Back on November 1, kids TV and film production-focused news site Kidscreen reported that U.K.-based Moonbug Entertainment, producer of Netflix’s wildly popular series CoComelon, had laid off writing staff from the show. 

And on Sunday, Bloomberg published excerpts from an interview with Andy Yeatman, who heads Moonbug’s U.S. business, confirming that the company is indeed “cutting back” and redirecting resources after previously embarking on aggressive expansion. 

“We’ve decided to make a little less content,” Yeatman said, adding that the company will now focus a bit more on video games and music. 

Also read: Moonbug, Producer of Netflix's Mega-Popular 'CoComelon,' Sold to Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs

Bloomberg reported that 30 jobs representing about 5% of Moonbug's workforce were cut. Most of CoComelon’s writing staff was let go, with the workload now handled by overseas third-party studios. 

The company has reportedly hired Canada’s Mainframe Studios and India’s Green Gold Animation Pvt., among other shops, to take on animation for its various properties. 

A Moonbug press rep didn't immediately respond to Next TV's email seeking comment and confirmation. 

Moonbug was purchased in 2021 by entertainment moguls Kevin Mayer and Tom Skaggs, with backing by Blackstone Inc., for a reported $3 billion. It’s privately funded, so it's hard to gauge the financial trajectory of the company. 

But business can't be that bad. 

Moonbug’s “CoComelon — Nursery Rhymes” YouTube channel has 168 million subscribers. And Netflix’s CoComelon series has been one of the most popular offerings on the top SVOD platform for several years. In fact, the season one debut of spinoff series CoComelon Lane was the fourth-most-watched English-language TV show on Netflix for the week of November 20-26. 

Bloomberg said that the flagship CoComelon was the third most watched show in all of U.S. streaming last year, trailing only Stranger Things and NCIS. 

So what does it say for the broader video entertainment industry that even the jobs behind this particularly successful franchise aren't safe? Probably nothing good. 

CoComelon, a big hit on YouTube and Netflix, said it will be selling tickets to the next leg of its North American live show, announcing the location of 20 of its next 65 appearances.

Tickets go on sale Friday. 

The CoComelon Live! JJ’s Journey live show started with six dates in 2021 and expanded with six more appearances this spring.

The next 20 stops will take place in September and September, starting in Baltimore and ending up in Long Beach, California.

CoComelon is a Moonbug Entertainment property. CoComelon Live! is produced and promoted globally by EMC Presents. The North American tour is presented in association with Premier Productions and S2BN Entertainment.  ■

“We’re so glad JJ and his family are back and can share their exciting journey with other families around the country,” said Michael Cohl, founder of EMC Presents. “The response we received from the first leg of the tour was extraordinary and I have heard from parents that this is a perfect live event to bond with their child.” ■

CoComelon Live! JJ Journey’s Tour Schedule

Fri, Sept 16 Baltimore, MD - Lyric Theatre

Sat, Sept 17 Raleigh, NC - Memorial Auditorium

Sun, Sept. 18 Charlotte, NC - Ovens Auditorium

Tue, Sept. 20 Ft. Lauderdale, FL - Broward Center

Wed. Sept. 21 Tampa, FL - Straz Center

Thu. Sept. 22 Jacksonville, FL - Moran Theater

Sat. Sept. 24 Atlanta, GA - Fox Theatre

Sun. Sept. 25 Montgomery, AL - Montgomery Performing Arts Centre

Mon. Sept. 26 Memphis, TN - Orpheum Theatre

Wed. Sept 28 Grand Prairie, TX - Texas Trust CU Theatre at Grand Prairie

Thu., Sept. 29 Sugar Land, TX – Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land

Sat. Oct. 1 San Antonio, TX - Tobin Center

Sun. Oct. 2 Austin, TX - Bass Hall

Tue. Oct. 4 Lubbock, TX - Buddy Holly Hall

Wed. Oct. 5 Midland, TX - Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center

Thu. Oct. 6 El Paso, TX - Abraham Chavez Theatre

Sat. Oct. 8 San Diego, CA - Civic Theatre

Sun. Oct. 9 Los Angeles, CA - Microsoft Theater

Mon. Oct. 10 Las Vegas, NV - Orleans Arena

Sat. Oct. 15 Long Beach, CA – Terrace Theater

WarnerMedia Kids & Family said it mad a deal with Moonbug Entertainment that will bring shows including CoComelon and Blippi to the Cartoonito preschool block on HBO Max and Cartoon Network.

