John Keeble
- Netflix just released data on watch time for its shows.
- Cocomelon, the animated nursery rhymes for toddlers, had more than 600 million hours of watch.
- The combined "seasons" would make it the fourth most popular show on Netflix.
Netflix just released a whole bunch of data about how many hours people watch its titles.
I couldn't help but notice a familiar title in the Top 100 most watched shows: "Cocomelon: Season 1" at No. 61.
I was shocked mainly to discover that "Cocomelon," a generally plot-free collection of animated nursery rhymes for babies and toddlers that started as YouTube videos, has "seasons," but it turns out that there are actually six of them on Netflix.
Let's say you combine the watch time of all six seasons, which seems fair since it's hard to argue that any 2-year-old is clamoring to wait for the newest season to follow up on the cliffhangers presented in "Wheels on the Bus."
Combined, "Cocomelon" (Seasons 1-6) was watched on Netflix for 601 million hours in the first half of 2023 alone.
Yes, 601 million hours.
Of stuff like this:
That's more than all four seasons of "Stranger Things" combined that were watched during the same time period.
If you ranked the combined "Cocomelon" next to the other shows, it would be the No. 4 most popular show, just beating out "Wednesday."
"Cocomelon" started as videos on YouTube, and was bought by Moonbug, which also owns other popular preschooler properties that started on YouTube, such as Blippi and Morphle.
Lest you think that a cartoon baby singing public domain nursery rhymes isn't serious business, Moonbug was bought for $3 billion in 2021 by the Blackstone-backed firm that also bought Reece Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine company.
Cocomelon's YouTube channel has been among the top channels for several years – it's currently the fourth-most subscribed channel according to Social Blade.
The list of the top most watched other shows weren't total shocks. Hit shows like "The Night Agent" (812 million hours) and season 2 of "Ginny and Georgia" (665 million hours) topped the list — as well as a South Korean drama and Tim Burton's Wednesday.