Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was pretty good. I had a D&D session yesterday, which was alot of fun as always. Today however, I'm going to be doing something a little bit different. As this post is my 350th post on this blog, I decided I'm going to introduce a brand new series where I take a look at a particular TV station, my history with it, and all the shows that I watched on it. That station is YTV and this post is going to be my history with the channel as it's one of the few that I've watched fairly consistently over the years, even into adulthood, long after I've aged out of the channel's target demographic, which I'll get into later on in this post. In future posts I'll be taking a look at particular elements of the station that I watched, as well as individual posts on each show I watched on it. So let's get into it and talk about...YTV!!!
While YTV has had many logos over the years, this is the one I think most Canadians who grew up in the '90s remember the most. The blue TV with the red screen, and the YTV name in white popping out of it. This appeared at the end of many TV shows, even after the main channel logo had changed in the late '90s with the channel's "Keep it Weird" campaign. But, being that some of you might not have grown up in Canada, or grew up in an earlier time, and didn't have kids in the '90s, you might be asking, what is YTV? I'm glad you asked.
YTV stands for "Youth Television", and began broadcasting on September 1st, 1988. While the United States had Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and other TV stations aimed at children, Canada didn't until 1988, when both YTV and Family Channel began broadcasting (on the same day no less). Sure, our broadcast stations, such as Global, CTV, and CBC all had programming blocks dedicated to children's programming, but none of them were 100% dedicated to it the way YTV, Family Channel, and eventually, Teletoon (now Cartoon Network Canada), were.
My history with YTV began in either 1991 or 1992 with reruns of The Flintstones, Get Smart, and The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle and Friends, as well as a children's show known as Take Part. New episodes of Video & Arcade Top 10 were also on at the time. I'll be talking about all of these shows, except for Take Part (it has no presence online), in future posts. But this was my introduction to the channel. Mostly during the day when I was in the hospital or home from school, so I didn't watch The After School Zone at the time. Don't worry, I'll talk about that more later too.
Everything changed when reruns of the 1966 TV series, Batman, began airing on The Zone in late 1992, alongside new episodes of an anime known as Samurai Pizza Cats, and Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Of course, my family moved out into the country, where we didn't have cable, and the only time I had access to YTV was either at one of my grandparents's houses or at the hospital. Which didn't prevent me from discovering The Zone hosted by Phil Guerrero, a.k.a. PJ Phil, where the killer 5 o'clock hour combination of Batman reruns at 5 pm and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers at 5:30. That was my favourite time of day from 1993 to 1994, when MMPR was removed from the station and replaced by Rugrats, which I also enjoyed. I mean I watched Power Rangers on Global at home, but watching it with an episode of Batman before it was extra special for me. Especially because Mom would change the channel to CTV for CJOH News at 6, and then a 6:30 rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation on CHRO (known as CTV2 Ottawa in the present day).
Around this time I was also watching the preschool block known as The Treehouse for shows like The Big Comfy Couch, Postman Pat, PJ Katie's Farm, Shining Time Station, and The Adventures of Dudley the Dragon. I liked these shows, even though I was nearing my 10th birthday in 1996, because they were something to watch in the mornings as Kids TV on Global was shorter by this point.
In early 1996 we moved to a house that had cable, and that opened my siblings and I up for more YTV as Sailor Moon was already on the channel, as were Spider-Man: The Animated Series, ReBoot, and Beast Wars, among many other animated shows that I watched with both my siblings, as well as by myself.
By the late '90s Teletoon had become a thing, and Family Channel was no longer a premium cable channel. Yet, my siblings and I, despite watching Teletoon, we stayed glued to YTV. By this point Pokemon had come to North America and Pokemania was in full swing, which led to more English dubs of Anime to come to North America, like Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh!. At the same time though, I was starting to watch live action shows on YTV like The New Addams Family, Animorphs, Incredible Story Studios, Radio Active, and reruns of a show that had run on CBC from 1992 to 1994 called The Odyssey. While I still enjoyed animation, I was approaching my teen years and live action shows were calling to me a little bit more than they had during my early childhood when cartoons dominated my daytime TV viewing.
The Zone had changed as both PJ Phil and Snit (voiced by Atul Rao) had left, and had been replaced by Jennifer Racicot (formerly known as PJ Katie) and Pat Kelly. I was more aware of popular music, so my favourite segments on The Zone were when Pat and Jenny would interview bands and music artists, like Savage Garden.
