The TV Zone

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.