While many Washington University students will be spending their Mardi Gras in Soulard, some students will be participating in and filming WUTV’s return to live broadcasting. “The Dating Game,” based on the game show of the same name, is a tradition for WUTV, though it has been some time since the group has put it on.

“We chose [‘The Dating Game’], because, as a first live broadcast for us, it gave us something that was dynamic enough to be a challenge, and interesting from a production standpoint so that students could learn a lot of the ins and outs of what it’s like to do [live] broadcasting, but also something that wasn’t going to be overwhelmingly complicated…And also because WUTV has done the dating game a couple of times in the past,” said senior and co-president of WUTV Evan Gates. “It’s something that we can kind of call it our own. Even though it’s not an original idea, in the Wash. U. context, we can call it our own.”

It’s been a long time since WUTV had the ability to broadcast, and although the infrastructure has long been in place, technical difficulties have kept WUTV from broadcasting live. Equipment fell into disrepair and other issues kept popping up along the way as WUTV attempted to get everything back up and running. Now that WUTV has their broadcasting ability back, they hope to enhance their programming and extend their reach.

“Our broadcasting is up right now,” Gates said. “So, you can tune in right now and watch it. It’s been out for a couple of weeks at this point. This is in terms of publicity and in terms of new, original content specifically for broadcasting because that’s of our mission now which is to manage this channel.”

But that’s not to say that WUTV is going to focus fully on live broadcasting. The base of WUTV programming has always been pre-recorded content.

According to Gates, WUTV is “always going to do pre-recorded content, because I think that’s a really important skill set for students to learn. And it’s also just a great, much less stressful environment to produce content. And it also just lends itself to various different kinds of content. We’re always going to be doing that, but I hope now to add live content to that. I don’t think it’s going to change our content overall. I think you’re going to be seeing a lot more new and diverse and interesting content, and hopefully enhancing previous content.”

But now that WUTV has their broadcasting ability back they hope to use “The Dating Game” to promote the new content they plan on producing. As a sort of inaugural event, WUTV has been promoting it as much as possible to build hype. And this event promises to be entertaining and interesting.

For those who don’t know, the premise of “The Dating Game” is as follows. One bachelor/bachelorette sits on one side of a curtain and questions three suitors on various topics and at the end of the show chooses one of the suitors. In WUTV’s iteration of the game, the bachelor/bachelorette and the chosen suitor will go on a date to a local restaurant paid for by WUTV.

In order to make the show as entertaining as possible, WUTV went through an extensive search and audition process to find the contestants with the best stage presence.

“We marketed with all the same strategies you would expect: [the] Underpass, flyering, Facebook, word of mouth and people responded to us. And then we scheduled audition times, we opened up auditions to all sexual orientations and gender identities to make sure that this was as inclusive as possible. We auditioned everyone who responded. It’s kind of a character interview, just to gauge the camera presence and sociability in some sense and entertainment value. It’s kind of hard to describe exactly what, but I think we have a really, really interesting batch of students, and I think people who watch this are going to be entertained. They’re going to see a lot of great characters on screen,” Gates said.

If you want to watch The Dating Game on March 2 at 4 p.m. there are many options available. If you’re in any Danforth Campus room with a TV you can turn to channel 22.1, WUTV’s dedicated channel, or if you’re not on campus you can watch a live stream on WUTV’s YouTube channel. If you want to experience The Dating Game in person you can be a part of the live studio audience in Studio 357 in the Harvey Media Center in the Danforth University Center. Social Programming Board is going to set up a projector in Tisch Commons so you can watch it on the big screen there.

WUTV hopes that “The Dating Game” will only be the first show in a new era of broadcast programming. According to Gates, “Students can tune into channel 22.1 from any TV on campus in their dorms on the 40 and the Village, in the Athletic Center, anywhere…and watch original student-created content 24/7. We’re going to be doing more of these live broadcast events in the future, and we’ll publicize those.”