CoComelon will also continue to appear on Netflix, where it is one of the most popular streaming shows.

WarnerMedia Kids also acquired the library of Vlad & Niki, a hit series on YouTube featuring brothers who are eight and six years old.

Also: WarnerMedia Redraws Kids Business at Upfront

Moonbug Entertainment was recently acquired by Candle Media, run by former Walt Disney Co. executive Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs and backed by Blackstone.

“The digital sphere is a wellspring of rich and popular content, and being in the preschool space affords us opportunities to work closely with reputable hitmakers like Moonbug to build our library of trusted brands such as Blippi and CoComelon,” said Adina Pitt, vice president, content acquisitions, partnerships and co-productions for the Americas, WarnerMedia Kids & Family. “With the addition of global phenomenon Vlad & Niki, we look forward to sharing these imaginative playtime adventures in a seamless and comprehensive viewing experience.”

CoComelon will start appearing on Cartoon Network on Monday. Blippi Wonders will premiere on Cartoonito on HBO Max and Cartoon Network in April. Blippi Learns and Blippi Visits premiere on HBO Max on April 22. HBO Max will also be streaming seven Blippi specials. No premiere date was set for the specials.

Also coming to Cartoonito from Moonbug are Lellobee City Farm and Mia’s Magic Playground.

Vlad & Niki will premiere on March 18 on Cartoonito on HBO Max. ■

Moonbug Entertainment, the producer of the mega-popular Netflix kids series Cocomelon, has been sold to a company operated by entertainment moguls Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs, and backed by Blackstone Group.

Moonbug’s founders, CEO René Rechtman and COO John Robson, and existing management team and shareholders, will retain equity stakes in the Mayer-Staggs-Blackstone-backed media company. No financial terms were announced. 

However, various reports from Bloomberg, The Information and Wall Street Journal peg the sale price to be $3 billion. 

Mayer and Staggs have had a busy partnership since leaving Disney, forming special purpose acquisition companies, and buying a range of media assets, including Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine production company. 

Formed in 2018, Moonbug describes itself as a "digital first" producer of kids content, making it in 27 languages for over 100 platforms around the world. Moonbug is best known for Cocomelon, which consistently ranks as one of Netflix's most watched acquired shows.

Said Mayer and Staggs in a joint statement: “We have known René and his innovative team for years, including during our time together at Disney, and they have built a perfect example of the type of category-defining business we are looking to bring into our company. They know how to identify and support brands that are beloved by millions of families across the globe. We and our partners at Blackstone look forward to helping expand Moonbug’s portfolio of titles and further extend its franchises across digital platforms and key licensing and merchandising channels.”

Future Today’s CoComelon and iFood.tv are being added as new channels on Vizio’s SmartCast TV sets.

The additions give Future Today 13 ad-supported apps and four free, ad-supported TV networks on the Vizio platform.

Also Read: Cable Giants Enlist Dish, Vizio To Fix Addressable Logjam

Viewership of Future Today programming grew 28% in the second quarter, with more than 13 million monthly users streaming over 55 million hours of content in May.

“Future Today is a fantastic partner and we’re very excited to add two more new apps featuring fan-favorite shows,” said Katherine Pond, VP of business development for Vizio. “We deliver right-out-of-the-box entertainment options for every SmartCast TV household. Expanding our free-of-charge channels on a family-safe platform, reflects our continuing commitment to provide endless entertainment options for the millions of households that count on our curation for best-in-class viewing.”

Also Read: Vizio’s SmartCast Adds Anime With Funimation

The two new channels added to SmartCast are:

Children’s channel Cocomelon has more than 100 million subscribers on YouTube. It teaches children about taking on activities with a sense of enthusiasm while presenting positive behavior for young viewers to emulate.

Food.tv has a collection of over 50,000 cooking shows and video recipes for everyday cooking that even foodies will devour. All recipes are tried, reviewed and organized by Future Today’s editorial team and community members

“Vizio’s award-winning smart TV operating system, SmartCast, has something for everyone; movies and TV shows, sports, kids and family, news, interests and lifestyle, gaming and more. It has become a dominant force in shaping the TV viewing experience in this burgeoning industry,” said Vikrant Mathur, founder and CEO, Future Today. “Our channels-as-a-service technology platform serves as a turn-key complement for expanding viewing choices for Vizio and all our video partners.” 

