TV series come and go. But Sinking Ship Entertainment’s industry ascent as a young, multi-platform content maker signals a generational sea change as the Canadian production sector increasingly tests new platforms with unproven revenue models in stormy waters.

How did Sinking Ship find its sea legs? For starters, co-founders Blair Powers, Matt Bishop and J.J. Johnson take risks that would make rival producers quiver.

‘We don’t develop lots of shows. We develop one show with the idea it will go,’ Johnson explains.

After a string of successful kids reality series like Role Play and Are We There Yet? World Adventure, Sinking Ship in early January debuted Dino Dan – its first scripted series – on TVO. Powers insists the live-action/CGI blended show, to bow on Nickelodeon this spring, got Sinking Ship out of its comfort zone.

‘We needed to be scared again,’ he says.

Other habits to break: don’t waste time probing broadcast execs on what they need, or hand out one-sheets. Instead, juggle costs and experiment to make pilots you’re proud of, send them out and wait by the phone.

‘It’s what we want to make, not what the broadcasters want,’ Powers explains. ‘We’re in TV. We’re not about showing a program on a piece of paper,’ he adds.

Talk about self-imposed pressure, and altering the guiding principle of indie production – that filmmakers are here to satisfy a TV network’s appetite for content.

In sailing solo and unassisted when developing pilots, Sinking Ship necessarily eats the cost for mistakes. But it also retains coveted creative control.

Johnson, Powers and Bishop originally bonded as misfits at Ryerson’s film school in Toronto completing a joint fourth-year project, Hooch. Like future Sinking Ship pilots, the student film started with a seed in Johnson’s brain before Powers and Bishop signed on to help it grow.

As it happened, one day, as the three film students auditioned potential cast for Hooch, one female student was heard telling another: ‘Don’t join them. It will be like joining a sinking ship.’

That whispered remark gave the trio their future corporate name. But the real story here is they were, and remain, stubborn filmmakers.

‘No is just the beginning to a long and vicious road to yes,’ Johnson says with his trademark grin.

A lightbulb over Johnson’s head also spawned This is Daniel Cook, Sinking Ship’s first TV show about a real-life preschooler. Having left Ryerson, Johnson got work in a Toronto talent agency where, in a moment of miraculous Hollywood serendipity, in walked five-year-old Daniel Cook one day.

As Cook’s nervous parents talked possible commercial work for their son, Johnson minded the little redhead and caught a sparkle in his eye. He recalls jotting down on a memo pad: ‘This is Daniel Cook, going to a farm, riding a horse…’

‘Basically, I thought we’d do a pilot about a kid on his adventures,’ Johnson remembers.

By June 2002, Powers, equally uninspired with his maiden job in corporate video, quit to help Johnson prep the live-action pilot for Daniel Cook. Soon Bishop left the advertising world to come on board. And by early January 2003, they’d finished a pilot and mailed it out to kids broadcasters. A day later, TVO rang with interest.

After coproducer marblemedia signed on, and Treehouse joined TVOKids as broadcasters, This is Daniel Cook debuted in September 2004.

As luck had it, while waiting for Daniel Cook to go to air, Sinking Ship completed pilots for Role Play and Jungle Room. They too became future series, as did the spin-off show This is Emily Yeung, which got higher ratings than Daniel Cook.

A sketchily drawn division of labor emerged at Sinking Ship: Johnson wrote and directed scripts, Powers secured production financing and Bishop, in charge of post-production and effects, created a look and feel for Sinking Ship series. And, as executive producers, they shared a vision for making successful kids shows: don’t over-direct child actors. Let them be kids and endlessly explore on camera.

As seeming control freaks, the Sinking Ship trio also cut costs by using their own production equipment, where possible, and created related websites and online content in-house. Toronto-based Optix Digital Pictures completed CGI dinosaur effects for Dino Dan. Still, Sinking Ship maintains an in-house post suite to maximize creative control over its effects.

Factoring in Dino Dan, Sinking Ship made 19 hours in 2009, and is set to make 22 hours this year to get to 101 hours of TV shows produced since its inception.

That included kids TV hits like I Dare You, also starring Daniel Cook, and The Ocean Room, directed and coproduced by Liz Haines, who also co-created The Jungle Room with Johnson.

Still, Dino Dan, co-developed with young Daniel Cook, marks a turning point. Johnson created the scripted series, but 2009 Playback 10 to Watch talent Christin Simms adds another layer as story editor. Sinking Ship is still working with child actors, but now they’re scripted. And the stakes are higher.

‘People thought we couldn’t do it,’ Johnson says of scripted shows, declining to identify the naysayers. ‘We had done so many kids live-action reality series. It was a call to arms.’

Dino Dan, budgeted at $210,000 per half-hour episode, also calls for crews of 50, rather than the close-knit cast and crew on earlier shows.

‘It’s a nightmare,’ Johnson insists. The Sinking Ship trio can no longer use shorthand cues to direct so big a cast and crew. And they have a U.S. broadcaster, Nickelodeon, which came on board Dino Dan early via a presale. The Disney Channel acquired This is Daniel Cook, but only after it was in the can.

Through gritted teeth, the Sinking Ship trio concede they’ve had to occasionally trim their sails on Dino Dan. An example: in one episode, a soaring dinosaur in a dream sequence ‘poos’ on Andrea Martin. Nickelodeon wasn’t amused, so Martin got splattered in the Canadian cut and spared in the American version.

But for all the rocking and bobbing to keep making kids TV shows, Sinking Ship would have it no other way.

‘We keep raising the stakes. It forces us to be committed,’ Powers explains.