Outrage as kids reality TV takes on 'Lord of the Flies'

For America's stage mothers the pitch could not have been clearer: send your children - 8 to 15 years old - to an abandoned ghost town in the boiling heat of the New Mexico desert for a reality TV show Survivor meets Lord of the Flies.

The children were asked to perform on camera for more than 14 hours a day, seven days a week, during the school year without any studio teachers or parents on the set. Such practices are already banned across much of America, but in New Mexico a loophole exempted television companies from normal child protection laws.

Even before the first episode of the new CBS series Kid Nation has been aired, howls of outrage are being heard from competing networks and parents groups across the country. And after a preview of the series for television critics this week, one person present blurted out what was on everyone's mind when she said: "Who the hell would let their kids do that?"

The idea behind the show is for the children to attempt to forge their own society, "fix the mistakes of their forebears" and turn the "completely dead ... former mining town" of Bonanza City, New Mexico, into a functioning community.

CBS is delighted with the fuss asKid Nation is already the most talked about TV series of the coming season.

CBS used a loophole in New Mexico law to declare the production a "summer camp" rather than a place of employment, just before the law was changed.

The Emmy-winning producer Tom Forman, who had the inspiration for Kid Nation, wanted something as head-turning as Survivor, the reality series that in effect rewrote the book on television entertainment when it was first shown.

But Mr Forman and CBS wanted to go further than any television series had previously dared in isolating children from the outside world.

The truth is that everything is less dangerous than the network would have it appear. The show was shot at a privately owned town (the Bonanza Creek Movie Ranch,) that featured in Silverado and All the Pretty Horses. Built on the ruins of Bonanza City by various TV production companies, little of the town is original.

While the children of Kid Nation do not have their pushy parents on the set, they are surrounded by producers and camera crews, and are far from being left alone to fend for themselves.

Two years ago, the TNT network ran into trouble with Native American groups when there were complaints that adults and children were overworked and mistreated on the show Into the West. Then on 1 July, the New Mexico legislature passed a law closing a loophole that bizarrely exempted television and theatrical productions from child labour law restrictions.

Today New Mexico like California and New York has strict limits on the number of hours children can work on a production - a maximum of 18 hours during a school week, and no shooting after 7pm. These states also demand that studio teachers and a parent or guardian are on the set and that the children are fed proper meals.

But with a small army of lawyers on its side, CBS managed to duck under the wire just ahead of the new legislation. It is now looking forward to both controversy and profit as the first show is broadcast in late August.