Banff has always been a great place to sneak a peek at the future.

The Banff Centre was home to pioneering work in virtual reality more than a decade ago, and last week’s Banff Television Festival continued the tradition.

While the 1,800-plus delegates from all over the world are mainly interested in cutting deals, more and more of their hot new projects involve companion websites, streaming media and wireless platforms.

This year, there was a lot of enthusiasm for using new technologies, but there was also a strong sense of realism. The Internet is not going to replace TV, but it may spawn something new and better.

Lib Gibson, CEO of Bell Globemedia Interactive, set the stage by admitting that even a colossus like Bell is struggling to figure out how to find gold in the New Media.

“TSN.ca, which is in our portfolio, did squeak by to make money last year, but none of us are going to retire on its profits,” she said. She pointed out that plain old television has a lot of advantages over Internet-delivered media.

“With broadcast TV, you can serve 10 million viewers for the same cost as 10,000,” she said.

“Using the Internet, your costs go up proportionately to the number of users.”

She also hinted that they’ll soon take steps to limit those who treat their streaming TV sites as free Internet radio stations.

“We know there are people who turn on ROB TV in the morning, then minimize the window and just let it run all day. We’re paying to stream them all that video that they don’t even see.”

Another issue is that, at least in Europe, the cost of broadband access has been going up. In Canada, competition between the cable companies and telcos is keeping high-speed Internet costs reasonable, but there is the looming danger of the hated “bandwidth caps” which limit the amount of data you can download in a month. This would certainly hit people who watch lots of online video content and crimp the plans of the producers of streaming media.

At a series of “cyberlunches” and interactive focus sessions, co-produced by the Banff Centre’s New Media Institute, the experts shared some of their secrets.

Raja Khanna, CEO of Snap Media Corp., said they spent two years getting ready for the launch of Degrassi.tv, the online cousin of television’s Degrassi: The Next Generation. They hired an MIT graduate artificial intelligence programmer and put serious effort into luring fans to sign up.

“We have a member base of 53,000 kids, 90 per cent of them girls, he says.

“Twelve-year-old girls LOVE the Internet and they use it for everything.”

When they sign up, for free, they become students in Degrassi School, complete with a student number and a homeroom. Soon, they start receiving “DMAILs.” These might be from other real kids or from characters in the show.

Khanna says the web writers and the TV writers work together closely, and that there are web-only subplots.

“Kids get the feeling that their e-mails are actually influencing the show, but of course it’s all pre-programmed.”

He says the company makes money from sponsorships and from licensing software to other countries that run the Degrassi show.

“We’ll give them the tools to set up their own online communities, because a U.K. Degrassi site is going to look different from a Canadian one.”

There’ll also be an online store selling Degrassi merchandise to eager preteens.

Another panelist, Kevin DeWalt of Minds Eye Pictures, handles the online version of YTV’s popular 2030 C E kids program. His website is nowhere near as elaborate as Degrassi’s, but he has a secret weapon – future food!

The show is set in a world where almost everyone dies at the age of 30.

So its teenaged actors are already doctors and lawyers, embarking on a quest to find the place where they can live to grow old. And they eat this special food.

Soon real kids will be able to buy this product in a unique tie-in deal with a food company. Relax, parents, it’s not junk food; in fact, it will be a new variety of cheese.

Matt Locke was one of the most future-oriented speakers at the Banff TV Festival. He’s creative director of Imagineering, the BBC’s research department. Locke organized a clever project that allowed U.K. commuters to enter a poetry contest from their SMS text-messaging cellphones.

“We saw huge peaks in the morning and afternoon rush hours,” he said, “as bored train riders fired off rhymes.” Now he’s considering delivering digital content from streetlamps and telephone booths. It’s not that far-fetched.

A company called Streetbeam is currently beaming samples of Stephen King’s latest book to the PDAs of passers-by from strategically located telephone kiosks in New York City.

Although Banff attracts participation from 42 countries, it still has a uniquely Canadian flavour. The delegates took a break from dealmaking for a western BBQ, complete with straw cowboy hats.

And at least one project really reflects Canada. Bob Connolly of BC Pictures has assembled a combined video and virtual reality tour of Canada. You watch a television show and then download an “e-book.”

He’s trying to sell the e-book for $12.95 US but . . . here’s the secret. For a limited time, you can download it for free for his virtualcanada.tv website. That’s the kind of offer even the hardened dealmakers here at Banff couldn’t refuse.

(Tom Keenan is dean of Continuing Education at the University of Calgary.)