By the early 2000s though, I found myself watching YTV less and less. Particularly once I got my own TV in my bedroom in the summer of 2001 and could watch shows like That '70s Show, Friends, Frasier, and The Simpsons. Sailor Moon and reruns of Radio Active were still on, but most of the shows that I had enjoyed on YTV, like Animorphs, Incredible Story Studios, and The New Addams Family were over, Batman reruns had moved over to Space Channel, and Family Channel had grabbed my attention with new seasons of Power Rangers, and shows like Radio Free Roscoe and Disney's House of Mouse. I had also dropped off of both Pokemon, which continued airing on YTV until 2014, and Digimon, which stopped airing on YTV in 2004. Though I would still watch reruns of Boy Meets World on YTV, finally catching the first three seasons of the show that I had missed when they had aired as part of TGIF on ABC, as well as movies like Pokemon: The First Movie (the beginning only), Sailor Moon R: The Movie - The Promise of the Rose, and Batman: Masked of the Phantasm. Though, again, I would still occasionally also watch Justice League and Teen Titans with my brother, but even those viewings were few and far between. By the late 2000s YTV was gone from my thoughts as it briefly became a premium cable channel, much like Family Channel had been from 1988 until 1997, as a result, my family didn't have access to it anymore. But then, in 2011 that changed.
Almost two decades after it had been removed from the channel, Power Rangers returned to YTV in 2011 with Power Rangers Samurai. After nearly a decade of being owned by Disney, Power Rangers was bought back from them by Saban Entertainment, now known as Saban Brands, in 2010. In the U.S. the series moved to Nickelodeon. But, even though Nickelodeon Canada began in 2009, Power Rangers was broadcast on YTV as well as on Nickelodeon Canada, as YTV had shared Nickelodeon shows with Family Channel since Day 1. For example, while Family Channel got Zoey 101, YTV got iCarly and Victorious. Canadian television is weird.
Regardless, the return of Power Rangers to the channel brought me back to YTV even though I was in my mid-20s by that time and no longer in the demographic for the channel. And because Power Rangers was on on Saturday mornings, I didn't watch The Zone or anything that aired on weekdays. Just Power Rangers, and one episode of Pokemon that was on after an episode of Power Rangers Super Megaforce in 2014. But then, both shows moved over to Teletoon for some reason, and I became less interested in newer Power Rangers seasons as I had been very disappointed in how they'd handled the 20th anniversary season, Super Megaforce, given that it was adapted from one of my favourite seasons of Super Sentai ever, Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, which was that franchise's 35th Anniversary season. So once again, YTV fell from my view as there was nothing on it that piqued my interest anymore.
My last encounter with YTV happened in 2021 when the first season of the Canadian produced live action TV show adaptation of The Hardy Boys aired on the channel, alongside the follow-up series of the 1980s's cult sitcom, Punky Brewster. They were on on Friday nights and I enjoyed both shows. It also gave me a window into what YTV was in the modern day, as I'd seen it change and evolve over the course of my lifetime.
Even though I don't watch YTV anymore, I have fond memories of watching it, from the early days of Batman and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to the Anime era of Sailor Moon, Pokemon, and Digimon in the 2000s, to Frank and Joe Hardy appearing on my TV screen on Friday nights in the present day of 2021. I spent so many hours watching so many shows, seeing so many hosts from the PJs (Program Jockeys) of the '90s to Sugar and Carlos in the 2000s, the various commercial bumpers, and hilarious commercials for shows like Radio Active, to the feeling of being accepted for just being a YTV Kid. YTV was as much an escape for me as Star Trek was, and I am grateful for its existence. I hope there's some kid who is watching YTV now, who has as many fond memories of the channel as I do.
That's it for me for today, but I will be back soon with more blog posts. One note I would like to make about this series on YTV is that I'm only talking about the shows I watched on YTV, and believe me, I didn't watch all of them. So if there's a show that aired on YTV that you watched, and it's not on my list of shows to talk about, then I'm sorry. Some of them were on when I was really little, were on after I'd gone to bed, and were over by the time I was old enough to stay up later at night, or I wasn't allowed to watch them, like X-Men: The Animated Series, or were on after I'd grown up and was less inclined to watch them. If you want a more comprehensive look at the history of YTV, including reviews of all of the shows, I recommend checking out Shinken004's YTV Retrospective series on YouTube. The retrospective has alot of info on all things YTV. I'll leave the link to the channel at the end of this post.
Until next time, have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
Shinken004 YouTube Channel
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