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Popular dating game shows were an innovation of TV producer Chuck Barris in the 1970s. The Dating Game, his first, put one female 'bachelorette' or one male 'bachelor' behind a screen to ask questions of three potential mates of the opposite sex - thus hearing their answers and voices but not seeing them. The audience could of course see them all, and the various suitors were able to describe their rivals in uncomplimentary ways, which made the show work well as a general devolution of dignity. Questions were often obviously rigged to get ridiculous responses, or be obvious allusions to penis or breast size.
The Newlywed Game, by contrast, another Barris show, had recently-married couples competing to answer questions about each others' preferences. The couple who knew each other the best would win. Sometimes others got divorced. Once, someone divorced after appearing on the Newlywed Game got a 'second chance' on the Dating Game. Gimmicks were the lifeblood of all such shows.
The genre waned for a while but The New Dating Game and the UK version Blind Date kept it alive, and the old shows were popular in reruns, unusual for any game show. Cable TV revived some interest in the 1980sMillennia: 1st millennium 2nd millennium 3rd millennium Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s Years: 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 Events and trends and 1990sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s Years: Events and trends Computers, technology Explosive growth of the Internet; decrease in the cost of computers and other techn and eventually new shows began to be made along the old lines. Gay variations began to appear on a few specialty channels.
Other shows focused on the conventional blind dateA blind date is a date between two people who have never met and typically know little or nothing about each other. They are generally arranged by a third party, usually a friend of one or both daters, either to bring together people the third party think, where two people were set up and then captured on video, sometimes with comments or subtitles that made fun of their dating behavior. He Said She Said focused not on setting up the date, but on comparing the couple's different impressions afterwards, and for their cooperation offering to fund a second date. These resembled the reality shows that began to emerge at about the same time in the 1990sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s Years: Events and trends Computers, technology Explosive growth of the Internet; decrease in the cost of computers and other techn.
A completely new type of dating show merged it with the reality game show and produced shows where the emphasis was on realistic actions and tensions, but which used less realistic scenarios than the traditional blind date:
Some common threads run through these shows. When contestants are removed it is usually one at a time to drag out the action and get audience sympathy for specific players. In shows involving couples, there is a substantial incentive to break up any of the existing relationships. In shows involving singles, there is a mismatch of numbers ensuring constant competition. This is what creates the action, the tension, and the humiliation when someone is rejected.
The first gay version of these more realistic shows to receive mainstream attention was Boy Meets Boy, with a format similar to that of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. The show featured an unusual plot twist. Eight of the men from the show's original dating pool were actually straight men pretending to be gay; one important part of the plot was whether the gay star would be able to recognize the straights.
Some gay and straight romances have been sparked on the other reality game shows, suggesting that they too may really be 'dating shows' in disguise. But any social situation has the potential to result in romance, especially work.
A sobering caveat of the power of television and romance in combination came when a popular dating variant of the talk show, inviting secret admirer s to meet on the stage, backfired on the Jenny Jones show. The admirer was a homosexual friend of a heterosexual man who was so outraged that he later murdered the admirer. The secret admirer variant of the talk show has remained popular, e.g. it is still done on Oprah, but with less emotionally loaded surprises, and much more careful checking of the guests' backgrounds and attitudes.
Examples:
See also: speed dating
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