Kid Nation: Premiere
I sat down last week to write about the new show Kid Nation, but honestly, I didn’t know what to write about. I began ranting on what I did and didn’t like about the program, but I felt more like a critic writing a column than an ad professional writing a blog. The truth is, I really don’t know how to react to the new show that I was so excited to see a week ago.
From an advertising stand-point, I don’t really know how to react about the prime time opportunity. The show seems like it will draw a very interesting audience. After receiving very mixed reviews last week, I am eager to see if the show gets better and draws steady numbers, or if it fizzles out and crashes within weeks. I noticed the premiere show had limited commercial breaks making me wonder just how much inventory NBC actually sold. An interesting trend that I’ve seen on blog sites and article message boards is some popularity among younger demographics. Many message board replies read something similar to “my 11 year old and I loved it”. This suggests that the show may have found an interesting niche demo - parents and their children (or especially mothers and children). I haven’t had a chance to research any hard, statistical data that confirms this, but from what I’ve seen thus far, this seems to be a basic profile of who will watch this show every week.
After watching the first episode, I expect that I’ll tune in again this week. The social experiment that the show is molded around is still quite interesting to me. However, I noticed something in the very first episode the kinda of ruined it for me. As is true with any experiment, all variables should be controlled in order to maintain the experiment’s validity. There were two problems I had with the way the show/experiment was run.
First, claiming the children were on their own with no direction or adult supervision is a bit ridiculous. I don’t really believe that the children are not given a helping hand by the adults in the production - in fact, I’ve read accusations that many of the lines were spoon-fed to the children by the production team. I understand how promoting a show with “40 kids, zero adults” makes the premise more appealing and interesting, I just don’t completely buy the notion that the children are completely independent.
To be honest, I’m not really too upset about this first issue. What really ruined the first episode for me was the ending. In each episode, one of the 40 kids is selected to win the “gold star” worth $20,000. Before the star was mentioned or explained to the kids, everyone acted like their true selves - older kids were cocky, stuck up girls were self centered and the kids told the town leaders exactly how they felt. Once the star was given away and explained, the kids didn’t care about anything but the money, and previews from future episodes show kids who were not the ‘ideal citizens’ in the first episode who seem to be highly motivated now. Unfortunately, it seems like money and greed are going to play major roles in this society instead of team work, leadership and genuine friendship.
Last week, I created a lot of buzz for the show among my peers and friends. Many of them tuned in and watched the first episode and their feedback was mostly negative. Many of them didn’t even finish watching the show, claiming the children were “annoying” and “hard to take seriously”. Many of the individuals I talked to claimed they would rather watch reality TV with more drama, which in turn led me to assume they preferred older personalities and participants (such as those found on The Real World).
I am looking forward to this weeks episode and reading more reviews after a second show has aired. I think I will continue watching throughout the season, as long as the experiment doesn’t get much more ‘contaminated’ by outside sources. The extra adults and the $20,000 bribes really made me question the show’s integrity. Hopefully some new storylines arise and some twists and turns come up. I already expect some of the town leaders will be impeached in the coming episodes. I foresee Michael, Greg and Sophia rising to the occasion and possibly taking over the town before it’s said and done.