After the big streaming services burned through every can of content in the cupboards, and tapped every foreign acquisition they could find, it appears that the long-anticipated video programming drought is finally here. 

For the second consecutive week, according to Nielsen, no television program or film broke the one billion viewing minutes mark among the four major U.S. subscription streaming services: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Disney Plus.

March Madness may be to blame for the low VOD numbers. But something was certainly amiss during the third full week of March. Re-runs of Grey’s Anatomy took the top spot on Nielsen’s master SVOD ranker and its acquired ranking chart during the week of March 15-21.

The off-network run of the ABC medical drama on Netflix, where 16 seasons and 367 episodes of the series are available, tallied 673 million U.S. viewing minutes during the week of March 15. That’s up by 45 million viewing minutes week to week.

The Netflix streaming of another off-network show, CBS procedural Criminal Minds, came in second place among all SVOD shows. The 12 seasons and 307 episodes of the procedural drama licensed by Netflix garnered 647 million minutes of viewing.

Both Grey's Anatomy and Criminal Minds consistently rank atop Nielsen’s list of acquired SVOD shows. And they often appear in the back half off Nielsen’s overall top 10 rankings. But for the week of March 15, no big original SVOD show or movie broke out big. 

Notably, another Netflix acquired series that routinely makes both ranking lists is Cocomelon. The computer-animated children’s program features baby J.J. and his siblings singing lullabies and telling stories. During the week of March 15, six episodes of Cocomelon’s collected 506 million minutes of viewing. 

That’s up 48 million views week over week. Cocomelon took the sixth spot on the overall ranker and was No. 4 on the acquired chart during the week of March 15-21.

The animated show originated on YouTube, where it remains one the most popular channels with close to 100 million subscribers. According to The Verge, in a one-month period, Cocomelon videos amass over 3.3 billion views. In May 2020, Roku made a Cocomelon channel for its platform. Then in June 2020, Netflix licensed three episodes of the preschool franchise. According to Nielsen, Netflix’s three episodes of Cocomelon drew 336 million minutes viewing, placing the show in the No.10 spot on the master ranker during the last week of August. According to Variety, the show spent 104 days on Netflix’s top 10 ranking chart, more than any other program excluding The Office.

In December 2020, Netflix, which is spending billions to grow the streaming service’s library of children’s programming, added three more episodes of Cocomelon.

Meanwhile on Nielsen’s movie chart, Netflix’s Yes Day stole the top spot from Amazon’s Coming 2 America. The Jennifer Garner film drew 593 million minutes of viewing over nine days of availability. Yes Day placed No. 3 on Nielsen's master ranker for the week of March 15-21.

Coming 2 America, which was No. 1 for two consecutive weeks on the more drilled down ranking of the top SVOD movies, fell to the fifth spot on Nielsen's movie chart during the week of March 15. The film captured 273 million minutes of viewing minutes—down by 497 million week over week.

Meanwhile, on the original series front, Netflix’s 10 episodes of Ginny & Georgia, which premiered Feb. 24, came in No. 1 on Nielsen’s ranking of SVOD original shows and No. 5 on the overall list, collecting 540 million minutes of U.S. viewing. That is down by 232 million viewing minutes week over week.

In the No. 2 spot on the originals ranker was Disney Plus’ first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. In only three days on the streaming service, the Marvel miniseries drew an impressive 495 million views per minute. The series came in No. 7 in the overall rankings.

The only other Disney Plus show to make the acquired chart was WandaVision. Despite coming to a close on March 5, the nine installments of the Marvel miniseries garnered 252 million views per minute. The show came in sixth place on Nielsen's acquired chart. WandaVision initially cracked Nielsen’s original series rankings when it debuted on Jan. 15 and tallied just 434 million minutes of U.S. streaming.

Previous Weekly Rankings

March 8-14 - Nielsen: Netflix’s ‘The Crown’ Got Royal Gains from Meghan’s Big Oprah Interview

March 1-7 - Nielsen: Amazon Tops the Charts for the First Time with ‘Coming 2 America’

Feb 22-28 - Nielsen: Netflix’s 'Ginny & Georgia' Leads the SVOD Biz

In the bowels of a database in Los Gatos, Calif. lies a definitive ranking of the most viewed shows on Netflix so far this year.

The rest of us have to rely on our own methodologies. 

