It was definitely a tough year for kids commissions, with fewer overall first-run TV orders than in 2024, according to Ampere Analysis. But there were a few bright spots that seem to indicate the industry is starting to stabilize. 

The market researcher’s data shows a 22% drop in the number of kids content commissions logged so far this year, with just 260 titles greenlit between January and November, compared to 333 in 2024. 

“2025 has been a difficult year for the TV industry as a whole,” says Fred Black, Ampere’s research director of the Americas, “with the fading of pay-TV revenues, debate over the funding of public broadcasting in many major markets, intense competition for profitability in streaming, a number of mega-mergers on the table, and the growing dominance of social video platforms like YouTube, compounded by rising production costs and basic economic realities for consumers.”

Unsurprisingly, most of the biggest kids commissioners this year were public broadcasters, but one streamer made the top-five list. France Télévisions was the most active commissioner with 26 titles, followed by the BBC (24), Canal+ (11), Netflix (10) and Ireland’s RTÉ and ABC Australia with nine each. 

Notably, public broadcasters ordered a fair bit less kids content this year. Collectively, these first-run commissions dropped by 26% to 142 titles. But these channels did engage in more co-commissioning, which is likely a direct result of their budgets getting squeezed, Ampere says. 

There’s also some more good news buried in the data: While streamers didn’t fully pick up the slack, they commissioned more in 2025 than they have for the past few years. Besides Netflix, Disney+ greenlit seven titles and Apple TV did four. And after years of cuts, the total volume of new kids shows commissioned by global streamers was up slightly for the first time since 2022, according to Ampere. 

“Privately owned platforms have stabilized in their commitment to the genre in 2025 across pay TV, streaming and free-to-air broadcasters—including major players like Netflix, Disney and Paramount,” says Black. “While the peak TV years are certainly over, kids content should find itself on surer footing in 2026.”