In the late 1990s, Jeffrey Elliott was working in television production for firms like Alliance Atlantis. While there, he dreamed of starting a new kind of channel, one that melded short bursts of traditional TV with online and interactive elements, a dream that could not be pursued through traditional channels, so he quit.

"I resigned to pursue this," Elliott says. "It took way longer than I thought it was ever going to take to make happen."

Elliott still remembers the day he got the green light from regulators for his broadcast license: "It took four years, sixteen days and one hour," but Bite TV (and bitetv.ca) was born, the fruit of Elliott's labor.

Often puerile, always entertaining, Bite TV features video segments with titles such as Vomit Fight and Rectal Probe as well as a now-annual Miss Hooters Canada contest, the channel and its new media outlets are clearly targeting males aged 18-to-35--and even then with a bias toward those at the younger end of the demographic. Sponsors such as Molson love the racy content, and Elliott is unapologetic about pandering to the lowest common brow.

"We're talking to 25-year-old young men," he notes. "They're interested in drinking, they're interested in girls, and they're interested in watching a guy get kicked in the crotch, or skateboarding and falling on the crossbar... That's what they're in to, and you're not going to change that."

Although buzzwords like "user-generated content" and "participatory media" are thrown about today as adjectives describing successful web properties like YouTube and MySpace, Bite TV was designed from the outset--five years ago--as a two-way form of entertainment, with the audience participation in everything from scriptwriting and pilot production to presenting the finished content. Selling the idea, however, was a struggle.

"Five-and-a-half years ago, when I was out trying to get money for this, people thought I was from the planet Krypton," Elliott recalls. "They just stood there like, 'What? Programmed by people, and content on your phone, and what? Yeah, sure, whatever...' They didn't get it."

In addition to the now-ubiquitous website w/message boards, Bite TV also employs some innovative technology, including "Chat To Screen," which allows viewers watching the TV show to submit messages though their computer to be displayed right alongside the programming. It's a feature that melds the previously separate worlds of chat and television, Elliott says, and further strengthens the connection Bite's "tribe" has with the channel.

Although many specialty channel broadcasters cry poverty when it comes to meeting required levels of Canadian content in their programming, Bite TV has easily surpassed its annual targets without breaking a sweat. This year, the channel is bound to air the minimum 25% Cancon, a figure that increases to 35% next year. "We're smoking that," Elliott boasts. "We're running anywhere from 50% to 80% Canadian content – I'm really proud of that."

One of Bite TV's rising homegrown stars is Jason Agnew, host of The Conventioneers, a wickedly funny satire of the wacky world of conventions and trade shows.

Last year, Agnew was roaming convention halls and conference centers with a microphone and a camera man, hoping to shine a light on the motley cast of fanboys, dorks and, of course, hot babes to be found at such events, when he bumped into Matt Chin, another Bite contributor doing his own take-off on conventions. The two joined forces, and The Conventioneers was born earlier this year with a trip to a motorcycle show in Toronto.

"Matt has made out with a couple of girls at shows," Agnew says. In keeping with Bite's multiplatform philosophy, Agnew and Chin also host a weekly podcast recounting their adventures. Recently, one of the booth bunnies Chin had developed a connection with called the duo in the middle of recording, so they added her to the podcast. "We're currently having a poll on the website, 'Should Matt date this girl?'"

Agnew insists that he and Chin are as much the butt of the humor in The Conventioneers as the convention-goers, and points out he's stepped up to the plate in the past to prove it. "I was at Lifefest, which is a convention aimed at women, and there was a wine company there" he recounts. Acting up for the camera, he took over the company's booth and started serving wine to passersby. "A lady, who must have been 60 years old, saw the top of my underwear that said 'Kiss me,' so she wanted to kiss me. So, I kissed a 60-year-old lady," he says, matter-of-factly.

While viewers submit much of Bite TV's video content, Agnew and Chin's show is an in-house affair; both are graduates of radio and television production programs.

Debuting on Rogers Cable in March 2005, Bite TV is now carried on the Rogers, Cogeco, Videotron and Shaw cable networks, as well as the Star Choice and Bell ExpressVu satellite TV services.

Bite TV is also putting the finishing touches on a new application, dubbed Bite Buddy, which allows users to stream video clips to their mobile phones. Many of the clips are exclusives, made expressly for smaller screens.

Bite TV is also poised for a move into the U.S. In fact, The Conventioneers and other select Bite TV content is already running on the similarly male-centric MavTV south of the border as "Bite on MavTV" airing several times a week.

Meanwhile, Elliot's master plan includes more content and possibly the entire channel showing both Stateside and internationally. "My long-term vision [is] to test and nurture and build this channel out in Canada," he explains, "because we're very wired and Canada's full of people who have a really good sense of humor, and then ideally we'd like to either sell the format or partner up with other broadcasters in other markets."