Picture Credits: Nickelodeon / Netflix
The kids’ streaming wars are arguably one of the most overlooked yet fiercely contested battlegrounds and there’s a lot to win and lose. With legacy franchises refusing to give up ground and YouTube-native creators making massive inroads, deciphering what kids are actually watching—and why—is more complex than ever.
Today, Emily Horgan, a What’s on Netflix contributor, former Disney executive, and independent Kids Media Consultant, released the “H2 2025 Netflix Kids Content Performance Report.” To make sense of the new numbers, we (once again) sat down with the report’s author, independent kids media consultant and former Disney executive Emily Horgan.
Before we get into some questions, some of the key findings this time around:
Key Findings from the H2 2025 Netflix Kids Content Performance Report:
- New Champion: PAW Patrol claims #1 in Hours Viewed following its Netflix US debut with 344M Hours Viewed.
- Preschool Dominance: Gabby’s Dollhouse remains the dominant force across the full year 2025 with more than 600M Hours Viewed.
- Creator-Led Rise: YouTube-originated Ms. Rachel rises to #4, the highest ranking achieved by a new kids series within its first year on Netflix.
- Legacy Laughs: SpongeBob SquarePants dominates Comedy animation at 143M Hours Viewed, 40% ahead of its nearest competitor (without US distribution).
You can find more of Emily’s insights over at her newsletter, The Kids StreamerSphere, and the full reports are available directly here.
On the Evolution of Measuring Success
What’s on Netflix (WoN): Six Engagement Reports in, has your approach to looking at kids’ performance changed over this time? Have there been any major evolutions?
Emily Horgan: What a data-nerd dream of a question! Lots has evolved in how we’re approaching content performance within the Netflix Kids Content Performance Report. The first thing, that applies more broadly, is that we’ve moved away from summing “Views” when looking at a title with multiple seasons.
Netflix’s “Views” metric is foiblistic by nature. When you sum the metric, as Netflix do themselves, there can be an unhelpful inflation of series with lower episode counts. As a result, we’ve orientated back to “Hours Viewed” whenever we’re looking at performance for multiple seasons of a brand. It’s the cleanest way of quantifying the engagement value. Views is still useful when you’re looking at individual movies or individual seasons.
The other thing we had when we started the reports was an “Elite Performance Series” designation. This applied to a handful of brands where the engagement was so outstanding, they dwarfed anything else in the chart, making insights amongst mid-tier titles (where the learnings really are) harder to discern. As the kids’ category, particularly Preschool, has become more and more competitive, we’ve retired the term.
The Preschool Battleground: Is CoComelon Fading?
WoN: You noted in the report that CoComelon’s decline is a multi-year pattern now, despite new seasons and spin-offs. What do you think is causing this fatigue, and why is a similar YouTube-native show like Little Angel finding renewed momentum in the same space? Is it a reputation issue, or something else?
Emily Horgan: The thing with these types of nursery rhyme shows is that they have such a narrow audience demographic. There’s limited scope for them to reach up to older kids or hold much co-watch appeal for adults. CoComelon was on a brand high in 2023, helped by COVID, to be sure. It’s still a massive, top-tier show in the scheme of things.
But I guess the question is, can these types of IP endure for decades, like Peppa Pig and PAW Patrol have? Or should the expected life cycle be to burn brightly for a strong period of time, until the next iteration comes in? CoComelon had the baton passed to it by Little Baby Bum. Is the natural thing now happening here with Little Angel? We’ll be excited to track it in the next round of data.
The Crossover Megahit: KPop Demon Hunters
WoN: We have to ask about Netflix’s biggest movie hit of the year. Have you seen a movie perform like KPop Demon Hunters before, on Netflix or otherwise? Why do you think Netflix struggled to identify early on that it was going to become the megahit it became?
Emily Horgan: The closest thing we have to KPop Demon Hunters was Encanto on Disney+, and although we can see that had stronger performance from a US streaming point of view, and plenty of cultural cut-through, for various reasons it didn’t make it to the echelon of franchise. Myself and another What’s on Netflix friend, the Entertainment Strategy Guy, had a back and forth on this recently.
I think Netflix struggled to identify this because they’re not (or weren’t) in the game of kids franchises themselves. They remain laser-focused on streaming, where a strong launch that drives success in 28 days is the typical benchmark. Kids franchises don’t always work like that. Very often they take a longer lead time to build.
Credit: Netflix
The Franchise Blueprint
WoN: A few years ago, you wrote for us that Gabby’s Dollhouse should be the blueprint for Netflix kids shows. Looking at the H2 2025 data, is that still the case?
Emily Horgan: Gabby’s Dollhouse remains the best example of how to intentionally build a kids franchise in streaming. Five years later, DreamWorks is still majorly showing up to keep momentum with the IP going, most recently with the theatrical movie.
That intention and strategy is so important in the kids’ landscape because, like I said, it’s super competitive. You’re trying to take space from legacy franchises that have dominated for decades. Making the show or series and assuming audiences will show up is risky and wasteful, particularly with premium streaming platforms like Netflix where the discovery tools are limited. From the creative, to the distribution, to the marketing, to the multi-platform activities, Gabby’s Dollhouse has gotten everything right and still remains the best blueprint around for how to build a kids franchise on Netflix.