For its part, streaming service aggregation platform provider Reelgood tallied up each and every “Top 10 in the U.S.” ranking Netflix published from Feb. 27 - Dec. 9. The Office finished No.1 with a bullet, appearing on the list 178 times.

The only show to come close is kids seriesd CoComelon, which appeared in the rankings 104 times.

Notably, Nielsen, which started in the late summer publishing a weekly third-party ranker of the top SVOD titles based on total viewing minutes, seems to concur, with The Office consistently ranked among the top shows each week.

Regrettably for Netflix, on Jan. 1, The Office starts streaming exclusively on Peacock, which paid $500 million to acquire those rights. 

Roku said that CoComelon is launching on The Roku Channel, marking the first time programming for CoComelon will be available outside of YouTube.

The Roku Channel is also adding more popular kids programming from YouTube with the Diana Show.

CoComelon, from Treasure Studio Inc., features songs and videos that help preschool kids learn letters, numbers and colors. It can be found through Roku Channel’s Kids & Family experience.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

“At CoComelon, we’re driven by being able to engage families with entertaining and educational content that makes universally relatable preschool moments fun,” said Jay Jeon, creator/founder, Treasure Studio, Inc.

“We are thrilled to launch with Roku today to make our popular programming available to Roku fans everywhere. Roku shares our deep commitment to creating positive content environments for children and brings a unique ability to engage and promote programming to audiences especially within The Roku Channel,” Jeon said. “This partnership is an important component of our strategy to be everywhere our audience is today.”

Roku users will be able to find CoComelon content starting Tuesday, including some of its most popular videos such as Bath Song, Yes, Yes Vegetables, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Wheels on the Bus, and Baby Shark Submarine.

“CoComelon is beloved by tens of millions of children around the world and is a natural fit for our growing selection of content available to the millions of families who are increasingly turning to The Roku Channel every day for both entertainment and educational content,” said Rob Holmes, VP of programming and engagement, Roku. “CoComelon joins a robust line-up of children’s programming within our Kids & Family experience and we could not be more excited to welcome their incredible streaming content to The Roku Channel.”

Multichannel News has partnered with social video analytics company Tubular Labs to bring you a monthly ranking of the most-viewed U.S. media creators across social video platforms. The ranking below covers December 2018.

For the second month in a row, sports-related content makes repeat appearances throughout the chart — but it’s once again the children’s creator Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes that leads with 2 billion views, all from YouTube. Appropriately for the holiday season, its most-watched video was “Deck the Halls - Christmas Song for Kids,” with 95.9 million views.

In second place (also for the second time in a row) is Buzzfeed’s Tasty, with over 1.5 billion views across social video platforms. Its most-watched video for the month (19.5 million views) was posted to Facebook and shows how mozzarella cheese is made.

It’s worth noting that Ellen DeGeneres is the only TV personality to make the chart, coming in at No. 9 with 846 million views across social video platforms. 

Multichannel News has partnered with social video analytics company Tubular Labs to bring you a monthly ranking of the most-viewed U.S. media creators across social video platforms. The ranking below covers November.

Although sports-related content makes a good showing with three of the top 10 spots, it’s kid-focused creator Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes that leads with an impressive 1.9 billion views, coming solely from YouTube. Second place goes to the Buzzfeed behemoth Tasty with over 1.4 billion views across social video platforms.

It’s also worth noting that Beauty Studio takes third place. Although many of its popular videos focus on health, beauty or self-care tips, November’s two most-watched clips are on the food side of things, one for fancy cake decorations and the other for cone desserts. With the holiday season (and resulting delicious treats) in full swing, it’s no surprise there’s a food focus in the top ranks of the chart. 

Online Video Deep Dive: Viewership Trends Across YouTube and Facebook

Chart newcomer Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes jumps to the top of the table with an impressive 1.8 billion YouTube video views. This creator, formerly known as ABCkidTV, shares nursery rhymes and children’s songs over 3D animations and is one of the fastest-growing creators on YouTube. The kids’ theme continues on the chart with creators 5-Minute Crafts KIDS, Nick Jr. and Little Baby Bum in eighth, ninth and 10th places, respectively.

It’s worth pointing out that Cocomelon and WWE, which snags second place, together helped unseat longtime chart-topper MovieClips, which slips to No. 3. WWE’s 1.2 billion YouTube video views in August adds up to healthy a increase from July’s 987 million — but MovieClips is right on WWE’s heels with 1 billion views.