Kids TV Is Dead, Long Live Kids TV

For decades, the act of watching kids TV was by appointment only. The networks dictated what was shown and when, whether after school or Saturday mornings, creating legions of fans for “Sesame Street,” “SpongeBob Squarepants” and “Blue’s Clues.” And a stable production pipeline and revenue stream was in place.

Now, that model is all but dead.

Linear ratings for kids television have cratered over the last decade and changed the programming landscape completely. Ratings for Nickelodeon plummeted 86% from 2016 to 2023, while the Disney Channel fell 90% in the same period, according to Nielsen ratings. Instead, viewers aged 2-17 accounted for nearly 30% of YouTube’s viewership in July, according to Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge report.

The carefully curated programming blocks of the past have also been upended by streaming, a point-and-click system that requires parents and children to know exactly what they want to watch. This, coupled with the rise of creator-driven YouTube shows that aren’t easily replicated at the studio level, has disrupted decades of knowhow around developing and programming TV shows for children, upending the entire playing field.

Put simply: Kids are not watching linear TV. 

Complicating matters further, companies like Nickelodeon dedicated to children’s programming miscalculated that they could seamlessly pivot to streaming while still preserving the decades-long television infrastructure studios invested billions of dollars to create.

“Our company, along with others, was selling our content to the streamers because it felt like it was going to be a parallel universe,” Cyma Zarghami, founder of MiMo Studios and a former president of Nickelodeon who left in 2018, told TheWrap. “It turned out not to be a parallel universe at all.”

It doesn’t help that some of the biggest players in the children’s space are tied to cable, a space that has historically and painfully dropped. The number of pay-TV households came in at 94.9 million nine years ago. By the end of 2024, that number is expected to drop to 70 million, according to Leichtman Research Group, a 26% decrease.

As the evolution unfolds, it isn’t just some niche story. The viewership trends of younger audiences often pave the way for the future. A generation of Millennials didn’t become Disney fans as adults; they fell in love with the brand as kids.

“If you get kids to love you, now you’re also future-proofing your further business,” Vanessa Brookman, general manager of kids, global streaming and international networks for Cartoon Network, told TheWrap. And the cable audience in the U.S. is aging, Brookman noted, with the average viewer age now around 60. Ten years ago, the median age for the average broadcast or cable TV viewer was 44.4 years old. “You really need to make sure you’re redefining your audience and catering for them in a meaningful way. Otherwise, you’re going to be obsolete in the future.”

To better understand what the collapse of the children’s TV model means for the entertainment industry, TheWrap spoke to current and former heads of some of the biggest brands in children television, industry insiders and leaders who have been monitoring this space for years. They all underscored the same basic takeaway: to survive these days, diversification is key.

Representatives for Disney and Nickelodeon declined to comment for this story.

A linear plummet and streaming pivot

In 2016, Disney Channel averaged 1.316 million viewers a day. During that same period, Nickelodeon averaged 1.313 million viewers and Cartoon Network averaged 969,000. All three of these kids TV network leaders have plummeted in the linear space. Last year, Disney saw 132,000 viewers, a 90% drop. Nick’s viewership plummeted 86% while Cartoon Network fell 85%.

It’s a trend that’s depressingly common in the world of cable, and it’s one that’s impacted the bottom lines of parent companies for these networks. From 2022 to 2023, advertising revenue for Disney’s linear networks fell from $4.88 billion to $4.16 billion, a nearly 15% decrease that was credited to lower average viewership and lower advertising rates. Over the same period, Paramount saw an 8% decrease in advertising revenues ($10.9 billion in 2022 to $​​9.99 billion in 2023), and Warner Bros. Discovery saw a 14% decrease ($2.23 billion in 2022 to $1.95 billion in 2023). Paramount credited this decline to a decrease in linear advertising, and WBD cited domestic audience declines for general entertainment and news as well as “soft” linear advertising markets for its drop.

At the same time, YouTube has soared. In July of this year, the Alphabet-owned video service became the first streaming platform to lead monthly TV usage, accounting for 10.4% of all TV viewing, according to Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge report. That was largely due to increased YouTube consumption from children and younger audiences as school-aged viewers, ranging from two to 17 years old, accounted for nearly 30% of YouTube viewership during the month and 13% of TV viewership overall. Every month, 100 million users interact with YouTube’s youth products, according to the company. YouTube’s ad revenue is also booming, from $29.2 billion in 2022 to $31.5 billion in 2023.

