Apr 30, 2018

Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network ratings are plummeting.

The ratings of the three major children's cable networks, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network, are plummeting inexorably. Everyone knows the cause, but no one knows how to stop it.

According to an article in Bloomberg Businessweek, kids are abandoning traditional cable TV in droves, and this year's ratings are shaping up to be the worst yet. The blame for this lies with streaming services, particularly Netflix. [viewership is down 20% from just a year ago, and ad sales have not grown for five years (currently hovering around $1.2 billion per year).

This chart says it all.

Bloomberg notes that children's channels are trying to catch up in the streaming arena: Nick has a platform called Noggin, and Time Warner offers a subscription service called Boomerang. But it's an uphill battle at this point.

Even Suzanne Daniels, global head of original content at Google's Youtube, recently admitted that her subscription service Youtube Red is no match for Netflix and its 125 million global subscribers. I don't think we can compete with Netflix at this point," Daniels said. But I do believe that eventually we can compete with Hulu, Amazon, and even Apple."