Aretha Franklin "Who's Zoomin' Who?"

After producing four morning radio shows, I segued to a new evening on-air dating show at WTMX-FM in Chicago during the fall of 2005. With online dating growing in popularity, station bosses sought to capitalize on the trend by having singles find love on the radio every weeknight during a show called "Mix 'n Match On-Air Dating". The premise was similar to the old Dating Game television show: we bring one bachelor or bachelorette into the studio each night and line up three eligible singles on the phone. After a series of questions and getting-to-know-you games, the single person in the studio chooses who they want to go on a date. The radio station paid for the date and we would air updates. Although simple in theory, this job proved to be one of the more challenging of my radio producing career.

Women flocked to sign up for the show whereas men...not so much. At that time, online dating still carried a stigma. Most men wouldn't admit to having a Match.com subscription much less go on the radio to announce their bachelorhood. This led to a challenge for all involved as we had nearly three times the amount of women as men to participate. We still managed to crank out a show five nights a week and hosted numerous singles events throughout Chicago. One challenge was Thursday nights; no one wanted to be on the show on Thursday nights because folks wanted to be home watching the steamy new television show called Grey's Anatomy. I struggled to put quality contestants on the air that night because DVR's and on-demand television shows were still not commonplace, so people watched TV shows live or else counted on their trusty old VHS to record the show. Season one of Grey's Anatomy ended with an episode entitled "Who's Zoomin' Who?"--which shares its title with the 1985 pop song from Aretha Franklin.