For 40 days, the children of "Kid Nation" hauled wagons, cooked meals, managed stores and cleaned outhouses, all in the name of building a society in front of reality TV cameras.
Were they working? There doesn't seem to be a simple answer. But what is clear is that CBS' new reality venture, which placed 40 children on a New Mexico ranch without any contact with their parents, has become a flash point in a television genre actors and writers have long blamed for taking jobs from them.
Scheduled to premiere Sept. 19, "Kid Nation" has become the subject of several official investigations, highlighting some of the inherent problems in reality television, which keeps costs down by avoiding paying writers and actors.
The stakes are high for the networks that profit from the entertainment and for the Hollywood guilds that have joined the "Kid Nation" fight as the industry girds for a possible strike this year.
To make their larger point about reality television, the guilds have seized on "Kid Nation" with its added dose of controversy -- the welfare of children.
"To me, this is the sweatshop of the entertainment industry," said Jeff Hermanson, assistant executive director of Writers Guild of America, West.
"What's happened with 'Kid Nation' is typical and universal, but then it's that much worse because it's about children. The exposure that reality television is getting as a result of the 'Kid Nation' case really has much greater import in the big picture."
It's also shined a light on the common network practice of creating subsidiary companies that can contract with production companies that are not bound by union labor laws and can shield networks from having their corporate image tarnished.
"This is an area that the networks don't really want to talk about because they don't want to address the manner in which they try to divorce themselves from legal responsibility or moral responsibility for the conditions on the shows," Hermanson said.
"The purpose of using these companies is to distance themselves from any liability for labor practices or lawsuits of any kind," he said. "But it's an insidious practice in my opinion because when you look at who is deriving the benefit ... it leads right to the network's door."
