The New People

The New People is a 1969 American television series on ABC that focused on a group of young college students who were returning from a trip in Southeast Asia when their plane crashed on an island in the south Pacific Ocean. This program is an extremely rare example of a regularly scheduled network television series with 45-minute-long episodes (which ABC did to try and counteract the competition in the 8:00-9:00 slot, which included Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In); it aired at 8:15 (ET), immediately after The Music Scene, another 45-minute program. Less than two months after its premiere, ABC canceled both shows.

Plot
A plane is shown carrying a number of college students back to the United States after a trip to Southeast Asia for a goodwill tour arranged by the State Department goes awry when they become outspoken about being used as a tool of goodwill that leads to the tour being called off. However, the plane crashes on an island, leaving only a select number of students alive, with the only surviving adult dying from their wounds not long after the crash. The surviving students are the only human life remaining on the island with no radio. The island, soon learned to be named Bomano, is discovered to be unusual in that it was built up as a site for a potential above-ground nuclear test which never took place, leaving all of the buildings and supplies untouched and ready for use by the survivors. The New People reflected the youth-oriented counterculture of the 1960s. All people over 30 were now dead, and it was up to the young people to start a new society on the island, which would see bouts of sexism and racism in the fight to establish order. The pilot episode was written by Rod Serling, credited as "John Phillips."

Production
When asked about his involvement in the show, Rod Serling stated it was Aaron Spelling's show, as "He brought me the idea and I wrote the pilot script. Beyond that, I have nothing to do with it. The show is somewhere between Gilligan’s Island and San Francisco State. It may work. But not with me." A 51-minute unaired pilot was screened at UCLA Film & Television Archive with a full Serling credit in 2012.

Similar programs
The concept of having all the adults killed off leaving only the young people to survive was not a new one, nor was this to be its last appearance. This concept had also been used in William Golding's 1954 novel and subsequent film, Lord of the Flies, and in the 27 October 1966 Star Trek episode "Miri".

In 2004, ABC premiered the hit series Lost which also featured a group of plane crash survivors stranded on a strange island. Producer Damon Lindelof later joked that if he had heard of the series, he would have used the name New People for the band of character Charlie Pace. In October 2005, NBC began broadcasting a Saturday morning series with a similar premise, Flight 29 Down.

Original paperback novel tie-in
They Came from the Sea, an original tie-in novel based on the TV series was published in 1969 by Tempo Books, the young adult paperback imprint of Grosset & Dunlap. The author was the prolific tie-in specialist William Johnston, writing under the pseudonym "Alex Steele."