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Travelling game show makes stops in northern Ontario

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Timmins -

It’s not often that a game show comes to the north, but teens around the region have been getting the chance to show off their pop culture knowledge.

New Canadian game show 'Pop Whiz' recently made stops in North Bay and Timmins, giving small-town teens aged 13 to 17 a taste of stardom and the chance to win cash.

For youth like Mathieu Robert, he normally would have been off to summer camp but with that cancelled due to the pandemic, he decided to audition for the show online.

"I was just kind of reading through the newspaper and I saw that there was a show coming to Timmins," Robert said. "I guess it was more, just, I wanted to be on TV and see what it was like."

A sentiment shared by fellow contestant Kaisha Lougheed, who felt confident after answering a series of pop culture questions on what the production crew call ‘the Dome.’

"I always liked watching game shows when I was little, so I felt like it would be fun to be on one," Lougheed said. "I think I did pretty good."

This being the first season of the travelling show, production staff said the goal is to meet young people from across the country and they wanted to start by featuring northern Ontario, as well as other small to medium-sized towns across the province.

For producer Sergio Gallinaro, the best part is watching excited and nervous teens break out of their shells and see their reactions to being on a TV show.

"We’ve got this travelling studio for one, that I call it, but inside it really does have the look and feel of a big-studio, shiny-floor game show and I think the kids are really responding to that," Gallinaro said.

With most of them likely being on TV for the first time, the show’' host, Andrew 'Gunnarolla' Gunadie, said the teens he’s met so far have been handling it surprisingly well.

"When they’re in the cube, it’s intimidating. You got lights, you got a crew," Gunadie said. "They are keeping their cool, they’re giving the best answers possible … I think they’re making friends too. A lot of them don’t actually know each other. It’s a real community spirit here."

'Pop Whiz' has three elimination rounds, eventually crowning one winner — but Gallinaro said really as long as people have fun, everyone wins.

Production officials said the show is scheduled to premier on GameTV early next year.

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