Just when Americans thought they had seen it all when it comes to reality television, CBS, the oldest-skewing network, has come up with a humdinger: "Kid Nation."
For 40 days in April and May, CBS sent 40 children, ages 8 to 15, to a former ghost town in New Mexico to build a society from scratch. With no access to their parents, not even by telephone, the children set up their own government, laws and society in front of reality television cameras. The goal, according to creator Tom Forman ("Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and "Armed and Famous"), was for "kids to succeed where adults have failed."
But CBS, the network that got the reality ball rolling in 2000 with "Survivor," had more in mind when it decided to run this social experiment of sorts. Recognizing that ratings are not enough in the age of rabid Internet fans, President of Entertainment Nina Tassler had been craving water-cooler buzz for her network for a couple of seasons.
So CBS Executive Vice President of Alternative Programming Ghen Maynard attempted to "wake up the attention" of children with a program that allowed them to "identify with people of their own age," he said in an interview. "I thought it could be a way to try to get some attention on a broadcast level for a new kind of show, one that really put young kids to the test."
Attention has not been a problem for "Kid Nation." Even though the show premieres on Sept. 19 and no one has seen more than a four-minute trailer running on television and the Web, it stands as the most controversial show of the fall season. On July 16, Television Week revealed that sources in the New Mexico Department of Labor claimed the children worked as many as 14 hours a day and were taken advantage of because of statutes on the books that protected theatrical and film productions from child labor restrictions.
That same week, CBS kept the children and parents away from the media during a tense news conference in which TV critics grilled Forman and the show's host about the legal, moral and ethical issues arising from their unconventional production. Of the 40 children, 12 are 10 or younger and only one is 15. Eighteen of the participants are girls.
