'The Next Paw Patrol Will be Born on YouTube': Nickelodeon Shifts Strategy
Exec Ashley Kaplan and creator Freddy Wexler take me inside the inside the launch of 'Kid Cowboy' as the TV net's first original to debut on the free streamer
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As the parent of a toddler, I know how hard it can be to entice your kid to watch something new. If my son had his way, he’d spend his days bingeing Spidey and His Amazing Friends, Hot Wheels Let’s Race and Paw Patrol. But recently I asked him to sit down with me to check out a new show from Nick Jr. It’s called Kid Cowboy, and it premiered in January not on Nickelodeon, or even its sister streaming service Paramount+, but rather on YouTube.
If you’ve got kids, you already know YouTube is hugely popular with the preschool and elementary school set — heck, with the middle and high school sets too (kids age 4 to 18 spend an average of 70 minutes a day on YouTube, per Qustodio). I wasn’t surprised to find my son’s potential next favorite show on the platform. But I was surprised that show hailed from a historically linear television network whose parent company, Paramount Global, defined the golden age of cable TV and hasn’t exactly been able to keep pace with Netflix’s shift to streaming.
As far as I can tell, Nickelodeon is the first TV network to debut an original series on YouTube. Yes, many others have released episodes of their shows there as a marketing move (see Disney+’s Andor). But in the case of Kid Cowboy, Nickelodeon plucked a show from its development pipeline and opted to distribute it in full on YouTube.
“You can’t talk about kids without talking about YouTube,” says Ashley Kaplan, the executive at Nickelodeon behind the Kid Cowboy strategy. “Its impact on kids’ franchises can’t be ignored. With the exception of Bluey, every new big kids franchise has been born on YouTube.”
The animated series, created by Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer Freddy Wexler and executive produced by Emilio Estefan, has been streaming on YouTube since January. And while there’s no guarantee it’ll be the next Cocomelon, there are signs that it’s off to a good start. The first 10 “full-length” episodes — which run about 13 minutes each — are averaging 200,000 views each. (For comparison, the full episode of Paw Patrol, uploaded to YouTube two weeks ago, has 1.4 million views.)
But a slow burn is built into the plan. The goal, says Kaplan, isn’t just to create a popular YouTube series but rather a multi-platform franchise. Sure, that means eventually a linear TV show. But it also means a theatrical film and merch. “We’re not just in this to build big YouTube channels,” she says. “I mean, a big YouTube channel is great and very important. But it’s also important to have the fandom and the heartshare.”
I talked to Kaplan and Wexler for a case study on a legacy brand’s experiment with YouTube to build a new kids’ hit — and how others in Hollywood can leverage creator platforms to grow and experiment with fresh formats. Read on to learn:
How Kid Cowboy almost died in development hell and came back to life
Why Nickelodeon is losing money on Kid Cowboy, and how long the show has to prove its value
Why Wexler agreed to the YouTube-first strategy, and how he adapted the show for the platform
How Kaplan is using existing channels and audiences on YouTube to set Kid Cowboy up for success
The Fullscreen and AwesomenessTV veterans leading Nickelodeon’s YouTube strategy
How YouTube functions as both a marketing platform and research tool for Nickelodeon
Wexler’s advice to other creators waiting for their TV breakthrough
Why Kaplan believes “the next Paw Patrol will be born on YouTube”