Netflix to Help Parents Trick Kids With Fake New Year’s Eve Countdown
Netflix will offer parents a special kid-friendly countdown that lets children celebrate the New Year before midnight, CNNMoney reports. The on-demand special will be hosted by King Julien, the titular animated lemur from the new Netflix series, All Hail King Julien and allows parents to pretend it’s midnight at any time.
The three-minute clip is available to stream now, and in a statement released by Netflix, King Julien himself “addressed” his constituents: “Move over, Ryan Seacrest, I’ve got my very own on-demand countdown party on Netflix.”
While parents will appreciate the help in tricking their kids, the countdown special doubles as a calculated move by Netflix. The streaming service and Wakefield Research conducted a survey that showed 87 percent of parents will celebrate New Year’s Eve with their kids, and that 34 percent of parents already fool their kids into thinking it’s midnight at an earlier time.
The special also bolsters Netflix’s efforts to reach as wide an audience as possible, including kids. In October, Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, told CNNMoney that over 70 children’s shows had been streamed by approximately 2 million subscribers. “To a 12-year-old boy, Netflix means something completely different than it does to a 5-year-old girl or 40-year-old,” Sarandos said.
Based off the character of the same name from the Madagascar franchise, All Hail King Julien premiered on Netflix earlier this month. The show is one of several series the site is producing in conjunction with DreamWorks Animation.
For childless adults and parents that have locked down a babysitter, check out Rolling Stone‘s guide to the best New Year’s Eve concerts across the country. Also, here’s hoping Netflix rings in 2016 with a House of Cards countdown hosted by Frank Underwood, in which he gravely sings “Auld Lang Syne” and compares the slow march of time to the incremental accumulation of power in an impassioned soliloquy delivered straight to the camera.