2024 in US Streaming: Kids Content for the Win!

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One month into 2025, the 2024 streaming data races are still being called. I posted about the top shows on Netflix based on Trending Top 10s a few weeks ago. The next streaming battle royale concluded a few days ago as US Nielsen Streaming Content Ratings dropped the annual round-up. Here content is categorized across original shows, acquired shows, and movies. The headline for kids content: Bluey!... we’re going to need a bigger chart…

Heck, even The Hollywood Reporter got the memo:

The success of Bluey remains so consistently outrageous, I needed to take a break from posting about it at one stage. This latest data point tipped me over the edge though, and now, just like with my TikTok addiction, I’m back at it. Without further ado, here is a flurry of charts to show you the staggering, ongoing build of this IP.

First off, the overall Top 10 in US streaming, and there’s our little blue dog sitting comfortably in first place. If you look closely, you can see her tail wagging. What an astonishing achievement.

Honorable mention for the Overall Top 10 must go to SpongeBob SquarePants. Paramount+ has never had a kids show hit the Nielsen end-of-year rankings before. I may have been too harsh on these “mad scones” in my last newsletter. In fact, I got some feedback on the matter. Let the record show that the term “mad scone” in Irish vernacular isn’t, by definition, a bad thing.

Back to Bluey. Here’s a visual that lays out the scale of that top 5 by total minutes viewed:

Bluey was #2 in 2023, which you may remember was the year Suits took Netflix by storm. It was a wake-up call that shiny, new marquee Originals weren’t the only important asset in streaming. Long-standing network series with a deep episode count could also add significant value. Speaking of value, just for shiggles, let’s see how that scale looks if we consider a rough average of the number of hours of content available:

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What a stunning chart for anyone aiming to demonstrate the ROI of kids content! If anyone wants to ping through some estimates of production budget on these, I’d be only delighted to math it into a follow-up chart…

As I said in the opening, the ongoing build of Bluey viewership is the most impressive element of the IP’s performance. This is still a franchise in the ascendancy six years on. When we look on an annual basis, it’s up and up and up and up.

It would be easy to view the above chart and think Gabby’s Dollhouse has done poorly, but that is not the case. The show, which launched in 2021, has done exceptionally well; it’s just that Bluey is stratospheric.

Gabby is now in her unglamorous sustain era. It was interesting to see that the show’s streaming footprint in the US is currently positioned across its home platform of Netflix AND Amazon Prime. The show also bagged itself a linear window on Nick Jr. at one stage. Everything, Everywhere All at Once is the key motto in kids franchise success. On that note, both Bluey and Gabby’s Dollhouse have theatrical movies in the works. Gabby’s is due later this year and could deliver a good shot in the arm to the IP.

One last chart on Bluey then I swear I’ll stop, but I needed to show you, you can definitely see her tail wagging…

Bluey had a phenomenal 2024. The last drop of Season 3, as well as feature episode “The Sign,” drove monster engagement, netting the show on average more than 1 billion minutes viewed weekly. It’s hard to imagine how much higher it could go. No further content has been announced until the movie in 2027. Two years is a significant amount of time to keep engagement fires burning.?

The one show NOT included in the 2024 Nielsen rankings was CoComelon, which had dominated for so many years. Now nobody freak out. My hunch is that the IP still does pretty well, but the streaming performance footprint is fragmented across the original plus its newer spin-off CoComelon Lane. This is a behavior we regularly notice (and account for) when rolling up data for the Netflix Kids Content Performance Reports.

?What about movies? I hear you ask. Well, there you’re in for another treat, where the whole Top 10 ranking consists of kids and family titles, all of which saw theatrical release (h/t Hernan Lopez ).

A few notes on this:

• Despite being panned by critics, and lukewarm at box office, Red One came up trumps with its short streaming window, driving over 8 million hours viewed in less than one month of 2024. The theatrical marketing campaign doubled as the streaming campaign in this instance, and I will say that live-action kids movies tend to be quite an under-considered genre.
• PAW Patrol: The Movie represents another kids title in the ranking from the mad scones at Paramount+. This is also the poster child of what Bluey and Gabby’s Dollhouse are going for with the abovementioned cinema release strategies.
• Inside Out was sure to have seen halo impact from the release of Inside Out 2, which did over $1 billion at global box office.
• Moana was likely subject to the same type of currents but that’s a whole other story…

As noted in my 2023 Nielsen performance round-up, Moana has been punching above her weight on streaming performance since the launch of Disney+. Don’t forget, the movie is going on for nearly 10 years old. After it premiered in cinemas in 2016, there was potential for the IP to be written off as one and done (see Tangled, The Princess and the Frog and Brave). Streaming has been a gift horse to this film in terms of delivering an opportunity to demonstrate value. It has consistently risen to the top as a high performer each year, even seeing growth more recently.

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This has had to factor into the recent decision to option up the dedicated Moana Disney+ series into Moana 2which came out just before Christmas.

I had my misgivings on the retool. Flipping formats tends to end badly in my experience. ?They proved unfounded though. Moana 2 has been a runaway success at box office, and FWIW despite myself, I thoroughly enjoyed it. All eyes will be on what success it can drive to Disney+. Could it reach the dizzying heights of Encanto? That movie stonked home with more than 27 billion hours viewed in 2022, during the last fumes of COVID lockdown life.

All this good news has fueled my musing on whether kids content drives subscriber acquisition for streamers. Or just retention? The latter tends to be the dominant narrative with anyone you speak to, and I’m not saying it’s not true, it’s just, can’t a gal do both?

The other thing worth noting from all the charts is that Netflix have taken a bit of a bashing in terms of dedicated real estate in this annual perspective. Despite the winner’s lap tone of their earnings last week, it seems, for the US at least, that the landscape is more competitive. Certainly from a kids perspective the only ranking Netflix IP of all the shows discussed in this newsletter is Gabby’s Dollhouse, now windowing on Amazon Prime. Don’t get me wrong, Netflix are dominant in the weekly Nielsen rankings, they are king when it comes to hot, viral marquee hits.? But it’s interesting, looking more broadly across the year, that other streamers are finding their own areas of strength.?

Last week’s Netflix earnings also marked the end of regular updates on subscriber counts.? By the streamer’s own call, the focus will now be on content engagement, which is precisely what the Nielsen rankings are capturing. ?It’s also precisely what I’m looking at in my new project, the Netflix Kids Content Performance report.

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The era of subscriber obsession has ended.? The era of engagement obsession has begun.? And as we can see from above, this gives kids content a massive opportunity to show its worth.?