Now that Teletoon is 10 years old, it’s easy to imagine the folks there breathing a sigh of relief. They survived the vulnerable start-up period and the first decade. They nailed the brand, stabilized the cash flow and found a solid audience and programming groove.

It must be akin to the way parents feel when their progeny emerge safely from adolescence. However, being in charge of interactive media there would be another story, more akin to being a parent to Peter Pan. It never grows up.

‘You’ve got these transitions in media – from theater to radio, radio to TV, TV to interactive,’ says Steve Szigeti, director of Teletoon Interactive.

‘In the ’40s, TV looked like radio – a lot of people standing in front of microphones,’ explains Szigeti. ‘That’s why, with the early Internet, you’re taking TV and putting it online. It’s questionable whether that’s the best form of content. We don’t know. There are still a lot of creative people coming together to ask: ‘How do you tell a story well in interactive space?”

Back in the fall of 1997, Teletoon launched its English- and French-language animation channel accompanied by the launch of a website – a forward-thinking move at the time.

‘It wasn’t that long ago, but it was a long time as far as interactive goes,’ says Szigeti, who was hired – for what he thought was a summer job – to design the site in anticipation of the launch.

Szigeti recalls checking out what the other broadcasters were up to online, and finding that, beyond CHUM and Alliance Communications (Showcase), there was very little.

Back then, Internet sites – including Teletoon’s shiny new offering – were comprised of ‘brochure sites.’

‘It was the same information that might be available in print if you put it online,’ Szigeti recalls. ‘There wasn’t a high level of interactivity. You were [also] limited in what you could do.’

Back in those dark ages, interactive elements would easily crash a home computer, so websites were basically marketing devices leading surfers back to the mother ship. Pioneering users had to be very patient to surf the web, as virtually everyone was on dial-up.

The thinking was that Teletoon had to be among the leaders on the Internet because animation fans tend to be early adopters of technology. And, like most companies, Teletoon accepted that creating a website was part of the cost of doing business.

The Internet evolved very quickly, of course, with an explosion in the number of sites, their sophistication and, more importantly, with the advent of advertiser-supported online revenue, which Szigeti says helps Teletoon’s site break even.

A new understanding of audience behavior also emerged. Online is now part of a circle that moves back and forth, like its viewers do. One recent Teletoon interactive initiative in this vein is Spin Cycles, in which programming blocks are set by online voting, a la Canadian Idol.

More than that, the number of screens is proliferating, and Teletoon wants to be available on any screen that its target demo is eyeballing. So, to that end, the circle expanded this year into mobile and VOD.

In the spring, Teletoon launched four mobile channels, in English and French, for preschoolers and older kids.

‘It’s a wheel of our Canadian content – a mix of short content and full length,’ says Trent Locke, Teletoon’s VP of finance and overseer of the move to mobile and VOD. Telus users can subscribe to a Teletoon Java feed, powered by MobiTV, that they can tap into at any time.

Given that not a lot of preschoolers own cell phones, Locke says the idea is along the lines of allowing a harried parent to hand their cell to the child in the back seat of the car for a more peaceful commute. The cost varies depending on the package.

Also launched this year is a VOD pilot project. Since April, Shaw’s Video On Demand customers have had access to Teletoon bundles. For $3.99, a subscriber gets access to a number of episodes for three to five days.

Both pilot projects are making use of sneak peeks, such as an August preview of the Ricky Sprocket – Showbiz Boy program on Shaw On Demand and on Rogers On Demand as a gratis experiment, and on the website, all in advance of its September TV launch. ‘We want to own the landscape,’ Locke says.

Certainly there is much to be done. The channel needs to increase the number of carriers of both services, as well as product availability and user volume. And hey, they also wouldn’t mind finding a way to monetize their efforts.

Then, technology being ever Peter Pan, Teletoon can move on to something else – something equally costly and experimental.