It started with programs like My Little Pony and Sonic the Hedgehog. It now involves the Anaheim Ducks and Texas Rangers.

In the dozen years since the Calgary-headquartered company A Parent Media Co. (APMC) launched its Kidoodle.TV streaming platform, CEO Neil Gruninger has seen the business lift off in many directions.

It now includes a separate sports streaming service that is gaining big league attention on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.

And across all of its business lines, APMC’s annual revenues have jumped about 350 per cent since 2023.

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“We’re the little engine that could,” Gruninger says. “We just kept chugging away and now all of our experiences have created this one.”

As Calgary prepares to see its population top two million residents in the upcoming years, the city’s economy is expanding, anchored by energy — but also including innovative new industries and companies, such as aviation, logistics and tech firms.

Kidoodle is a streaming platform available in more than 160 countries, with 18 million monthly active users. Started by APMC in 2014, it provides families access to popular children’s programs, such as Gabby’s Dollhouse, Sesame Street and Paw Patrol.

Gruninger and fellow Albertan Mike Lowe co-founded the company in 2012 during the middle of a booming oil sector in Calgary.

Since 2024, APMC has been rapidly evolving its sport media and technology enterprise.

With its Victory subsidiary, the company provides a direct-to-consumer streaming service with live regional games of the NHL’s Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks, baseball’s Texas Rangers, along with Western Hockey League and National Women’s Soccer League matches.

More than a decade ago, the city was not known as a hotbed for tech startups that could scale up quickly.

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Gruninger, a Lethbridge native, acknowledges it was difficult in the early days to bootstrap the business, but points out APMC was able to secure investors in the city after Kidoodle began operating.

Over time, it gained fans — it was named best streaming service at the Webby Awards last year — attracted investors, and expanded.

“Ultimately, if we didn’t live in Calgary, we probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity and the foundation of investors to align with our mission of keeping kids safe,” says Gruninger.

“That was really core to the early days of us being able to raise capital. And if it wasn’t for the oil boom, I don’t think we could have had that opportunity, quite frankly.”

Today, APMC has about 50 employees in its Calgary office, and about 215 employees across Canada and the U.S., with an office in Dallas, where the University of Lethbridge grad is now working.

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