iVillage Plans Television Dating Show

It may look like a kindler, gentler Blind Date, but it's really a natural merger of today's dating and media scenes.

Thanks to a development deal between Web giant iVillage and TV producer Berman/Jacobs, some of the relationships that started online will soon be on TV. The newest reality show, tentatively called iDate, could be on the air by fall 2004.

Unlike Joe Millionaire and Mr. Personality, there's not going to be a lot of subterfuge involved. Promises iVillage Chairman/CEO Doug McCormick, at least one staple of the Blind Date/Elimidate subgenre won't be a part of iDate: no hot-tub scenes.

"It won't have the meanness that a lot of these programs have," McCormick said Monday.

The show takes into account what has become a dating ritual of the early 21st century, people who meet online and then maybe meet for the first time a while later. The show will be a reflection of today's dating reality. The participants would have already struck up a relationship online, perhaps for months, in what McCormick called the "clean, well-lighted place" that is iVillage. Berman/Jacobs sees a half-hour show that would include interviews with the couple before they meet, background and highlights of their high-tech courtship.

"The magic moment, of course, is when the two meet, which is excellent television," said McCormick. The cameras follow them on their date and maybe check back for updates on how the couple is doing.

"The idea was kind of good, wholesome fun," said McCormick. Couples would enter a pool of possible TV participants through the iVillage Website, by phone and mail.

If Blind Date and Elimidate skew male, then iDate's potential viewing audience is drawn more from 18-49-year-old women. The show's focus is on relationships, not some of the seamier sides of dating.

"I think women are far more interested in relationships and things working out and a magic moment," McCormick said in describing the potential show's appeal.

No distributor has been picked yet and it's not clear whether it would appear as a syndicated show or in some other venue, although McCormick said that the syndication market is hot right now. The earliest the half-hour show could appear would be fall 2004 or as a midseason replacement in 2005.

McCormick said that while the deal is great for iVillage - there's little cost to the company ant it will share in profits from advertising - it's a harbinger of things to come.

"The concept of Internet brands migrating to television is something I think that you'll see more of," McCormick said.

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