Producer Pledges Allegiance To "Kid Nation"

The producer and host of the upcoming CBS reality series "Kid Nation" had their work cut out for them when they faced the media at the summer TV press tour. But they handled it almost as resiliently as the kids on their show. The premise of the show is that 40 kids aged 8 to 15 were isolated in a New Mexico ghost town for 40 days and left to build their own society, while CBS filmed the results. There were reward challenges, but no eliminations.The point was to see what kind of world they would build for themselves - a kid utopia, or something a little more "Lord of the Flies." The results were heartening for those who chose the more optimistic scenario.   

But when executive producer Tom Forman and host Jonathan Karsh took the stage in the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton hotel, they faced a press corps riled up by a story in TV Week magazine that made the show sound just short of a kiddie forced-labor camp.

"The kids performed on camera for more than 14 hours at a stretch, seven days a week, making their own meals," the article said. "They were filming during the school year, yet no studio teachers were present. They were working on a major television production, yet no parents were present."   

It's all true, too. In other words, more than a half-century of show-business child-labor laws appeared to have been rolled back on the production. They navigated New Mexico labor laws (since changed) by describing themselves as a summer camp. Dastardly!   

Not so fast, said Forman (left, with Karsh), an energetic defender of his program.   

"The kids woke up whenever they wanted and went to bed whenever they wanted, and that was part of our commitment when we came up with this idea and decided to do it. We were going to follow their lead," said Forman, who won an Emmy for "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."   

"A large adult safety net was there to make sure that if anything happened we had a contingency plan in place. But they woke up whenever they felt like it. They set their own bedtime. And they discussed those things and debated them. So there were mornings they got up early. There were mornings they slept in. We taped whatever happened," Forman said.   

"This was as well thought-out, i's-dotted, t's-crossed a show as I have ever seen in terms of contingency plans lest any little thing go wrong," he said. The meant everything from extensive psychological testing of the kids beforehand and consultations with their parents and educators to a just off-camera collection of pediatricians, child psychologists and even animal wranglers lest anything go wrong during shooting.   

The press tour debate went on and off for much of the hourlong session, sounding a bit like the Inquisition at times. But Forman won over some of the other critics with answers like this one, to a question about why kids? Who's the audience for this show? What do you want people to learn from it?   

"I'm the audience for it," Forman said. "Look, here's where this idea came from. I've been a reality television show producer for a number of years but a news producer before that, and I was just getting bored by the genre, bored by the sort of Hollywood reality types that auditioned for every show I did, who knows the answers before you ask the questions, who are looking for this as a way to further their career.   

"We started talking about how you could make a show that had the unpredictable excitement of that first cycle of 'Survivor' that I remember watching, not as a producer but as a fan. ... And said, look, well, maybe we need to look for participants that weren't even born when that thing premiered," he said.   

"They come to his with fresh eyes and fresh ideas. They are, if nothing else, incredibly honest. They tell you what they think. They tell you what they feel. If they are sad, they cry. If they have a crush on someone, they talk about it. If they're jealous or angry, they fight. It's everything that's best about human beings and at times, worst, because they just don't censor themselves. And it is, for that reason and a number of others, more interesting than almost anything I've seen."   

Forman, a father of two kids too young to be on the show this time, said he will watch it with his older son, "who will think this is the coolest thing he's ever seen in his life."   

"I think you're watching incredible people - and I'll give them the respect of calling them people," Forman said. "They're young, but wise beyond their years. They do things you could never possibly imagine. As a parent out there, I was floored every day just by watching these kids get up, light a pioneer-era wood-burning stove, cook a breakfast for 40, do their own dishes, head back out to the water pump, get water and bring it back.   

"So just the experiment of the kids living in this world was fascinating to me. The world they choose to build - every episode is themed, so in every episode, these kids are going to tackle something that both their forefathers in Bonanza City (and) our adult population today seems to struggle with. They're going to talk about religion. They're going to talk about pollution. They going to come up with their solution. Sometimes it stumped them and I think they did worse than adults do today. Sometimes nailed it and, in a couple of minutes, would solve the problem that adults can't seem to solve."   

Are you getting that he's really, really passionate about this show? He is.   

The one topic that even Forman seemed just a little bit sheepish about was actually Bonanza City itself. Unsurprisingly, CBS is touting the "kids rebuilding an abandoned ghost town" angle, when in fact barely a handful of original structures survive even partially, and most of the town was built as a movie set for westerns including "Silverado."   

Still, it's hard to hate the concept. Only a few kids opted out along the way - as they were allowed to do - and all are uniformly glad they participated, Forman said. 

"This show is showing children's leadership skills, how responsible they can be, how they can tackle adult issues," said host Karsh, who barely got a question as Forman jousted with the critics. "I truly believe they're going to look at this and be very proud of what they did."