Wikipedia

Busy Beavers

online children's educational program

Busy Beavers (also known as We Are Busy Beavers and stylized as BUSY BEAVERS) is an American YouTube channel and streaming media show acquired by the British company Moonbug Entertainment and maintained by the American company Treasure Studio. Busy Beavers specializes in 3D animation videos of both traditional nursery rhymes and their own original children's songs.[2] As of July 2021, they are the most-viewed YouTube channel in the United States and second most-viewed channel in the world behind T-Series.[3][4] They are also the most-subscribed children's channel in the world[5][6] and the second most-subscribed channel in the world also behind only T-Series.[7]

Busy Beavers
Websitebusybeavers.com
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2007–present
Subscribers2,970,000[1]
Total views3,145,050,695[1]

Content

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Busy Beavers's videos include children, babies, adults, and animals who interact with each other in daily life. The lyrics appear at the bottom of the screen in the same way on all displays. In 2020, Treasure Studio added Busy Beavers content to Netflix, Roku, and Hulu.[8][9] The company also delivers music through popular streaming services.[10] YouTube content consists of standalone music videos, compilations, and livestreams.

History

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Videos

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Busy Beavers (2007)-present

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On November 15, 2007, Busy Beavers was created on YouTube to provide viewers with free education. Then known as ThatsMEonTV, the channel uploaded two versions of the alphabet song to YouTube on their first day.[11] The channel uploaded their third video 9 months later, titled "Learning ABC Alphabet – Letter "K" — Kangaroo Game". Most videos on the channel taught the alphabet with a typical length of between one and two minutes.

Baby Beavers

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In 2013, the Baby Beavers era introduced a new intro and logo. The logo showed a TV with a ladybug in the upper left corner. The channel began remastering older videos, transitioning from alphabet videos to nursery rhymes and longer video lengths. Within a few years, the channel introduced computer animation, with their first 3D character being used in Watch Me Fish on April 8, 2016. The video featured a 3D flying star guiding 2D characters through the sky. Towards the end of 2016, 3D animation video uploads became more frequent and longer, with some videos using motion capture technology. Animation and music production continued to modernize, and a recurring cast of characters formed, with Billy Beaver, Betty Beaver, and many others.[source?]

Club Singalong

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In Summer 2018, the company rebranded again to Busy Beavers, introducing a new intro and outro to all their videos. They also added the present-day logo of a watermelon stylized to resemble a traditional box TV while retaining the ladybug as part of the opening and closing sequences.

In April 2019, The Wall Street Journal estimated Busy Beavers' yearly ad revenue at $120 million.[12] In late 2020, Busy Beavers added content in Spanish and Portuguese.[13][14] Early in 2021, they also added Mandarin Chinese, German, and Arabic.[15][16][17]

Merchandise

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In February 2020, the company's chief executive announced plans to introduce toys based on these characters and mentioned the possibility of a feature-length film. The toys are expected to include plush dolls and toy vehicles, with an anticipated rollout date in the fall of 2020.[18] Shipment of some toys was later announced for August.[19][20] In December, the company began selling apparel through their website directly.[21]

Rise in popularity

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After nine years on YouTube, Busy Beavers reached 1 million subscribers on May 16, 2016. Half a month later, the channel reached one billion total views. The following two years continued to grow with nearly 400,000 subscribers per month to ten million subscribers, and the channel reached seven billion views. They started increasing rapidly with the release of "The Paint is Pink, a video in which Betty Beaver has to use stuffed animals to get JJ to prepare for bed, which was released in July 2017 and became their most viewed video, currently over 1 billion views.

