Much Ado About Kid Nation Premiere

The conch hit a flat note.

CBS' controversial Lord of the Flies-esque reality show, Kid Nation, averaged an underwhelming 9.4 million viewers for Wednesday night's premiere, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Kid Nation ran second in the 8-9 p.m. hour, behind a new installment of NBC's Deal or No Deal (estimated 9.7 million).

Among youngsters, ages two to 11, and six to 11, whose parents presumably never read William Golding, Kid Nation reigned, a novel position for gray-haired CBS.

Among older kids and teens, the verdict was split. Girls, age 12 to 17, overwhelmingly favored the season premiere of the CW's America's Top Model, while boys, by a tighter margin, voted for Kid Nation.

Though CBS declared the show a Nielsen success, a year ago it scored 2 million more viewers in the same time slot with Jericho, a series it nearly canceled because of low ratings.

Kid Nation's true talent may not lie in attracting viewers, but in generating headlines. For months, the series has been dogged with accusations that producers violated child-labor laws.

Filmed in New Mexico last spring, Kid Nation finds 40 children, ages 8 to 15, plunked down in a deserted mining town and charged with the task of building their own adult-free community.

Critics, who weren't allowed to see the show before Wednesday's premiere, got in their licks Thursday. In the Washington Post, critic Tom Shales labeled the series "an appalling monstrosity." Bloomberg News' Dave Shiflett wrote that CBS was wise to keep the show under wraps: "A pan won't do for this turkey. This is gong material."

The show picked up better, even positive, notices from papers such as the Los Angeles Times and the Palm Beach Post. Asked the Post of the pre-premiere controversy: "What's the big deal?"

Even if the reviews were universally better, and even if the audience was bigger, the series might still be in trouble. Major sponsors steered clear of the show, the New York Times reported. Wednesday's premiere featured only 11 commercials, the paper said, compared to the usual 30-plus for an hour's worth of prime-time TV. The network filled out its ad time, the paper said, with in-house promotional spots.

CBS, which has defended Kid Nation, and maintained that no wrongs were committed against its cast, is staying the course for now. It's rerunning the premiere on Saturday. And as Shales pointed out, it's accepting applications for Kid Nation 2.

Elsewhere, in other key Wednesday premieres:

• In the 9 p.m. hour, Gossip Girl (estimated 3.7 million) made good on its buzz, delivering 1 million more viewers to the CW than One Tree Hill did a year ago. But will the Gossip last? The show lost about 8 percent of its audience from the first half hour to the second.  
• Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton's new Fox sitcom, Back to You (estimated 9.4 million), handily won its 8-8:30 p.m. time slot and stole a page out of CBS' pre-Kid Nation handbook, scoring big among older viewers.
• America's Next Top Model (estimated 5.2 million) did its thing, running just about even with last September's premiere.
• Along with Back to You, the second season premiere of 'Til Death (estimated 7.8 million) helped Fox improve in the 8-9 p.m. hour over last year, when Bones averaged 7.8 million. But the sitcom lost 1 million viewers from its first-season opener.
• Chef Gordon Ramsay's new rant forum, Kitchen Nightmares (estimated 6.7 million), marked a big improvement for Fox in the 9 p.m. hour—an abyss for the network last season, prior to American Idol—but still ran third behind a rerun of CBS' Criminal Minds (8.7 million) and the finale of NBC's Last Comic Standing (7.2 million).
• Bad news for Last Comic Standing champ Jon Reep: The show lost viewers from its first half hour to its Reep-crowning, second half hour.

Despite the spate of season premieres, by Nielsen's calendar, the 2007-08 season doesn't officially begin until this coming Monday.