Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.In 2007, 40 children between the ages of eight and 15 were thrown together for an experiment in a deserted town in New Mexico. Separated from their parents, without any clear authority figures and with no running water or electricity, how would they fare by themselves? Except that they weren’t by themselves, as behind the scenes lurked producers and camera operators whose brief was to create a desert version of Lord of the Flies, or a junior Survivor.Cancelled after one season, Kid Nation remains one of the more disturbing developments in reality TV and is now the focus of a podcast, Split Screen: Kid Nation. Hosted by self-confessed reality-TV fan Josh Gwynn, it unearths commentators, producers, former contestants and their parents to tell the story behind a nightmare that the young protagonists were told would be just like summer camp.Gwynn paints a grimly unsettling picture of naive parents, terrified children and ratings-hungry TV execs who are still trying to justify their decisions 17 years later. Shrugging off concerns about the long-term impact on the children, one former producer says: “Society has a responsibility, too, in terms of how we see people and what we tune in to watch and what we provide ratings for.” Which is true but also a startling disavowal of her own culpability.Reality TV is proving rich source material for podcasters in the market for wild stories and retrospective outrage. Another new series, The Bachelor of Buckingham Palace, tells the tale of I Wanna Marry “Harry”, a 2014 reality show that lured a gaggle of American women to a grotty hotel on the outskirts of Reading, Berkshire, so they could compete to win the affections of Prince Harry. Contestants were then ferried to a nearby stately home where, in the first episode, the prince made a dramatic arrival by helicopter. Obviously, the real Harry would never be involved in such tawdriness, but that was no barrier to the series’ creators, who employed the services of a lookalike named Matt. The hope was that the American visitors — who were told they were participating in a show called Dream Date — would be none the wiser.TV journalist Scott Bryan is our host who has a good laugh at I Wanna Marry “Harry”’s myriad WTF moments — we listen in on him and his producer as they watch the series, which sounds tedious but is a hoot — while taking the deception at the heart of the show entirely seriously. There is a world of difference between Kid Nation and I Wanna Marry “Harry”: the first loftily billed itself as a social experiment while the second was sold to viewers as a harmless prank. Yet both embodied the crassness and cruelty of TV networks that thought nothing of misleading contestants in their relentless quest for a hit and then hanging them out to dry. cbc.ca, wondery.com
