributing to a steady decline in ratings for more traditional networks.

As ratings splinter, then, the ability of edgier content to attract an increasingly elusive audience appears to have become more irresistible to programmers.

“The more television is thinking of market segments rather than the mass market . . . the more room for the airwaves to be cluttered with stuff that a lot of us think is beneath contempt,” said Michael Schudson, a communications professor at UC San Diego.

In addition, what once might have shocked people can quickly become commonplace when seen on a regular basis--a vision popularized two decades ago by the movie “Network.”

Keith Spicer, a former chairman of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, contends that repeated exposure to television has the effect of wearing down the audience.

“I’m convinced after having that job for seven years [that] watching TV is not very good for your IQ,” said Spicer, a visiting professor at UCLA’s Center for Communications Policy. “It’s such an addictive habit, and the more you do it, the more your standards fall.”

Beyond the proliferation of Fox specials, which have at various times shown actual video of people being mauled by animals and plummeting to their deaths, the most notable ratings story lately may be “Jerry Springer.” His syndicated show--with its unabashed mix of cross-dressers and philanderers--has been on a roll, climbing to best-ever ratings this month.

The week of Nov. 10, for example, “Springer”--airing on KCAL-TV Channel 9--tied “The Tonight Show” for the highest audience share locally in its time period; in fact, the program won its time slot in 20 major cities and beat Oprah Winfrey’s perennial ratings champion head-to-head in Atlanta, Cleveland and New Orleans. KCAL has even added a second airing of the show weekday mornings.

That success comes despite negative publicity that so-called “trash talk shows” received after a “Jenny Jones” guest later murdered another man who revealed his “secret crush” on him during a taping. A spokesman for Universal Television, which distributes “Jerry Springer,” said the show is presented as entertainment and that its audience views the program in that context.

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A different sort of voyeurism can be found in HBO’s “Real Sex”--which has aired a total of 19 specials highlighting unusual aspects of sexuality over the past six years--and “Taxi Cab Confessions.”

Unlike its movies, which benefit from extensive and splashy marketing campaigns, HBO doesn’t promote its late-night programs beyond the channel. Executives suggest that the audience interested in such shows finds them on its own.

With the exception of pay services, advertising remains a key factor in limiting content. Sources say Fox has experienced difficulty finding blue-chip sponsors willing to support more graphic specials like “When Animals Attack,” just as Springer’s show is on a number of media-buying “hit lists,” meaning certain advertisers don’t consider the show a suitable environment for their commercials. A Fox spokesman would only say that its video-based specials have run fully sponsored, meaning that all the commercial time was sold.

That’s one reason officials at the major broadcast networks insist that cable--which garners revenue from viewer fees and therefore is less dependent on advertising--is more aggressive in pushing boundaries of taste.

Still, some within the industry see a natural and general tendency for television to keep expanding what’s permissible.

“Television as a medium seems on a mission to render everything visible,” said Fenton Bailey, who with partner Randy Barbato produces the HBO series “Shock Video.” “If you look at its history, every few years it presses the boundaries to where it’s never gone.”

Echoing those sentiments, Barbato called television “a medium built for exploring our voyeuristic tendencies.”

For that reason, Bailey maintains that parameters of what’s considered taboo are destined to keep falling, basing those conclusions in part on a special he produced under the “Shock Video” umbrella, subtitled “The Show Business of Crime and Punishment.”

“Ultimately, televised executions are inevitable,” he said. “It’s not clear when, [but] there’s no doubt sooner or later, it will happen.”