The TV Zone

I've received a lot of reader comments - which in my humble realm means about three - concerning the cancellation of CBS's "Kid Nation." Now, I was initially cheered by news of this cancellation, considering how bad the show is.

But I'm in the minority. Turns out, there's a whole nation of "Kid Nation" fans, who are angry at CBS for canceling their favorite show. Some of them are distraught, and the reason I'm writing this blog entry is because last night, I got this comment from Kim: "MY LIVE IS NO LONGER WORTH LIVING!!!!!!!!!!NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOO..."

Well, take heart, Kim. It IS worth living, and there is a possible solution here. CBS may have canceled this show, but there are options. Consider how fans of "Jericho" extended that worthy's life for an extra seven episodes? They sent bags of nuts to CBS executives. Sick of the nut tsunami, they relented.

So here's an idea for "KN:" Send your kids.

It's simple. Put them in a large box, and tape it up well, but be sure to put some holes in it so they can breath. For food, add a couple of Domino's pizzas (cheese only, no toppings - they can get messy.) Don't forget the iPod.

This could work. Seriously. Les Moonves - and I suppose Julie Chen - will be driven crazy by the crowd of noisy needy little buggers - all those fights over which favorite show to watch, and constant demands to buy Guitar Hero or Miley Cyrus tickets. CBS'll throw in the towel by the upfronts, and "KN" will be on the fall schedule - and maybe they'll stick your kids in it!

This isn't an original idea. Someone at New York Magazine recently suggested sending hair to ABC executives as a plan to save "Cavemen." It didn't work.

Kids will work. Don't say I never did anything for you, Kim.

Here's the address:

CBS Studios: 7800 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles, CA. 90036

Here’s a little light reading to go with today’s Part 2 story on CBS’ controversial “Kid Nation” reality show, currently scheduled to premiere Sept. 19.

Our friends at The Smoking Gun have unearthed what they say is the contract parents were asked to sign before their kids could go live in a New Mexico ghost town under the tender loving care of TV producers looking for a hit.

It’s a 22-page feast of legalese that leaves the network and producers blameless for anything that might happen to the kiddos, despite the program taking place “in inherently danerous travel areas that may expose the Minor and other participants to,” among other things, crime, drowning and disfigurement.

Enjoy.

CBS has announced the 40 kids it collected in a New Mexico “ghost town” this spring to create their own “Kid Nation” for a new fall “reality” series (premiering Wednesday, Sept. 19 at 8 p.m.).

Turns out no Long Island parents are among those who thought this was an awwwesome idea.

On CBS’ web site, you can now meet the cast -- I mean, real-life event participants. These kids aren’t actors, no, of course not. Then they’d have to “work” fewer hours and be paid a lot more. But the site’s promo reel -- which is all that CBS has shown to TV critics at this point, too -- reveals that young players can be just as savvy as adults when it comes to the incidents, attitudes and “roles” reality producers favor.

Which isn’t to say “Kid Nation” won’t be a huge hit, as many industry analysts are expecting. But should it be? That’s the question that came up for debate at the recent TV critics' press tour, where CBS executives and series producers defended the project.

More fuel on the fire: this new story from our sister-paper Los Angeles Times talking to some of the kids, parents and series skeptics.

Smell that? (Sniff. Sniff.) Ah, yes -- the scent toward which entire flocks of TV critics fly like moths to a flame at the twice-yearly Hollywood gang-interrogation called press tour.

It's the sweet perfume known as Obfuscation. Or Withholding Information, the ever-popular Spin, or sometimes even Look How Long His Nose Is Growing. Nothing makes our kind grab for the press-conference question mike quite so aggressively as when panelists deliver non-answer answers, or what one reporter delicately termed an attempt to "fudge" a few issues during this afternoon's session for CBS' fall "Kid Nation" reality series. [CBS photo above by Monty Brinton.]

Let us count the varieties of fudge served up in this veritable chocolate-fest.

Critics skeptically inquired about the notion of sending 40 kids ages 8-15 into a New Mexico ghost town for 40 days to undertake the on-camera mission of creating their own youth-run society with, as CBS' promo clip proudly proclaimed, "no adults!"

Well, OK, admitted producer Tom Forman ("Armed & Famous," "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"). The project actually had "a large adult safety net." Like a hundred-plus grownup crew members, nutritionists, doctors, etc. "But we were mostly just standing back and watching" as the kids cooked and cleaned, cared for animals, ran businesses, formed a more perfect government, etc.

Now about that genuine ghost town. Some of us had heard that oddly-camera-friendly Bonanza City, N.M., was actually being used in recent years as a standing movie set ("Silverado").

Well, sorta, said Forman. The production had to have some place to "safely put kids." So there were extant/constructed (and fairly comfy) buildings in which to sleep, eat, restructure civilization and hold town hall meetings. (And, lest we forget, to shoot well-lit TV footage.)

But the kids were supposedly set loose in it to construct a new society in whatever manner they wanted. "We made the decision early on that we were going to give these kids an incredible experience," Forman said, and producers would just "follow their lead," with cameras just happening to record it all. Well, except for those producer-designed Showdown challenges like the ones on "Survivor." And the every-three-days Town Halls serving as a kind of tribal council. And other cliffhanger/climax-generating events like that.

Forman said "I get it" about critics' well-voiced "Kid Nation" reservations. But he also claimed critics can't understand what a truly authentic and life-broadening experience this was for the kids. He said that's what all of the kids and their parents would tell us if they were here to answer questions. Except they weren't here. Why? Because those so-cool kids would only show him up, the perpetually smiley Forman grinned, before launching into more Hollywood how-great-my-project-is fast talk. "I can't wait," he enthused, "for everybody to meet them." Except that he, and we, will have to.

