We want to wish all of you a very happy and healthy holiday season. We will be back with another edition of the Daily on January 3.

Until then, you can always catch up on some of the major happenings in 2018, like Mattel signing a deal so new seasons of Thomas & Friends will run on Nickelodeon rather than long-term broadcast partner PBS KIDS. Also, Hasbro picked up Power Rangers and other Saban brands in a US$522-million acquisition.

There was a lot of chatter this year in the kids online world, of course, with the Baby Shark song from Pinkfong getting stuck in everyone’s heads and generating a successful CP program. And Fortnite dominated basically every conversation, increasing video game spending and becoming a licensing power-player.

Not to be outdone, Netflix continued to invest in an insane amount of content—ordering half a dozen new animated projects from the likes of Breadwinner director Nora Twomey and Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken, not to mention partnering with Vampirina and Doc McStuffins creator Chris Nee.

We’re looking forward to another exciting year of nonstop news in 2019!

Cheers,

Alexandra, Elizabeth, Jeremy & the entire Kidscreen team