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By India McCarty
Children’s media’s boom on streaming continues, but can studios keep up with the demand?
“The streaming wars are five years old now and they are entering their ‘childhood era’,” Emily Horgan, a former Disney executive and current kids media consultant, told Deadline. “Up until now it was about finding marquee entertainment shows like HOUSE OF CARDS or THE MANDALORIAN, but that overfocus was unhelpful for kids’ content. These shows don’t pop straight away — BLUEY took ages to build — so now is a big moment for kids brands.”
BLUEY, PEPPA PIG and COCOMELON are just a few of the massively popular series that have taken off on streaming, generating movies, toys, books and more.
While streaming platforms are now prioritizing children’s content, some studios have shared concerns about competing with YouTube or securing funding.
Related: Why Streamers Should Consider Offering More Kids Content
“The irony is that the biggest brands of original IP are coinciding with a time when funding has never felt more challenged,” Horgan explained. “There is also a problem in that if you want to be big on YouTube you need to be able to make a global play, but when public broadcasters commission, they want to lock in rights at a local level and that makes it much harder to build franchises. YouTube is now the front page of the kids’ internet, so this creates a catch-22.”
Child’s Play: Kids TV Mega-Brands Are Booming But Can Any Others Compete? https://t.co/8hYjQXqaIq
— Deadline (@DEADLINE) October 13, 2025
Another factor in streaming services’ decisions to prioritize kids’ content? The increased likelihood that parents will be putting their kids in front of screens.
“PEPPA PIG did arrive at the time when mobile phones were being used by parents to offload their parenting onto screens, and children were adapting to using screens as a primary mode of engaging with content,” Benjamin Burroughs, an associate professor of emerging media at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Fortune.
Should children watch streaming shows?
Streamers also pay attention to the “rewatchability” factor. While an adult might rewatch a movie or show they like every so often, children will repeatedly watch their favorite characters onscreen.
“Kids’ content drives a huge amount of engagement because kids watch it over and over and over and over. They never tire of it,” Kevin Mayer, co-CEO of Candle Media, owner of COCOMELON distributor Moonbug, told CNBC.
Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president of product strategy and thought leadership at Nielsen, shared an example of this: when Netflix only had one season of COCOMELON streaming on their platform, kids would watch the same episodes multiple times, boosting the show up the Netflix charts.
Children’s content dominates streaming and beyond, but platforms and networks will have to put up the funding to create the next big thing.
Read Next: Disney Dominates Kids’ Streaming, Thanks These Shows
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