Live New Year’s Eve countdown shows are a New Year’s Eve tradition, from Dick Clark to Ryan Seacrest to Carson Daly. It’s fun for a lot of people to literally tick down the final seconds of the old year and welcome in the new one while “Auld Lang Syne” plays. For the second year in a row, Netflix will offer kid-oriented countdown shows starring some of its most popular kid-vid characters, but because it’s Netflix, parents can run them whenever and kids won’t know it’s not really midnight. For example, parents can cue up Netflix to run New Year’s Eve videos of Trollhunters, Skylanders Academy, Puffin Rock, and All Hail King Julien, at, like, 8 p.m. The kid watches, their cartoon heroes countdown to “midnight,” and then Mom and Dad tuck the kid into bed. The kid thinks they got to stay up until midnight to enjoy the festivities while they actually retired at their regular bedtime. Mom and Dad are then free to party, get some alone time, or, as is highly likely, watch Netflix. Win-win!
Another way kids benefit from this: the New Year’s special content will stay up on Netflix until January 31, so kids can watch it over and over again, the way kids often do.