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CBS Backs ‘Kid Nation’ Despite Pressure From Whiners

Go set your TiVo. We’ll wait.Photo: iStockphoto (kid), Courtesy of CBS (logo)

Vulture applauds CBS’s brave decision to stand behind Kid Nation, the fall TV season’s most anticipated child-abuse-based reality program, despite protests from critics who wouldn’t know comedy if it made them drink bleach and threw boiling grease in their faces. Nation is the only show — for now — that drops 40 kids, ages 8 to 15, in a New Mexican ghost town and forces them to fend for themselves without adult supervision. When it debuts, as planned, on September 19 at 8 p.m., we anticipate that it will be more popular than American Idol, High School Musical, and Star Wars combined.

Not only has CBS pledged to go ahead with Kid Nation’s premiere, they’ve already started casting for a second season (we rode the subway this morning with several children who would make excellent contestants). The only problem? Producers are having trouble finding a U.S. city willing to accommodate the show’s particular brand of child-labor-law-flouting hilarity, so they may need to look “outside of the United States.” We hear Baghdad is nice!

CBS Backs ‘Kid Nation’ Despite Outcry [NYT]

Earlier: ‘Kid Nation’: We Pick the Winners
Please, CBS, Don’t Cancel ‘Kid Nation’

CBS Backs ‘Kid Nation’ Despite Pressure From Whiners