So maybe the kids aren't here because they're in school. Oh, wait. It's July. Interesting. "Kid Nation" was actually held back for a fall premiere from CBS' originally intended summer run. So when was this all-natural kid experience staged and shot? "April-May," said Forman. Which, where I live, is during the school year. Don't real kids go to school?

Sure, this show is all about average American young people determined to, as Forman said, "prove something to the adult world out there." Too bad he had just minutes earlier discussed rather more frankly what makes a show like "Kid Nation" so important in the network TV scheme of things.

America is "getting bored" by been-there done-that unscripted shows filled with "Hollywood reality types out to further their career," Forman said. The networks need to find something to provide the same "unpretentious excitement of the first cycle of 'Survivor,'" before everybody knew the reality show drill. The concept here was that "maybe we need to look for participants who weren't even born" when the reality format took off. Besides, he noted, kids are "incredibly honest. If they're sad, they cry. If they're mad, they fight. It's human beings at their best and human beings at their worst. They don't censor themselves."

Umm, maybe that's because they're immature, ventured one critic's follow-up question, and they haven't developed the internal mechanisms that tell an adult when to keep things private, or check a baser impulse, or forestall behavior that might injure/embarrass oneself or others. They are kids, for cripes' sakes – children! -- who are still developing, still learning skills like self-control, still rather inexperienced at interpersonal conduct. And they are still (despite any reality TV impulses) protected by society with all kinds of different-than-adults ethics and, yes, laws in recognition of their inability to make well-considered decisions. (See my colleague Verne Gay's report on that below.)

All this protection appears to disappear when it comes to providing reality show fodder for TV networks. Earlier this morning, CBS entertainment chief Nina Tassler was telling us about the "legacy of reality shows" changing now. "To really get out there and change the landscape of television, you have to sort of stir public debate. We know we're going to create some controversy," she said. "The whole objective was to get out there and do something different and have people talk about the show. Which is what's happening."

Well, bully for CBS, and its stock price, and the future employment prospects for reality show producers. But what about the on-camera kids whose actual lives provide this brave new landscape of "entertainment"? One of the most admired veteran critics of our unruly clan prefaced his question to Forman by positing that "You could ruin a kid for life. Literally. You could brand a kid as, say, the crybaby of 'Kid Nation'" and change the way both he and the world see him from then on, quite possibly not for the better.

Forman urged critics not to "judge the show based on a log line" synopsis condensed for a TV listing or press release. Fair enough. We haven't been shown more than a couple minutes' clips so far. That's why we come here to ask these questions. That's why we'd like to ask them of the kids themselves, and their parents, who Tassler told us "knew full well what was involved, and they embraced this opportunity for their kids."

So did Shirley Temple's folks. (The vintage Hollywood icon later wrote a book about the fallout of that "embrace.") So did the parents of such tragic died-young kid stars as Dana Plato, Anissa Jones and River Phoenix.

And those were performers playing scripted fictional roles. The hazard here is that "Kid Nation" has the potential to pervert real children's real (and naive) behavior into (not so naively) edited TV melodrama, which will linger through their entire real lives on DVD shelves and in cyberspace.

Forman kept telling us to just wait and see his show's "compelling stories about amazing characters."

That's precisely what we're afraid of.

Beverly Hills - Hey, networks are almost always happy to get a little pre-launch flak before a new show hits the air, but it's also always valid to ask - how much controversy? or what SORT of controversy? or can this controversy have the potential to humiliate both network, producer, cast member and viewer? This is the kind of stuff the new CBS reality show “Kid Nation" invokes because it IS about kids, and there AREN'T any adults involved, and there ARE such things as child labor laws, and, well, we could go on, but let Tom Forman tell you about all this stuff.

Tom's a reasonably well-regarded producer - talented enough to survive "Armed & Famous," his deliriously, deliciously bad creation, now thankfully cancelled. He was a top producer at "Extreme Makeover," and has a credit on CBS’s "9/11," and was once a network news producer, so maybe he deserves benefit of the doubt here.

Or does he?

There's not much to see with "Kid Nation" - CBS has released only a brief snippet - but it's still one of those shows that instantly prompts a visceral kind of response as in - "what were they drinking when they thought this up?"

The basics: forty kids spend forty days/nights in a New Mexico ghost town, Bonanza City, to "build a new world." They cook their own meals - and they are only about eight years old - haul water, run businesses, and create their own government. No one gets booted - this isn't "Survivor" - and at each episode’s end, the forty kiddies gather together for a town meeting where they hash stuff out. (By the way - no TV.) Seems harmless enough but there have been reports that the show somehow violated child labor laws, and Forman was even asked whether New Mexico was picked because the state has a loophole in said laws that he exploited.

"No," said he, "we picked New Mexico because it had the right location and...we checked with our attorneys, who said there was no problem." But - this persistent writer persisted - when the show started shooting, the New Mexico state legislature discovered the loophole and instantly closed it in response to “Kid Nation,” right? Foreman: "I don't believe that's true..."

"The truth is, it's less child labor laws than labor laws...the participants aren't acting, and we went ahead and made this show with he understanding they'll do what they do and we're not going to consider them actors" who get paid residuals.

He added, this kind of show would not have been possible in, say, California – where presumably the child labor laws have no loopholes.