Classic Game Shows - Love Connection

This show popped into my head the other night and I can't figure out why. Was it the old catchy theme song? The premise that I never understood? I honestly think I was doing some kind of math problem involving percentages and all of a sudden the cool noise made when they showed the percentages of the studio audience picking the proper date popped into my head (see video below). Anyway, I can't recall much about the show but that's what this website is all about!

Love Connection was a game show on in the late 80's and it was on here in NY either on around 4ish or on at night around 7:30pm before the network shows came on. I'm pretty sure it was on NBC too. The show was hosted by Chuck Woolery who I loved as host of Scrabble (another post down the road). Anyway, the show involved a lonely bachelor or bachelorette looking for love and they'd get to pick from three single people. Before the show aired, they had already had their date. The audience saw the three people the contestant could choose from and then Chuck would ask the audience who they thought would be the best match...hence the percentage noise thing.

Anyhow, Chuck would bring the date on to discuss how it went. Then he'd reveal who the audience said was the best pick. If the date went well and the audience picked the right date, Chuck would give them $75 to go on another date....wow. You potentially embarrass yourself on national TV and all you get for a second date is enough to buy a bottle of wine and some condoms.

Here were my thoughts as a 10 year old kid watching this show:
- What is a date?
- Why spend $75 to take somebody out to dinner when you could buy all six parts of the Devastator transformer...and still have money left over to buy Skeletor.
- Why would people think that one person is better than another in terms of dating. Aren't they teaching me in school that all people are created equally?
- Why did the two people just kiss there?
- On the flip side, why are the two people so angry at each other?
- Why does Chuck Woolery keep saying "Be back in two and two" before going to commercial break?

I didn't watch many episodes of this show since it didn't involve a specific game with neat concepts, like Card Sharks or Joker's Wild. It really was just a lot of talking. Still I'm sure old people ate this up.

Ironically enough the exact inverse of this show is "Blind Date" since all you saw was the actually date and no follow up or how the date was chosen.

Here's an example of how the show worked. No need to watch the whole thing unless you have 8 minutes to kill. I watched most of this segment and I love Chuck breaking up half the time. The catchy theme song is a must listen. To show I'm not completely crazy, the "percentage changing" noise occurs at the seven minute mark. It also completely reiterated my faith in how boring this show really was.