“Blippi” is huge.
The YouTube kids TV series just had its biggest month ever in January with over 2 billion views in a single month. That’s billion with a B.
The viewership of the live-action preschool series, which follows a cheerful character named Blippi who uses direct-address to the camera to teach kids about cars, animals, tools, safety and a plethora of other topics, has increased almost five-fold since Moonbug Entertainment acquired the brand in 2020, and now “Blippi” is entering a new era: premium episodes on Netflix.
As kids TV viewership migrates almost entirely online with the advent of “cord-nevers” and aging-up of “iPad kids,” YouTube is the undisputed king. But streamers like Netflix and Disney+ are starting to take notice of shows that exploded on the platform, licensing episodes of YouTube sensations like “Blippi” and “Ms. Rachel” to bolster their children’s programming much the same way Netflix licensed shows like “The Office” and “Friends” before they hit upon a winning original comedy strategy.
Now, Netflix is partnering with Candle Media-owned British company Moonbug — which also has animated hit “Cocomelon” under its umbrella — on a new original, premium “Blippi” series called “Blippi’s Job Show” with a bigger budget and episodes that kids and parents can’t watch on YouTube for free, marking a major move for the streamer in the kids space and yet another leveling up for Moonbug’s beloved brand.
The arc of “Blippi” underlines the way kids TV has radically changed over the last decade – it’s a show that could only get to this point having started where it did, growing organically on YouTube after creator and original star Stevin John posted his first video in 2014. As the show’s popularity rise coincided with more and more kids watching content on YouTube, John sold the franchise to Moonbug, at which point “Blippi” began to expand into live shows, merchandising and spinoffs all while continuing to mine views (and ad revenue) from short-form content. Now, having amassed a worldwide fandom through free-to-watch videos, the show is expanding onto a premium tier.
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“We’re still obviously investing in Blippi as a core franchise that’s going to be on YouTube and other platforms, but what we’re doing with this show is trying to make something that’s going to be very specific and unique for the audience that we know Netflix has,” Courtney Holt, Moonbug’s Managing Director, Americas, told TheWrap. “We think that we’re going to fulfill a lot of great demand for kids and parents really looking for something magical and premium in the live-action space.”
Holt stressed that Blippi is “not an influencer” despite calling YouTube home. “Netflix understands and respects that, so they’re not looking to say, ‘Oh, this is just influencer content or YouTube content,’ they see it as these are really well-defined characters,” he said, noting that Netflix and Moonbug worked together to develop the creative on “Blippi’s Job Show,” which follows Blippi and co-host Meekah as they explore various jobs.
And Netflix knows “Blippi” works for its audience — licensed “Blippi” shows amassed 24.1 million views on the platform in the second half of 2024. To that end, Holt said the partnership between Netflix and Moonbug was an organic one because they both have a wealth of data to help guide programming.
“We look at trends enough to say that we’re hyper responsive, but I think the responsiveness of our ability to produce this content in this way allows us to bring data sets into the conversation, similar to how Netflix is looking at what’s trending and tracking on their platform, so the synthesis of that data does go into the development process,” Holt said.
For example, each episode of “Blippi’s Job Show” is a deep-dive into one specific job, from firefighter to astronaut to monster truck driver. Blippi GM Mike Katzman told TheWrap that, when drawing up a list of hundreds of possible jobs Blippi could tackle, they used data from their YouTube stats and Netflix’s platform to help trim down the list.
“We really want to do things that we know work for the character set, work for the platform and ultimately are going to give us the best expression of a show that’s going to work for the target audience, which is kids and their caregivers, because we want to make this show as impactful as possible,” Katzman said.
While Moonbug declined to provide specific numbers, the budget for “Blippi’s Job Show” is greater than the budget for regular episodes of “Blippi” that exist on YouTube. The show also made use of the volume, the VFX technology pioneered on “The Mandalorian” that renders CG backgrounds in real-time on set, to bring Blippi’s clubhouse to life for the first time in live-action.
But a bigger budget doesn’t just mean louder and busier. Indeed, while kids have flocked to YouTube, the platform is also a hotbed of homegrown kids and preschool content that may not be as enriching — or safe — as parents want, with the algorithm feeding content to users that hasn’t been vetted by their parents. Moonbug’s focus on making “Blippi” educational and safe as well as fun is directly related to its popularity, and that is enhanced in “Blippi’s Job Show.”
“We focus a bit more than usual on the socio-emotional learning side of things [in ‘Blippi’s Job Show’], because jobs have different values,” Katzman said. “So we’re able to talk about, ‘What does bravery mean?’ if we have an episode on a firefighter, or creativity or doing your best. These are some topics that we reinforce in the episodes through the jobs.”
He also teased more songs than the YouTube episodes, which may or may not be welcome news to caregivers watching along with kids.
The performance of “Blippi’s Job Show” may well pave the way for Netflix to continue to expand its kids programming by partnering with the creators of shows that have exploded on YouTube, especially as it competes with the platform for views. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos even said last summer that Netflix and YouTube “feed each other.”
“We clearly do compete with YouTube in certain segments of their business, and we certainly compete with them for time and attention, but our services also feed each other really well,” Sarandos said, referencing how Netflix’s trailers and behind-the-scenes content perform on YouTube and drive awareness of their content. More recently, Sarandos took a bit of a shot at his competitor, saying at a Paley Center event that Netflix is in the “spending time business” while YouTube’s model is built around “killing time.”
Moonbug hopes “Blippi’s Job Show” is the next in many collaborations with Netflix, and Holt said there could certainly be more premium “Blippi” shows on the way.
“We hope to continue to do bigger, better with them,” he said. “I think what I really appreciate about working with them is the spirit of collaboration. There’s a lot of symbiosis of how we think about family and reaching them. I really think that their kids and family team is best-in-business when it comes to understanding what their platform needs are and communicating that super clearly.”
