First off, I must apologize for my belated return to the Classic TV forum on RD after its revival a little while back. I'm the one who, as some of you remember, did retros (mostly 60s/70s) with snarky comments attached and had a thing for smaller markets, UHFs, and such back in the day. I'll try to squeeze in some comments from time to time.
Ah, Jim Lange. A talented voice/MC who got typecast as Mr. "Heeeeere They ARE!" for the rest of his days, even though he lived over 30 years after the final taping of Dating Game (the 5-a-week syndie version from 1978 to 1980, seen in most places right before network primetime). Seems as if all the attempts he made to overcome the image: Bullseye, Name That Tune, The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime, Triple Threat, and resuming a storied radio career in the 1990s didn't cut it.
Lange's example just goes to show you that 60s TV, in many ways, had a unique cultural impact that will NEVER be repeated again anywhere in pop culture. Fragmentation of media is the main reason why: back in the day, Lange on ABC daytime was assured of AT LEAST a 25 share or so, since the only other options in most of the country, during much of his run, were Art Linkletter's House Party on CBS and soaps like NBC's The Doctors (1963-82; no relation to the current syndie show by that name)--only the top 20 or so markets had indies, and cable was still known as "Community Antenna TV," with HBO, let alone TBS, CNN, et al, years away. Because of that more than anything else, Dating managed a very respectable 7 1/2-year run on ABC daytime (and about three years on primetime also), and another year as a weekly syndie feature (under the "New" prefix, which has been shown on GSN along with celeb episodes of the original), plus the aforementioned revival at the end of the decade, which was MUCH more lascivious and suggestive than the runs between 1965 and 1974.
Lange's daughter remarked somewhere that he felt uncomfortable donning a tux and perming his hair for the "nighttime" version, the latter of which Chuck Barris made Jim Peck do for the 1979-80 fiasco Three's A Crowd, too. In fact, that version of Dating collapsed, not due to ratings, but because of the backlash Barris faced from women's groups and religious conservatives (yes, Virginia, they used to work TOGETHER sometimes, such as on protests over pornography) over the sexual innuendo on Crowd. Stations began canceling Crowd, Newlywed Game, the weekly Gong Show, and Dating, through no fault of Lange's own, because of fear of advertising boycotts. Had that not happened, Lange might have carried on well into the mid-80s with Dating--he did, matter of fact, have a false start in Spring 1984, when he helmed a trial week of a Newlywed revival on ABC daytime (it wound up running in syndication beginning in '85, with original host Eubanks back in his customary podium). But cable was starting to thread its tentacles ever deeper onto the boob tube, tightening a stranglehold on conventional television genres. Lange tried to use it to his benefit for awhile--Bullseye and Name That Tune enjoyed extended lives on early cable outlets like Pat Robertson's CBN and USA Network. But by the time the flops Chance and Triple Threat came along in the late 1980s, he had nowhere else to go, with the cable/OTA pie being sliced ever finer. So, not unexpectedly given his affection for the medium, he returned to his radio roots.
TV history is full of chances that have oftentimes NOTHING to do with talent. Lange's fate could have easily been met by Alex Trebek or Pat Sajak, for instance, and Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune might well have become forgotten artifacts of a bygone age, like Dating eventually became. But like all congenial hosts from that period, Lange was a good sport about it and kept plugging on. May all wish him goodbye kisses at his funeral.
