A new low.

On Wednesday, NBC is treating us to a television program called The Baby Borrowers. The premise, so we're told, is that childless couples and/or teenagers are given babies to deal with for a period of time, giving them (so we're told) "a unique opportunity to peer into the future and see what they (and their partners) might be like if they remain together and decide to build a family." For three whole weeks.

Now that television has run out of ways to abuse adults, they have figured a way to include children in their nonsense. The problem (among many) is that children don't have a way to defend themselves. They are at the mercy of their (so-called) parents, who apparently will sell them to television in exchange for a few dollars. NBC calls it a "social experiment" but what it really is is something more - or less depending on your viewpoint.

NBC's upcoming reality series "The Baby Borrowers" is an intriguing new social experiment based on the hit British program that asks five diverse teenage couples - ages 18-20 - to fast-track to adulthood by setting up a home, getting a job and becoming caring parents first to babies, toddlers, pre-teens and their pets, teenagers and senior citizens - all over the course of three weeks.

Meanwhile, adults who wish to adopt children are made to wait for months while agencies research their (so-called) worthiness as parents, while parents with active sperm and eggs are able to sell their children to television for money.

If you find yourself watching this program on Wednesday night, you are as much to blame as the network and the parents who sold their children. It is at the low end of what we have come to call entertainment and I think the network, at a loss for actual entertainment options, has turned to the lowest form of the medium that we have seen. It isn't entertainment. It's child abuse.