“There is this whole new category of user-generated content, and it’s getting more and more sophisticated,” Brad Altfest, director of media and entertainment at Agora, told TheWrap. “That’s starting to fill its own niche, a new niche.”

Because of the impact of streaming and the internet, Altfest noted that the industry at large will need to become “less opportunistic” when it comes to where content is being consumed. “We’ve already seen that. We see everything from full-on episodes of shows and movies you can buy on YouTube on through to individual clips that are sent out through social media to try to reach the new audience,” Altfest said. “We’re going to see the traditional broadcasters completely transition to an online, digital-first platform provider. That’s inevitable.”

The upending of the kids TV landscape hasn’t just been hard on distributors — it’s also been tough on creators. One showrunner for a 6-11 animated show that ran on linear told TheWrap that the network was “trying everything” with this individual’s show as ratings were in freefall, using it as a test balloon to experiment with different release strategies to try to find an audience while holding firm in their decision to not put full episodes on YouTube. (The network eventually relented.)

“Nobody knew what to do,” the showrunner said of the ratings decline in the late 2010s, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “They still don’t know what to do.”

The current linear programming strategy on networks like Disney Channel and Nickelodeon leans heavily on running popular shows over and over again — Disney ran 14 episodes of “Bluey” in one day in October, while Nickelodeon aired nine episodes of its biggest hit “Paw Patrol.” The hope for discovery on linear is sparse with the space’s limited audience, so linear is largely used now to further amplify tried and true hits.

Networks like Nickelodeon and Disney Channel have leaned more into streamers under the same corporate roof: Paramount+ and Disney+, respectively, where children’s content reduces streaming churn. A recent report from Ampere Analysis found that households with children were 8% less likely to cancel a SVOD subscription compared to households without children. This is partially because re-watchability is a huge factor for kids and toddlers. At the same time, children’s TV is not a significant driver of new subscribers.

Kids and family ranks as the second most popular genre on Paramount+ in terms of consumption, an individual with knowledge told TheWrap, as the streamer leverages massive hits like “SpongeBob” and “Paw Patrol.” And Disney+ is tailor-made for a kid’s viewing experience, boasting tiles that separate by brand (Disney animated films vs. Pixar movies) and genre.

Still, the showrunner who spoke with TheWrap said that even success on a streaming service doesn’t guarantee longevity as studios still cling to the old metrics to determine success.

“They’ll say, ‘Let’s see how well it does on Disney+,’ but it better be a f—king slam dunk because the decisions were definitely weighted towards linear, even in the Year of Our Lord 2024,” this individual added. “If there was a Disney Channel animated show that was dying on Disney Channel then doing well on Disney+, that’s not enough.” As is par for the course with most streamers, specific streaming numbers for their show were largely kept hidden, the individual said.

The YouTube elephant in the room

To create a winning television strategy, companies like Disney, Paramount and WBD have been forced to branch out. Eric Berger, the CEO of Common Sense Networks, which consults with YouTube, TikTok and creators to create safe content for children, told TheWrap that studios have learned they have to be everywhere with their content in order to make an impact.

That includes YouTube.

Kids’ content from creators accounts for a large percentage of what the average child consumes. Ms. Rachel, who specializes in toddler learning videos with songs, currently has 11.8 million subscribers on YouTube. The brightly colored Blippi has even more, clocking in at 21.2 million subscribers, although creator Stevin John sold his character to Moonbug in 2020 and “Blippi” is now on Max, Hulu and Prime Video.

If you look at all these avenues as competition, the children’s space can feel overwhelming. It’s certainly not the one employed by YouTube, a company that partners with both the biggest players in media and homegrown channels.

Children no longer distinguish between “legacy content or creator-driven content,” Katie Kurtz, global head of youth and learning for YouTube, told TheWrap. “We see this huge opportunity to be able to be a real resource for families.”

In polling conducted by the company, YouTube found that 85% of parents who use YouTube for their kids say they find quality content to entertain and educate their kids, and 75% of those parents say they find content that can help fill in gaps for their kids and their educational experiences. “That’s very motivating for us to think about,” Kurtz said.

In the meantime, legacy media companies that rebuffed the notion of putting their content on the internet for free for years have now embraced YouTube as a delivery system. Full episodes of Disney hits like “Bluey” and “Big City Greens” and Nick’s “Paw Patrol” are streaming for free on the platform. And starting this year, Cartoon Network has used the platform as a promotional tool to give sneak peaks of episodes ahead of their linear premiere.