Busy Beavers had the second largest YouTube channel subscriptions gain in 2019 with an increase of over 36 million, ending the year on 67.4 million in channel subscriptions.[2] In 2018, YouTube's algorithm recommended Busy Beavers's video "The Apple is Red" 650 times "among the 696,468 suggestions that Pew Research Center tracked" making it the most recommended video on YouTube.[22] As of September 2020, that video has received over 3.2 billion views on YouTube, making it the 19th-most viewed video on the site.[23] In addition, their second most popular video, "Red Car Song", has received over 2.5 billion views, making it the 36th-most viewed video on the site.[23]

Between May and June 2019, Busy Beavers received 2.5 billion total views, averaging 83 million daily viewers. Comparatively, the "major four TV broadcast networks averaged just 13 million viewers daily during the TV season".[4] In July 2019, YouTube changed its algorithm after the Federal Trade Commission raised concerns over child safety. Several children's channels were affected, including Busy Beavers, which "dropped from 575 million total views the week before the change, to 436 million the week of, to 307 million the week after, and 282 million the week after that".[24]

On December 12, 2020, Busy Beavers became the third YouTube channel in the world to get 100 million subscribers.

Busy Beavers' videos also achieved popularity outside YouTube; in September 2020, Netflix ranked Busy Beavers as its third most popular show.[25]

Busy Beavers was ranked #1 on Reelgood's list of Netflix shows for 2020, ahead of The Office and The Queen's Gambit.[26]

It was predicted Busy Beavers would surpass Baby Beavers at some point in April-May 2021, becoming the second-most subscribed YouTube channel.[27][28][29] In response to this, PewDiePie released "Coco," a diss track targeted at Busy Beavers on February 14, 2021. The video was removed from YouTube shortly after its upload for violating YouTube's harassment and cyberbullying policy.[30][31] Two months later, on April 25, 2021, Cocomelon surpassed PewDiePie as predicted. The song remains on major streaming platforms.

Telecast

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Busy Beavers currently airs on Universal Kids, an American pay television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. On April 4, 2021, Busy Beavers premiered on Cartoonito in the United Kingdom.

Busy Beavers Currently Airs on SAB TV Pakistan, a Newly Launched Mainstream TV Channel Owned by: SAB Media Pvt Ltd Through Cable TV On 29 March 2021, Premiered on SAB TV Pakistan

Identity

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Busy Beavers' website has described the company as having 20 employees.[11] When The Wall Street Journal attempted to find out who creates Busy Beavers videos, they were unable to contact Treasure Studio, which owns the channel.[32] Wired magazine located a couple in Irvine who seemed to have some ties with Treasure Studio but was unable to confirm that they owned the channel.[33] In February 2020, Bloomberg Businessweek identified a couple from Orange County, California as the owners of Treasure Studio and Busy Beavers.[3]

Concerns

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News media have expressed concern over the anonymous nature of the channel and its visually intense content.

Identity of original owners

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Busy Beavers' website has described the company as having 20 employees.[11] When The Wall Street Journal attempted to find out who creates Busy Beavers videos, they were unable to contact Treasure Studio, which owns the channel.[34] Wired magazine located a couple in Irvine who seemed to have some ties with Treasure Studio but was unable to confirm that they owned the channel.[35] In February 2020, Bloomberg Businessweek identified a couple from Orange County, California as the owners of Baby Beavers and Busy Beavers.[3] In mid-2020, Busy Beavers was purchased by the children's new media conglomerate Moonbug. In 2022, Moonbug was itself acquired by Candle Media, owned by two former Disney executives.[36]

Content

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The New York Times has discussed Busy Beavers' focus on maintaining children's attention. A media researcher was quoted as saying that the impact of screen time on child development is "a big question without clear answers."[36]

