KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2010 / NEWS
7
How do you come up with your ideas for the talk show?
Sometimes I will hear different things in the community; my last show was about balancing marriage and kids and that came from just asking people about their biggest relationship problem. So basically, I use feedback from people and I do research. I have a couple of people that work on my show and do research; they go to relationship forums and see what people are talking about.
Where does the competition go from here?
They're verifying the vote count and they'll make an announcement sometime this week on the website; the top five vote getters will get an automatic bid to the finals.
Another 35 people will be chosen by producers; people they've either seen in person or by seeing the person's audition tape online.
If the producers looked at your audition and thought you had the goods, that you had an outstanding audition, you could be chosen. They look at comments, your talents and your show idea. I think the other thing they would possibly look at is the generated votes, to see if they have most of their votes coming from one computer rather than from all over.
Forty people will go to L.A. and compete in a reality show, so there's another competition part to this. They're going to dwindle it down from there.
6 Why do you want your own show on the Oprah network? Will it be similar to your show now?
That's the idea that I pitched, and I want to have my own show on the national level because I just want to reach more people with my message. I feel like it's my passion; I'm passionate about helping people. I want them to have happy, productive lives.
What will you do if you're selected? What will you do if you're not?
I can take time off work, so yes I would participate. It's gonna be a challenge if I am selected as a relationship enthusiast. I would have the biggest challenge of anybody because people would be watching to see how I interact with the other contestants.
If I'm not a finalist, I would still love to see my show on a cable network, a niche network that's women-orientated. I'm gonna go for it. That's in the works. After this, if I don't go out to L.A., the next phase is to put a tape together and pitch the whole package to a network.
Overall, how has this experience been for you?
Either way, this was a good experience because I was able to get responses from people all around the country. You never know who saw my tape and who might come knocking on my door. It was a lot of fun and it let me explore my feelings a little more deeply to ask myself, why am I doing this? It's helped me reassure myself.
Check out Kansan.com to see what else Williams- Jallow had to say about her experience.