Noggin Preschool Streaming Service Shut Down By Paramount

Noggin, Paramount Global‘s interactive learning subscription service for preschoolers, is shutting down. The Nick Jr.-affiliated app is slated to sunset this year, with the majority of its staff let go in the latest round of layoffs at Paramount Global on Tuesday that impacted about 800 U.S. employees.

As Noggin stops taking new subscribers, there will be a transition period for current ones. Noggin predated Paramount Global’s flagship streamer Paramount+, which has been carrying Noggin’s video content under the Nick Jr. preschool brand.

The development comes almost a year after Paramount reportedly explored a sale of a majority stake in Noggin as the company shifted priorities — and resources — to Paramount+ and Pluto TV.

Noggin was co-founded by Nickelodeon parent MTV Networks and Sesame Workshop and originally launched Feb. 2, 1999 as a cable television channel and a companion website focused on imagination, creativity, and education.

In 2015, Noggin, now fully owned by Paramount Global, was relaunched as a subscription streaming service, offering preschoolers educational content developed by curriculum experts through popular Nick Jr. characters. The app has offered long and short-form Nick Jr. content like Paw Patrol, Dora the Explorer, Blue’s Clues, Shimmer and Shine, Blaze and the Monster Machines and The Wonder Pets! as well as well as third-party acquisitions.

The SVOD service for two- to seven-year-olds had 2.5 million global subscribers in 2019 and houses more than 1,000 educational games, videos and books in its library, according to Kidscreen, which first reported the news of Noggin’s shutdown.

Nickelodeon’s Kids & Family content has been consistently among the most watched and re-watched programming on Paramount+, which is said to remain committed to the genre as part of the strategy to acquire and retain subscribers.

This weeks layoffs were part of an ongoing cost-cutting effort at Paramount Global amid rampant speculation that the company has been exploring a sale.