THE DATING GAME was and still is by all accounts, the premiere game show for singles. It was the forerunner for many imitators, such as "Love Connection", MTV's "Singled Out" and numerous others. But they all have the same influence: Chuck Barris, the creator of the one that started it all!  "THE DATING GAME" first premiered on December 20-24, 1965 on ABC-TV and remained a fixture on the network in both daytime and nighttime incarnations through the rest of the 1960s and well into the 1970s.  Jim Lange, fresh from his announcing duties with Tennessee Ernie Ford, stepped through the flower-speckled rotating partitions for the first of many, many times shortly before Christmas 1965.  The game play was simple. On one side you had 3 bachelors answering questions from a girl on the other side of the partition (each not being able to see the other). The girl was given a certain amount of time to ask as many questions as she could to the 3 bachelors. More often than not, the qu