Production on the pilot episode of TV Nation began in January 1993. Moore initially turned to friends and colleagues in many production areas, while also making a point of ensuring the show's employees were unionized. For the show's title sequence, graphic designer Chris Harvey put together the images, and music group tomandandy wrote the TV Nation theme. After NBC canceled the show after one season, it was subsequently picked up by Fox, and the second season aired in the summer of 1995.
TV Nation was formatted as a newsmagazine, with stories interspersed by short clips of the show's theme (for example, Moore spending a day with Dr. Jack Kevorkian) and factual polls surveying the American public. The show's investigative reports delved into various aspects of American life, and they were filmed and presented in a style similar to Moore's feature-length documentaries such as The Big One (1998).
The show featured segments such as "The Corporate Challenge," in which CEOs were challenged to prove they could use the products their companies created; the storming of the supposedly "private" beach in Greenwich, Connecticut; hiring ex-KGB officer Yuri Shvets to conduct investigations; an experiment to see if hiring a lobbyist for $5,000 could get the Congress to declare a "TV Nation Day" (he got a bill introduced, but it never passed); and "Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken." Among its correspondents were Merrill Markoe, Janeane Garofalo, Karen Duffy, Jonathan Katz, Rusty Cundieff and Louis Theroux. Crackers was first portrayed by Lee Brownstein, but TV Nation writer John Derevlany played Crackers for the remainder of the show's run. TV Nation also featured humorous (but true) public opinion polls, each conducted by the firm of Widgery and Associates from a random sample of Americans.
Unaired segments
The release of TV Nation on two VHS volumes in 1997 offered a chance to view two unaired segments considered too controversial to be aired on broadcast television at the time. In the first segment at the end of Volume One, one of the correspondents visits drug stores and inquires about extra-small sized condoms.
Three additional segments were not allowed to air on American television, although all aired in United Kingdom: A segment on a support group formed for executives involved in the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s; an examination of the extreme anti-abortion movement; and re-enacting the 1992 Los Angeles riots using Civil War re-enactors.