The usual mall rats, teens and tweens were hanging out in Fairview Mall Saturday afternoon - except this time there was a difference. About 300 spectators, including the occasional parent, gathered around the stage at the mall Saturday for the first taping of Up Close with Chioma - an interactive teen talk show that will be taped for television in malls across the GTA.
No television network has agreed to air the program yet, but its producers say the networks will soon be banging down their doors. "There's nothing like it on the market," explained Barbara Barde, the show's producer and owner of Upfront Entertainment, a Toronto-based television production company. "We want to give teenagers role models. We want to help them answer questions like 'What an I going to do with my life?' and give them a sense of their future."
The first episode was unveiled with host Chioma, a hipper and sassier version of Oprah, who interviewed Toronto rap queen Michie Mee, who first emerged in the scene in 1991 with Jamaican-Funk-Canadian Style. The straight-talk interview revealed Michie Mee's early days of "hanging with the wrong crowd," becoming pregnant in her early 20's, and battling the odds to achieve hip hop fame.
The young audience then asked the Canadian rapper questions that ranged from how to avoid fist fights at school, to the reason she decided to keep rapping in Canada. "If you choose to give up, you can always choose to start over again," Michie Mee told the audience - one of a dozen tidbits of wisdom she offered up.
After the show, Donna Kyle, 10, said Michie Mee talked to the kids in the audience like a parent - except "she's much cooler." "She is a mother and it was great because she was talking like a parent and we listened," said Kyle.
"This show is original, they're bringing everyone together in a mall," said Ranu Walia. The 17-year-old high school student compared the show favourably to CBC's teen show Jonovision, which, she said, "is much too corny and nobody watches it."
Chioma, wearing a purple leather outfit, strutted throughout the audience with her microphone taking questions for Michie Mee, said she has visited about 50 schools across Ontario to get a better feel for her young audience. "If you relate to the kids, they will listen," said the Nigerian-born Canadian host. "I want to instil a future and get them thinking about what they want to do with their lives. I want to get kids to start talking."