When children first started flocking to YouTube, some seriously strange stuff started to appear – and after much outcry, the company found itself scrambling to fix the problem
Harry Jho worked out of a 10th-storey Wall Street office, in which one corner was stacked with treadmill desks and another was filled with racks of colourful costumes and a green screen for filming nursery rhymes. He worked as a securities lawyer. With his wife, Sona, Jho also ran Mother Goose Club, a YouTube media empire.
Sona had produced short children’s segments for public-access TV stations before the couple decided to branch out on their own. As educators – the Jhos once taught English in Korea – they saw television’s pedagogical flaws. To learn words, kids should see lips move, but Barney’s mouth never did. Baby Einstein mostly showed toys. The Jhos, who were Korean American, had two young children, and noticed how few faces on kids TV looked like theirs.
