The INSIDER Summary:
- Dating reality shows started back in 1965 when "The Dating Game" premiered on ABC.
- Since then, the genre has skyrocketed into success.
- What started as televised matchmaking has since turned into drama-filled debauchery.
If you think that "The Bachelor" started the reality show dating game, you couldn't be more wrong.
The genre kicked things off over half a century ago with ABC's "The Dating Game." Since it hit the airwaves in 1965, several producers and networks have followed suit, and innocent matchmaking shows have evolved into wildly successful dating programs with an emphasis on sex and drama.
Check out the roller coaster evolution of dating shows below.
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"The Dating Game" revolutionized reality TV by playing matchmaker for young men and woman when it started in 1965.
Each episode helped one man or woman find a date with eligible contestants. The catch? The potential partners were hidden out of sight behind a board while the eligible bachelor or bachelorette made decisions based solely on their answers and voices.
By the time the show ended in 1999 after four separate runs, the game had become iconic, and was parodied on comedy shows like "Saturday Night Live" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
The next big dating show was "Blind Date," UK's big hit that started in 1985 and lasted until 2003.
It started out the same as "The Dating Game," but then sent the couples on epic first dates where they would finally meet one another. Some people ended up at ice cream factories, but others met in the Maldives or Anguilla.
Now, it's coming back this year after 14 years off the air.
2001's "Temptation Island" started to push the boundaries of what it meant to date on TV.
Fox decided to put several happy couples in the same house as a group of lively singles. The idea was to test the couples' commitment to each other when there was so much temptation — get it? — to cheat in the house.
It was controversial before the first episode even aired, which helped drive up ratings in its first season. In the following years, several shows would take notes from this dramatic dating game.
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