'KID NATION' PRODUCERS WERE WARNED, DOCUMENTS SHOW (NYT, LAT)

By Nancy Vialatte

According to a report in today�s New York Times, the producers of CBS reality show �Kid Nation� were warned by the state attorney general's office while the show was being taped last spring that they might be violating the state's child-labor laws. "Kid Nation," which is scheduled to premiere on CBS on Sept. 19, is a reality show whose premise is to take 40 children, ages 8 to 15, and place them in a "ghost town" in New Mexico to see if they can build a working society without the help of adults.

For 40 days in April and May, CBS sent 40 children, ages 8 to 15, to a former ghost town in New Mexico to build a society from scratch. With no access to their parents, the children set up their own government, laws and society in front of reality television cameras.

An earlier report in the Los Angeles Times said that on July 16, Television Week revealed that sources in the New Mexico Department of Labor claimed the children worked as many as 14 hours a day and were taken advantage of because of statutes on the books that protected theatrical and film productions from child labor restrictions.

That same week, CBS kept the children and parents away from the media during a tense news conference in which TV critics grilled Forman and the show's host about the legal, moral and ethical issues arising from their unconventional production. Of the 40 children, 12 are 10 or younger and only one is 15. Eighteen of the participants are girls. (LAT)

In interviews last week, CBS contended the children were not employees because they were not performing specific work for specific wages. A lawyer for CBS said the network had received no indication that it was violating the law.

But on May 1, two weeks after a state labor inspector was turned away from the site, Andrea R. Buzzard, a New Mexico assistant attorney general, warned in a letter to lawyers for the production that the state did not agree with the network's interpretation of state labor law. (NYT)

"We are not certain that those laws are limited to traditional 'employment' relationships," Buzzard wrote, citing part of the state child-labor statutes that say that a child's frequent presence at a work site "shall be prima facie evidence that such child is unlawfully engaged in labor."

New Mexico frequently issues exemptions to its child-labor statutes to Boy Scout camps, Boys and Girls Clubs and similar groups to allow minor members of those groups to participate what would otherwise be considered work, Carlos Castaneda, a spokesman for the state labor department, now known as the Department of Workforce Solutions, said Tuesday. (NYT)

CBS officials had used the "camp" designation to characterize the reality show in discussions with parents, Ghen Maynard, the executive vice president in charge of CBS's reality programming division, said last week. CBS spokesmen did not respond Tuesday to requests for comment on the attorney general's letters. (NYT)

But Castaneda said that CBS and Good TV Inc., the production company behind the show, neither applied for nor were issued such an exemption during the six weeks they spent working on the show.

When a state labor inspector, Abe Tapia, visited the ranch on April 13, he was reportedly given the runaround and finally told that the show's executive producer, Tom Forman, would not be available that day.

Tapia, says the NYT, returned to the site the following day and on April 16, but was stopped at the front gate and not allowed onto the property.

'KID NATION' PRODUCERS WERE WARNED, DOCUMENTS SHOW (NYT, LAT)

By Nancy Vialatte

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