Paramount Global will shut down the interactive children’s app Noggin after laying off the brand’s entire operational and support team this week.
The company plans to offer a grace period to current subscribers, who will be notified of Paramount’s plans to shut down the app in the near future. Starting this week, Paramount stopped allowing new customers to sign up for a Noggin subscription.
The app offered more than 1,000 games and interactive videos geared toward pre-school and elementary school-aged children. At its peak, the company counted more than 2.5 million subscribers to Noggin, which was sold directly to consumers and offered on some subscription platforms like Amazon’s Prime Video Channels.
The website Kidscreen was the first to report about the layoffs at Noggin and the app’s impending closure. Kidscreen said some video series offered by Noggin will eventually shift to Paramount’s flagship streaming service, Paramount Plus with Showtime.
The job losses at Noggin are part of a broader round of layoffs that saw Paramount eliminate its global workforce by about 3 percent. Around 800 people received pink slips, including employees at BET Media and CBS News and Stations.
Paramount will report its fourth quarter (Q4) and full-year earnings for 2023 on February 28.
