She’s a 42-year-old new mom and he’s a 96-year-old animated rodent. As pairings go, they couldn’t be more different.
And yet Ms. Rachel and Mickey Mouse do have one thing in common: They’re the most watched U.S. children’s programming in streaming year to date, according to Luminate Streaming Viewership (M) data.
Since its Jan. 25 debut on Netflix, Ms. Rachel has taken the top spot occupied last year by Avatar: The Last Airbender, which had received a boost from Netflix’s original live-action version of the series. But what has helped establish Rachel Accurso as the reigning queen of kids TV has been her presence on YouTube.
To get the full picture of the total number of eyeballs on a series, SV(M) offers a combined count of Netflix and YouTube in the U.S. In Rachel’s case, that amounts to a gargantuan 2.6 billion minutes across just four 36-to-59-minute episodes.
However, the data also indicates that it’s not just the new kid on the block in kids’ content that commands the biggest audiences. A 20-year-old season of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on Disney+ and YouTube collected nearly as much viewing time as Rachel — a great sign for a property about to relaunch this summer.
Rachel is following a strategy already successfully employed for Cocomelon, whose first season in 2020 remains a Top 10 draw. Both began as YouTube channels in short-form episodes that Netflix acquired and repackaged as original long-form episodes.
While the TV business has always been focused on the 18-49 demographic, Rachel proves the biggest original series on streaming are often in the 18-49 month demo. She cracked the Top 10 Netflix originals across both Netflix and YouTube the very first week she made her SVOD bow.
And Accurso isn’t done dominating 2025 yet: After taking a few months off to have her second child, Netflix plans to drop a second batch of episodes sometime later this year after averaging 15 million views across the show’s first four episodes.
However, Clubhouse may be an even more remarkable story considering three other seasons of the series ranked among the Top 10 — and that doesn’t include the other Mickey-centric series also available on Disney+ and YouTube.
No wonder, then, after concluding the initial series five-season run in 2021, that Disney is giving the property a fresh spin with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse+, which is expected to premiere in August 2025. A new stage show, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Live!, also launches next month at the Disneyland resort.
However, not all SVOD kids’ hits hail from YouTube. Originally commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Company in partnership with BBC Studios, Bluey remains a potent property on Disney+, Disney Junior and YouTube. Nielsen crowned the Disney+ version of Bluey the most streamed series of 2024.
The sizable audiences all these kid-centric series attract speak to how valuable they are to streamers because of the repeatability and binge-ability of evergreen content. To take a deeper dive into audience trends across streaming originals for all ages, explore Luminate’s SV(M) data.