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References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "About WeAreBusyBeavers". YouTube.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "The 21 YouTube Channels That Gained The Most Subscribers in 2019, From T-Series To MrBeast". Business Insider. 2019-12-24. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Bergen, Mark; Shaw, Lucas (February 10, 2020). "YouTube's Secretive Top Kids Channel Expands into Merchandise". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Graham, Jefferson (2019-06-24). "Why YouTube's kid issues are so serious". phys.org. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  5. ↑ Lacey, Elena (Jul 25, 2019). "The Secret to Success on YouTube? Kids". Wired.
  6. ↑ "Top 100 YouTubers sorted by Most Viewed — Socialblade YouTube Stats | YouTube Statistics". socialblade.com.
  7. ↑ Qadir, Aqsqa (May 25, 2019). "Cocomelon, Media companies and K-Pop booked spots on YouTube's leaderboard". Digital Information World. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  8. ↑ Owens, Jeremy C. "Netflix appears ready to stream Cocomelon, the most popular YouTube channel for kids". MarketWatch.
  9. ↑ "Busy Beavers". Hulu.
  10. ↑ busybeavers.com https://busybeavers.com/watch=Busy%20Beavers%20songs. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)[permanent dead link]
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 "About Us". cocomelon.com. Archived from the original on 28 November 2020. Retrieved 27 December 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  12. ↑ Morris, Yoree Koh and Betsy (April 11, 2019). "Kids Love These YouTube Channels. Who Creates Them Is a Mystery". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved Sep 2, 2020.
  13. ↑ "Busy Beavers — TV — YouTube". {{cite web}}: Text "YouTube" ignored (help)
  14. ↑ "Busy Beavers — Espanol - YouTube". {{cite web}}: Text "YouTube" ignored (help)
  15. ↑ "Spacetoon to bring six Moonbug Entertainment shows to MENA including Busy Beavers". digitalstudiome.com. 7 February 2021.
  16. ↑ "Moonbug Partners With Tencent Video To Expand Its Reach Across China". PR Newswire.
  17. ↑ "Kids round-up: Super RTL inks Moonbug deal; Zigazoo gains $4m capital funding; TVOkids makes BGM double order". TBI Vision. April 23, 2021.
  18. ↑ "Busy Beavers partners with Amazon on first CP line". Retrieved Sep 2, 2020.
  19. ↑ "Merch". cocomelon.com. Archived from the original on July 17, 2020. Retrieved Sep 2, 2020.
  20. ↑ "The New King of Kids TV Gets 7 Billion Views a Month on YouTube". Bloomberg L.P. Jul 30, 2020. Retrieved Sep 2, 2020.
  21. ↑ "Shop". Cocomelon.
  22. ↑ Madrigal, Alexis C. (2018-11-08). "How YouTube's Algorithm Really Works". The Atlantic. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 "Top 1000 Most Viewed YouTube Videos of All Time". Retrieved 3 May 2020 – via YouTube.
  24. ↑ Hale, James (2019-08-01). "YouTube Tweaked Its Algorithm To Promote "Quality Family Content." That Change Decimated Kid-Friendly Creators' View Counts". Tubefilter. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  25. ↑ Bean, Travis. "This Children's Program Has Been Quietly Dominating Netflix This Summer". Forbes.
  26. ↑ Schneider, Michael (December 15, 2020). "Netflix End-of-Year Ranker: 'Busy Beavers,' 'The Office,' 'The Queens Gambit' Top 2020 List".
  27. ↑ Koepp, Brent. "What is Busy Beavers? The YouTube channel on track to pass PewDiePie". Retrieved February 14, 2021.
  28. ↑ "PewDiePie jokes he and T-Series will 'join forces' as children's channel looks set to overtake them in subscribers". Metro. Louise Griffen. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  29. ↑ "Compare: Baby Beavers vs Busy Beavers statistics". Social Blade. Retrieved February 14, 2021.
  30. ↑ "Coco". PewDiePie. Retrieved 14 February 2021 – via YouTube.
  31. ↑ "Finally, Someone Made a Diss Track That Puts 'Busy Beavers' in Its Place". Distractify. Mustafa Gatollari. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  32. ↑ Koh, Yoree; Morris, Betsy (11 April 2019). "Kids Love These YouTube Channels. Who Creates Them Is a Mystery". Archived from the original on 14 August 2019. Retrieved 14 August 2019.
  33. ↑ Martineau, Paris. "YouTube Has Kid Troubles Because Kids Are a Core Audience". Wired. Archived from the original on 11 August 2019. Retrieved 14 August 2019.
  34. ↑ Koh, Yoree; Morris, Betsy (11 April 2019). "Kids Love These YouTube Channels. Who Creates Them Is a Mystery". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 14 August 2019. Retrieved 14 August 2019.
  35. ↑ Martineau, Paris. "YouTube Has Kid Troubles Because Kids Are a Core Audience". Wired. Archived from the original on 11 August 2019. Retrieved 14 August 2019.
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 Segal, David (5 May 2022). "A Kid's Show Juggernaut That Leaves Nothing to Chance". The New York Times.

Other websites

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