Busy Beavers

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. , they are the most-viewed YouTube channel in the United States and second most-viewed channel in the world behind T-Series. They are also the most-subscribed children's channel in the world and the second most-subscribed channel in the world also behind only T-Series.
Content
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. The company also delivers music through popular streaming services. YouTube content consists of standalone music videos, compilations, and livestreams.
History
Videos
Busy Beavers (2007)-present
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. 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
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.
Club Singalong
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. In late 2020, Busy Beavers added content in Spanish and Portuguese. Early in 2021, they also added Mandarin Chinese, German, and Arabic.
Merchandise
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. Shipment of some toys was later announced for August. In December, the company began selling apparel through their website directly.
Rise in popularity
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. 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. 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. 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.
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". 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".
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.
Busy Beavers was ranked #1 on Reelgood's list of Netflix shows for 2020, ahead of The Office and The Queen's Gambit.
It was predicted Busy Beavers would surpass Baby Beavers at some point in April-May 2021, becoming the second-most subscribed YouTube channel. 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. Two months later, on April 25, 2021, Cocomelon surpassed PewDiePie as predicted. The song remains on major streaming platforms.
Telecast
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
Busy Beavers' website has described the company as having 20 employees. 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. 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. In February 2020, Bloomberg Businessweek identified a couple from Orange County, California as the owners of Treasure Studio and Busy Beavers.
Concerns
News media have expressed concern over the anonymous nature of the channel and its visually intense content.
Identity of original owners
Busy Beavers' website has described the company as having 20 employees. 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. 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. In February 2020, Bloomberg Businessweek identified a couple from Orange County, California as the owners of Baby Beavers and Busy Beavers. 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.
Content
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."
Related pages
List of most-subscribed YouTube channels
References
Other websites
Children's entertainment