High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Dating Game is an ABC television show that first aired on December 20, 1965 and was the first of many shows created and packaged by Chuck Barris from the 1960s through the 1980s. ABC dropped the show on July 6, 1973, but it resurfaced in several syndicated versions (1973–1974 as The New Dating Game, 1978–1980, 1986–1989 and 1996–1999; repeats of the last version appeared in the 1999–2000 season.) For years it was almost always aired in tandem with another Barris production, The Newlywed Game, which premiered on ABC the following year. The show was a forerunner of a number of other shows themed in the same style.