Decode and Alltime team up on kids' portal

Canada's Decode and the UK's Alltime Entertainment are working in partnership to create KidsTime, a new entertainment portal for the pre-school set.

The two companies, who previously co-produced animated series Watership Down, recently soft-launched a KidsTime website.

{Kids can decide where they want to go, whether it's to the storytime shoe to just listen to stories, or play some games and learn,{ explains, Decode's director of interactive development, Dan Fill.

The site features some well-known kids brands such as Baby Casper, and the Mr Men characters. Decode and Alltime are also taking advantage of the site to market test their own original characters online.

KidsTime also has an incentive programme to keep kids coming back. With every activity that kids complete, they can collect puzzle pieces that eventually fit together to make an image. The puzzle pieces are stored in the kid's own personal folder and archived so that each time they come back to the site, their stash of puzzle pieces is kept safe.

Although the site is only in testing phase right now, Fill figures that they will move to license either all or parts of the site's content internationally.

{We've been successful with shows like Angela Anaconda where we've licensed it territory by territory, so we'll probably look at that route for KidsTime as well,{ says Fill.