ABC-TV's Good Morning America show came to my home to interview me about the new, free family safety service called OnlineFamily.Norton. Let me tell you a little about what goes into making this popular news program come to life. It's not quite like learning how sausage is made but it gave me such appreciation for how hard people work and for so long to create just a few minutes of television.
Initially we knew we had an opportunity to talk about how easy it is for even good kids to find bad things on the internet. What would help make it a story that could interest a major news group like GMA would be if we could find a family to share a story like that, what is called in news programming, "the victim". Not everyone wants to share a personal story on national television and it's not always easy to find a story where it is clear that the child made an innocent mistake when online as compared to a child hoping to get out of trouble by saying it was a mistake. We asked around among our work friends, "do you know a child who stumbled into a porn page when online?" It took a while but between the television producers, the friends and colleagues, eventually a plea put out on Facebook resulted in the wonderful family featured on Good Morning America today, Claire Santaniello and Gary Shapiro and their three boys of Simi Valley, California.
Their online experience was just perfect. After a baseball practice, the boys returned home, eager to search for a new pair of sports shoes at their local sporting good store, Chick's. Unfortunately the website they typed in took them directly to an adult entertainment site, all while their mother, Claire, was hovering in the background. They were moritifed and despite giggling and teasing each other, they were quick to "x" out of the page and turn to their mother for help. "What did we do wrong?" they asked her.
And their story was a great example of how easily children can get into trouble on the Internet. For this reason, and to kick off Internet Safety Week with our partner, PTO Today, we're launching the new OnlineFamily.Norton service and providing it for FREE, at least until 2010. PTO Today will distribute 1 million copies of a special themed magazine to school parents across the country with articles and tips for getting your family onto a plan for better internet safety. They feature a family internet contract, advice about starting "The Talk" about internet safety and offer parent and teacher approved websites and browsers for you to learn about.
So last week, a wonderful team of producer, Bill, cameraman, Min and sound engineer, "D", headed out to Claire and Gary's beautiful home in the foothills of Simi Valley, down the road from the Reagan Presidential Library. The production team set up lights on tripods all over the living room and family room. They rearranged the furniture, opened and shut curtains and blinds until everything was just right. I have to say how impressed I was with how hard they worked to get a good story and how neatly they restored everything at the end of the day. They did several interviews, some with the whole family in the living room, others in the TV room, even shot images of the family playing in their yard with their dogs.
The next morning, bright and early, that same wonderful team showed up at my house in Los Angeles. Also joining us was Becky Worley who is GMA's Technology correspondent. Her background is so impressive. Not only does she have a Master's Degree in computer science but she's even written a book for consumers on staying safe from computer viruses and spam. And she is a mom to 15-month old twins, slim as a rail and Miss America -gorgeous. The production team quickly got to work rearranging my furniture and messing with my blinds to get things just the way they wanted it. We discussed the new OnlineFamily.Norton service extensively. I even demonstrated it for her on my own computer, though if you look closely it's not on my desk but on a table from my living room which gave the camera man more room to shoot. They even featured my youngest child in some of the footage. She was so excited to skip school and so disappointed when I took her in late when we were done!
As soon as we wrapped the shoot, a courier came by to pick up the raw footage and audiotracks. It would be sent to the team in New York for editing into a much shorter piece as compared to the many hours of footage they shot. The reporter, Ms. Worley, then packed her gear up to fly home and then on to New York to tape this morning's in-studio piece. The rest of the team stayed about another hour to clear out their gear and repack their truck. We had discovered that "D" had worked with my husband nearly 30 years ago and so before they left, I made sure they had a chance to talk on the phone to reconnect. That was funny, hearing D's stories about my husband and his hot rod fastback Mustang from so many years ago. Small world!