Television: More Class

To brighten the cultural luster of daytime television, ABC last week added two new shows:

SUPERMARKET SWEEP, a Talent Associates creation, lets housewife contestants choose anyone they like (provided, say the rules, "that he is between 17 and 40 and in good physical condition") to dress in numbered jerseys reminiscent of the late Roller Derby. Thus properly attired, the delegates run down supermarket aisles like thieves, grabbing up goods in a race against the clock. The contestant whose champion has snatched the most valuable mer chandise in his basket returns the next day to meet new challengers in a game that may very well go on to infinity. "They originally tried it with the homemakers themselves running up and down the market collecting stuff," explains an ABC executive, "but it looked a little cheap. This way, they choose a boy friend or a husband or something, it has more class."

THE DATING GAME proves that when big ideas die, they go on television. Its spirit is borrowed from Sex and the Single Girl, which enjoyed a huge sale at book counters and furnished the title for a moneymaking movie. For TV, the screen has become a gigantic keyhole through which viewers are invited to watch a series of career-type girls snare a date for the night. Out of girl-sight, three bachelors—at least one a celebrity—parry questions from the husband hunters. Samples: "How would you go about telling your date that she had a dress that was maybe too short or too tight?" "They can't make a dress that's too short or too tight." "What's your most favorite activity with the weaker sex?" "How intimate may I get?" "Well, let's make it your second most favorite activity with the weaker sex."

Serenaded by a band and a group of frugging teenagers, egged on by a studio audience that cackles at each doublc-entendre, the ladies quickly become impulse buyers, opting for the bassest voice or the warmest laugh. The reward: a man plus an all-expenses-paid night on the town including dinner, show, and nightclub.