Maybe you haven’t heard about the show, scheduled to debut on September 19, but it’s a twist on the reality genre that – you have to hand it to CBS – we’ve never seen before.  Filming took place over 40 days outside of Santa Fe with 40 kids in attendance.  Each was paid, supposedly, $5,000, with a possibility of $20,000 more if certain incentives were met.

Two points have since developed: 1) New Mexico Attorney General Gary King’s belief that the show violated child labor laws, and 2) The Writers’ Guild opinion that Kid Nation is the worst example yet of the industry’s desire to cut costs by using the reality genre, one which allows for decidedly cheaper labor (ie, Timmy gets really excited about that $5,000 check while Lou-the-adult-screenwriter requires quite a bit more).  “To me,” said Jeff Hermanson, assistant executive director of Writers Guild of America, West, “this is the sweatshop of the entertainment industry.”

To the first point, CBS claims innocence because the kids weren’t “working,” they were “participating.”  Curious stance, that one.  Pamm Fair, the Screen Actors Guild deputy national executive director, said, after looking at the contract between the parents and producers of the show, “it’s been a long time since we’ve seen such egregious provisions for any performer, let alone children.”

Now widespread calls for the show’s cancellation, a large push to curb Hollywood’s love of reality television, and a punishment for child labor law violation have become the issues.

But let’s take it easy for minute and consider the show’s creation.  Here’s how it might have come to be:

CBS producers were sitting around showing photos of their kids to each other one night and talking about the approaching summer.  “What are your kids doing?” was the topic.  Then someone had a bright idea and began telling a story: “When I was a kid I loved shows like Kids Incorporated and The Mickey Mouse Club.  But those poor kids!  They had to work while all of us got to do fun things like recess, sleepovers, and summer camp.  How cool would it be to combine the two?!  Let’s have a summer camp that is a television show!”  (The room went wild.)

But the show went horribly wrong and it seems CBS took itself serious with this “adult-free” society (and by the way: again, you have to hand it to them.  If you were watching the show this fall you’d never believe Kid Nation was as unsupervised as they were claiming it to be.  Turns out you’d be wrong.) 

A formal charge of “abuse and neglect” by the mother of a 12-year-old whose face was burned while cooking in an unsupervised kitchen was made public last week (you see, I wasn’t making that up!).  Question to CBS: What were you thinking???  Do you let your kids cook unsupervised at home?  Do you let your kids cook even when they are supervised?  (I’m imagining a CBS producer nodding his head at that: “You bet!  Timmy has my eggs and toast ready for me every Friday morning of the school year!”)

Everyone up in arms about Kid Nation needs to relax for a second.  The fact is it was irresponsible of CBS to create and produce the show the way they did, and it was at least as irresponsible of the parents who sent their kids packing (which reminds me of a movie with Kevin Bacon called White Water Summer, co-starring Sean Astin.  There’s a scene when Bacon recruits Astin’s parents to let their son join him at camp, and Astin just knows the guy isn’t right.  That’s how I imagine it going for some of the kids involved with CBS.  Some exec comes into their house flashing a grin to the parents, then eyes young Timmy with a sinister look while the parents sign away, a look that says, “Your ass is mine.”)

The Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild need to take it easy too.  Their positions are understandable, yes, but they should keep in mind that the public loves this stuff!  That’s why it exists in the first place.  If people didn’t consume reality television as voraciously as they do, we’d never even have Kid Nation to begin with.

Scott Goldberg