Media research company Luminate Intelligence has put numbers to the decline in orders for children’s animation series in the US, and they paint a grim picture.

The new data show that the number of children’s animated series orders on US streaming, broadcast and cable networks has been steadily dropping since 2021.

The report looks at 2018 to H1 2025. During that time, the number of series orders peaked in 2019, at 123. As the pandemic hit in 2020, the number dropped to 105, and after a bounce back to 119 in 2021, the number has been dipping every year since. What’s perhaps most alarming is that there have only been 35 orders in the first half of 2025.

The number of series orders on children’s animated series orders on US streaming, broadcast and cable networks from 2018 to H1 2025. Courtesy of Luminate.

The data backs up the industry’s growing concern over a lack of series greenlights, both in the US and around the world. And the report names kids’ increasingly fragmented screen time as the other main challenge facing the animation business. 

Where kids spend their screen time has indeed been changing over the past few years. Citing Common Sense Media data from February, Luminate notes that zero- to eight-year-olds spent 30% of their time playing video games in 2024 (up from 19% in 2020), 22% on longer videos like those found on YouTube (down from 32%) and 11% on short vids like TikTok or YouTube Shorts—which weren’t tracked in 2020. Kids only spent 4% of their time watching live TV (vs. 15% in 2020), while time watching streamers remained level at 25%. The rest of their screen time was spent watching DVDs, which was down to 8% in 2024, compared with 10% in 2020. 

Luminate released its report, Animation + AI, yesterday. The 23-page report covers a variety of topics in animation, including the success of animated films, the well-documented rise of anime and ruminations on the dramatic effects AI could have on animation. More info on the report can be found on Luminate’s website. 

Image courtesy of Patricia Prudente via Unsplash.