As Brockman puts it, “It isn’t linear vs. streaming vs. YouTube vs. social, etc. It’s linear plus streaming plus social plus gaming plus YouTube.”

Sara DeWitt, SVP and General Manager of PBS Kids, broke down that the Today’s PBS Kids ecosystem, for example, features longer-form content that is typically consumed via linear broadcast, streaming services or any sort of “leanback experience.” At the same time, short form content and gaming dominates tablet and phone usage. Desktop and laptops are more likely to be used for gaming than streaming any sort of video.

“We just have to be everywhere,” DeWitt said.

Finding an audience in the new environment

While YouTube has offered many creators a chance to connect with a wider audience, it’s more challenging than ever to launch a new show on streaming. Viewership discovery relies on either an algorithmic suggestion or the viewer (or viewer’s parent) specifically selecting a show or video to watch. There’s also a slowdown of new shows in the industry. The number of children and family TV titles announced from 2022 to 2023 fell by 15% globally, according to research from Ampere Analysis.

“It’s daunting to have to restructure the way you look at the entire industry, but that’s what you have to do,” Aaron Augenblick, founder of Augenblick Studios and EP of “City Island” on PBS, told TheWrap. In the traditional linear days, having a concrete idea for a new show was enough. Now that fully formed new idea needs to come with a strategy for short form content, social media, games and possible movie tie-ins.

Augenblick expressed relief that his company is “a small studio that makes big projects,” meaning it can be more “nimble” than competitors. “It’s hilarious,” he said. “Everything’s changing so much that it’s starting to resemble independent film.”

Instead of creators finding their starts by partnering with big-name studios, Augenblick has noticed that more artists are making their projects “by any means necessary” before selling successful projects to streamers. Good examples of this are the “Blippi” franchise and “Cocomelon.” Both found their start by independent creators on YouTube, and both entered into distribution deals with Netflix after selling to Moonbug Entertainment.

Another key for networks and production companies is to target Millennial parents. “Up until maybe five and six years old, content discovery is very parent directed. If you want to build a big franchise, you’ve got to get to the Millennial parents,” Common Sense Networks CEO Eric Berger said, explaining that shows like “Teletubbies,” “Thomas the Train” and “Franklin” — which were popular two decades ago — are surging in popularity on YouTube as Millennial parents choose to show familiar content to their kids.

Cartoon Network is looking into recommissioning some of its hits, such as “Adventure Time,” “Regular Show,” “Teen Titans” and “Bat Wheels.” “These are all pieces of IP that have multi-generational appeal,” Brookman said. “They also have narratives that can work in multiple formats, so that’s crucial.”

Though that approach may seem like a safer bet for now, it comes with its own cost. “[Cartoon Network’s] reputation was made in originals, so we’re also making sure that we don’t forget to develop and think about what will be the ‘Gumball,’ ‘Adventure Time,’ ‘Regular Show’ or ‘Teen Titans’ of the future,” Brookman said. Maintaining that balance, she said, is “an ongoing conversation.”

“Bluey” and the future ahead

Though the present may seem hazy, Zarghami is confident that “the dust hasn’t settled yet.”

“The good stuff does float to the top,” the former Nickelodeon head said, pointing to “Gabby’s Dollhouse” and “Bluey” as examples.

“Bluey” may be the ultimate example of this. Rarely a week passes by when the animated Australian show isn’t part of Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming list. With 35 billion minutes watched in 2024 alone, “Bluey” is the most-watched show of the year, period.

But “Bluey,” which Disney acquired international distribution for in 2019, is the exception.

Every network is looking at Disney’s “Bluey” success with envy. “A lot of these networks are drifting towards acquisitions. Something like ‘Bluey’ is brilliant because it does amazing, it’s a great show and it’s cheap,” the anonymous showrunner said.

Some streaming services have also started to adjust their platforms to meet the preferences of kids, taking inspiration from the previous model. Disney+ recently released several continuous, live programming “playlists,” including the children-focused Playtime — it’s a channel that plays a curated selection of kids-centric TV shows throughout the day. Or, as some might call it, “cable TV.”

Despite the chaotic sea change and fewer investments in new ideas, consumption of children’s content has never been higher, executives stressed.

“From my perspective, kids are 100% of the future world that we’re going to inhabit, so it is vital that we are continuing to create meaningful content and experiences for that audience,” Bookman said.

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