Moonves Should Pull the Plug on Kid Nation

AS THE FALL TELEVISION season sneaks up on us, all anyone is talking about is CBS’s highly promoted Kid Nation, but for all the wrong reasons.

The scandal surrounds the reality show’s featuring of 40 kids, ages 8 to 15, living on their own in a deserted mining town in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico while cameras chronicle their Lord of the Flies trials and tribulations. Already, editorials condemning CBS have appeared in The Baltimore Sun, New York Daily News and The Boston Globe, which urged viewers to boycott the show and “reestablish the line between entertainment and exploitation.” Meanwhile, several state and union investigations into the show are asking the same questions I am: If CBS were as proud of Kid Nation as the network would have us believe, then why were such pains taken to shoot in secrecy, and do it in a state that did not protect children on show-biz sets, and in such a way that guild rules didn’t apply? I predict that any minute Congress, which back in the 1950s discovered that TV quiz shows were fixed, will use its oversight and subpoena powers and begin a probe as well.

And smack in the middle of all the controversy sits the smart but smarmy Les Moonves, CBS’s chief executive, who is busy talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, I’m told his CBS board of directors has been assured that the company is conducting “an internal investigation” into Kid Nation. A director tells me that CBS has pledged that “everybody is being interviewed. All the footage will be watched. We will give the board a full report on what happened. This is of great concern.” But publicly, CBS is denying allegations it violated any laws or put any children in jeopardy during the production. So how can Moonves stand behind CBS’s denials when its own internal probe has barely begun? Or is there really no internal probe going on? Meanwhile, he hopes to ride the publicity all the way to great ratings for the 13 episodes starting September 19.

CBS’s general counsel only alerted its board about the allegations of child abuse and violations of child safety and labor laws in advance of a tough New York Timesarticle that came out on August 18. Of course, the New Mexico newspapers had been covering the controversy for weeks before that. And TV Week besides. A July 18 Albuquerque Journal article accused CBS of working kids up to 24 hours a day on the set and paying them only $5,000 for the experience. At the same time, TV Week raised early and tough questions of CBS, like why Kid Nation was filming during the school year yet no studio-provided teachers were present, and why were kids working on a major television production with no parents around? The trade also chastised CBS for choosing New Mexico because it has some of the most lenient labor rules governing kids on entertainment productions.

But even as these reports came out, the CBS board was kept in the dark about these problems until just before the New York Times piece, because presumably the company and directors only read that paper. Since the Times piece, “a couple of board members have asked Les questions, and he’s responded,” a CBS source told me. “What Les said to the board is that he’s confident there was nothing inappropriate done and the children were treated very well.” But Moonves doesn’t know that. While some board members were led to expect a serious internal investigation by CBS, it looks to me like the company’s chief has taken a perfunctory look into this at best. “He’s spoken to the executive in charge of the show. He’s spoken to the people involved with the show. He’s seen the show,” a CBS source told me. And if anything further comes up, Moonves will involve himself, the source said.

With news reports of children being hurt on set (one girl was burned while cooking, and four kids drank bleach from an unlocked container; others were rushed to the hospital with god knows what else), such a superficial look into Kid Nation’s production is irresponsible at best and callous at worst. After all, the marketing for the reality show as far back as May boasted how there’s “no adult supervision.” At the time, a Washington Post TV writer made the unfortunate joke, “Heck, where I grew up in Colorado they call that summer camp.” Which is exactly what CBS wanted to fool everyone into thinking.

The local paper hadn’t even heard about the show shooting at the Bonanza Creek Movie Ranch, eight miles from Santa Fe, in April and May until after filming wrapped. Lisa Strout, director of the state Film Office, had the production described to her as “more like a camp” than work. And by calling it a summer camp, the network was able to avoid SAG guidelines too. In other words, CBS took advantage of every loophole in kid-protection laws available. (On July 1, well after Kid Nation finished filming, New Mexico finally enacted legislation in the works for some time governing how children are treated on show-biz productions.)