Can You Tell Me How to Get to… a Global Preschool Strategy?
Sesame Street charts a new path across major platforms
It’s a big week for Netflix Kids, a true Q4 play to feed pre-holiday ad sales. DreamWorks just released their new animated franchise series The Bad Guys: Breaking In. The latest Netflix Original animated film, In Your Dreams, premiered yesterday. And last Monday, Sesame Street arrived on the streamer, the result of a deal-making spree over the summer that reshaped the beloved brand’s global distribution footprint, securing its presence on the biggest global platforms for years ahead. There’s a lot to unpack in Sesame Street’s recent moves: the PBS-Netflix partnership, its bigger collaboration with YouTube, decisive activation on Roblox. Together they all point to a brand making deliberate, strategic endeavors to cook up the perfect footprint across the most relevant touchpoints of modern-day preschool audiences.
New Season Roll Out on Netflix
The new season, Season 56, of Sesame Street launched concurrently on Netflix and PBS Kids on Monday, November 10th. The unprecedented, first of its kind partnership was a much-needed bright spot in kids media. The pressure is on for Netflix. The streamer needs this to work. Sesame Street can’t become another disposable title in its catalogue. It’s too high profile. The audience, the industry and, dare I say, perhaps even Wall Street would be aghast if Netflix dropped this particular ball.
One of the biggest shifts here is public-private concurrency. Previously, when new episodes premiered on HBO Max, PBS had to wait out a nine-month hold back window, killing any chance of shared momentum or coordinated messaging. This time, Netflix and PBS are in step, with both services taking the new episodes this week. That’s uncharted territory for Netflix, a company once famous for its obsession with exclusivity. But exclusivity doesn’t serve established preschool brands. In fact, it limits them. These franchises deliver the biggest lift for themselves and their platforms when accessibility is part of the strategy.
This is the first time, as far as I know (ping me any corrections), that Netflix have shared a key preschool IP with a free-to-access linear partner at launch. Linear is in decline, sure, but it still has relevance, particularly in preschool. And it offers something streaming doesn’t: schedule-driven discovery. We know Sesame Street is getting audience sunlight at PBS because we can see it twice daily on the schedule. That doesn’t mean most viewing happens there, but being visible on an EPG builds routine and awareness that can feed into streaming engagement. Streaming has never offered that kind of measurable discovery (discovery overall in premium streaming is broken, which I wrote about a few weeks ago). Linear is also something that’s quietly helped Bluey thrive, in my opinion. The show is available at scale on Disney+ but has been turning up daily on Disney’s linear channels from the get-go, keeping it ever-present in family life.
The other thing that caught my attention with Sesame Street on Netflix is the content volume. The press release promised a new season alongside a back catalogue of over 90 hours. Yet at launch, only the first four episodes of the latest season are live, with two more new-season “volumes” to come, timing still TBC (as far as I can tell—@ me if you’ve seen more). It’s curious that Netflix didn’t prioritize mining that 90 hours for a bigger initial batch audiences could dive into. I suppose they’ve had success with Ms. Rachel and CoComelon launching in small volumes, so maybe that’s the approach here. Or maybe licensing windows glitched between PBS and YouTube. Another side to this four-episode, multi-volume approach is that tracking metrics will be a pain in the proverbial. My problem, not yours. I know, I know, I know, I know.
Sesame Street on Roblox
Beyond Netflix, something we’ve been tracking very closely is Sesame Street’s recent expansion on Roblox. The organization is no stranger to the platform, having launched an Experience, Mecha Builders: The Game, in 2022. But its recent expansion is very much a double down. Two new Experiences:
Neighborhood Adventures, a central hub of three games, complete with avatar builder and video screening area
Magical Beastie Quest, minigames directly linked to a brand-new segment in the latest episodes
A large-scale activation like this from Sesame Street is a statement in the Roblox landscape. It joins Gabby’s Dollhouse and Blippi as preschool brands choosing to show up on the platform. There is plenty to learn from Sesame Street’s specific approach though, a thoughtful, appropriate activation for the youngest players. We circulated a deeper research note on this to clients of the Netflix Kids Content Performance Report earlier in the week, which is available here.
Looking at performance (you finally got to the data, Emily) we’ve been tracking the Roblox CCUs for the central Experience, Neighborhood Adventures, alongside the Gabby’s Dollhouse Experience below: