[Author’s Note: Apologies for this being late. A few last-minute meetings and matters popped up.]

Insider reported ($ - paywalled) yesterday that “a series of recent moves in Hollywood signals that streaming's investment in kids content might not be paying off”, and that “Hollywood may be realizing that children's programming is "not a silver bullet" for acquiring or retaining subscribers."

I think the key paragraph in the piece is a quote from a kids and animation insider that “few kids hits have been minted on subscription streamers”. The insider added: "There's not so much a 'moderate success' in kids animation. It's either a big success or not at all. That's fine as a 24/7 network but it's a different environment to go onto Netflix where they're watching anything on demand that they want."

My take on an exposé of Netflix’s animation division from The Wrap back in April was that “Netflix’s feedback culture is not working, and it’s being engineered by Netflix employees to deliver self-defeating outcomes for the Kids & Family strategy.” The missing piece in the equation was why that was happening: why was Netflix growing and winning market share, despite failures of the division responsible for meeting the demand of ~60% of all Netflix subscribers who watch kids and family content every month?

But this Insider piece throws some cold water on that perspective.