In 2019-20, the nation’s favourite family of Aussie blue heelers continued to make their mark with audiences here and overseas. Bluey remains the ABC’s most successful series ever, with around 170 million plays on ABC iview during the reporting period alone.¹

The ABC Kids’ animated series, produced by Brisbane-based Ludo Studio, won the prestigious International Kids Emmy Award for best preschool program and won hearts around the world as it rolled out across Disney channels and platforms in the United States, United Kingdom, China, New Zealand, South Africa and Kenya. At home, Bluey won the Logie Award for Most Outstanding Children’s Program, the AACTA Award for Best Children’s Program and the Screen Producers of Australia Award for Animated Series Production of the Year.

Offscreen, Bluey: The Beach was named Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards – the first time a children’s picture book claimed the top prize. In response to popular demand, the Shepherd Centre also added a special ‘Canine’ category to their 2019 Father of the Year Awards for Bandit.

The ‘12 Days of Bluey Christmas’ campaign delivered impressive results on broadcast and iview, with the debut of the special ‘Verandah Santa’ episode attracting a national average audience of 1.2 million. The campaign also made its mark on social media, with posts scoring 108,000 engagements and 238,000 video views. The voting page on the ABC Kids’ website enabling viewers to pick their favourite Bluey episode recorded 74,000 page views in December 2019.

In March 2020, the premiere of Series 2 of Bluey – which included bonus episodes on the relaunched ABC Kids app – attracted an overnight metropolitan audience of more than 1 million viewers,²and had 4.6 million plays on ABC iview. Over 2019-20, Bluey had 63 million program plays on iview in total.³

In June, the launch of the interactive Bluey dance mode filter became the ABC’s most popular VR effect, with more than 5500 Australian families submitting videos of themselves dancing along with Bluey and Bingo.

“It amazes me how so many people are brought to tears watching some of these episodes – myself included! It just goes to show how people have really connected with the stories and the characters. How real and true and how heartfelt this show is.” Beki de la Cerna