My 90's and 2000's Experience: YTV's The Zone (1992-2002)

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was pretty good. Today I'm here to talk about a programming block on YTV that kept me entertained for about a decade. The Zone, with PJ Phil and Snit, PJ Katie, PJ Jenn and PJ Ashna, and Sugar Beard. Let's get into it.

Originally known as The Afterschool Zone, The Zone was a two to three hour programming block that aired after school usually from 4 pm to 6 pm. At certain points though the programming block would air from 3 pm to 6 pm. That was certainly the case in the summer of 1996 when Sailor Moon aired at 3:30 pm, after reruns of The Woody Woodpecker Show at 3. The original host of The Zone, from when it was known as The Afterschool Zone, was Gordon Michael Woolvett, who I know as Seamus Harper on the 2000 Sci-Fi series, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, who hosted The Zone from 1991 to 1992, and then PJ Phil, a.k.a. Phil Guerrero, took over. I began watching The Zone in 1992 with Video & Arcade Top 10 and reruns of the 1966 TV series, Batman. Other shows like Alvin and the Chipmunks, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, the aforementioned Sailor Moon, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Rugrats and Pokemon all aired on The Zone at one time or another. And I watched them all.

From 1993 to 1996 I didn't have cable, so I could only watch YTV if I was in the hospital or visiting my grandparents, be it Nana and Grandpa, who lived five minutes away from us, or Grandma and Grandpa, who lived in the west end of Ottawa. So watching The Zone was really special during this time because it was so infrequent. 

 Starting in 1994, Snit, voiced by Atul N. Rao, became Phil's cohost on The Zone. This was after Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had been pulled from the station's lineup, but he was there to bring in Rugrats as a replacement after Batman. He and Phil would host The Zone together for three years, until Snit left. The cool thing about The Zone is that sometimes, they would have storylines that the hosts, be it Phil and Paul, Phil and Snit, or later on Sugar and Carlos, would act out, filming on location in some cases, or as a way to introduce new hosts, new elements, or new sets, to the block. 

By the time PJ Katie, going by her real name, Jennifer Racicot, took over in November, 1999, the set was designed to look like a subway train, to look more modern in the last few months of 1999 and into early 2000. Also by this point Jenny incorporated alot more pop culture news into the segments between shows, like Spongebob SquarePants. While I wasn't watching The Zone as often as I had been from 1992 to 1997, when Sailor Moon went on a three year hiatus to give Cloverway Inc. time to dub the third and fourth seasons, I was still watching the block with my siblings because of Pokemon. I remember that Jenny had interviewed Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones of Savage Garden around this time, as their second album, which ended up being their final studio album, Affirmation was released on November 9th, 1999, only six days before Jenny and her cohost, Pat Kelly, whom I only vaguely remember, began hosting The Zone.

By the time Carlos came on as Sugar's cohost in 2002, I wasn't watching The Zone anymore, but I did see a little bit of the Sugar solo era though because of season 4 of Sailor Moon airing, and the fact that Sugar also voiced Sailor Mini-Moon in seasons 3 and 4. I've said this in my previous YTV post, but if you want a complete history of The Zone, check out Shinken004's YTV Retrospective on YouTube. He has a very indepth episode on the history of The Zone from 1991 to the present day. Now, let's talk about the shows that I watched on The Zone. This will have a very loose order, because the majority of the shows that I watched on The Zone were on together, one after the other.

The earliest show I remember watching on The Zone was Video & Arcade Top 10. This was a pop culture review game show hosted by Nicholas Picholas. Kids would play the latest Nintendo games, with the occasional Sega Genesis game for points. While Nicholas and his co-hosts would review the latest movies/home video releases, and music. Contestants at home could write in their answers to a skill-testing question based on one of the reviews and if they won their prize would be free movie rental passes for either Rogers Video or Jumbo Video or the CD or home video release being reviewed on the show. I honestly only ever remember watching the show from 1992 to 1993, because I wasn't watching The Zone much except for Batman and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and only when I had access to it like at the hospital or my grandparents's places. I definitely don't recall seeing it during the Pokemon era, and I wasn't watching The Zone after Woody Woodpecker and Sailor Moon during the period that those two shows aired together. It's crazy though that Video & Arcade Top 10 stayed on the air until 2008, which is insane to me, because like I said, I didn't watch it after the early era.

It's also weird to me that Alvin and the Chipmunks aired on The Zone, because while I do remember watching it there, I mainly remember it from Kids TV on Global around this same time. Nevertheless I did watch it on The Zone at like 4 or 4:30 pm starting in 1994.

Another show that I watched on The Zone was Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Again, I only watched it a handful of times because I didn't have regular access to YTV and The Zone, but I do remember watching it. However, it's the next two shows that I really watched The Zone for.

At 5 and 5:30 pm I was introduced to Batman and the Power Rangers on The Zone. You all know my history with both of these shows as I've talked about them numerous times over the years, even reviewing season 1 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers last year. Unlike the other shows that were on The Zone during this time, Batman and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were the shows that I went out of my way to make sure I had access to YTV for on my TV in the hospital whenever I was there. I loved, and still love, both of these shows. But, I think what made me fall in love with both shows is that they were aired together on YTV. Yes, it was only reruns of Batman being that the show originally aired from 1966 to 1968, but to me it felt special that it aired as the lead-in to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which was a brand new show in 1993. Especially because Batman was so popular at the time given that Batman Returns came out the year before and Batman: The Animated Series was currently airing on Fox Kids, Global, and YTV. Of all the shows on The Zone from 1992 to 1994, it's these two that I remember the most fondly.

Eventually though Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was pulled from YTV, though episodes would continue to air on Global's Kids TV until the end of the second season in 1995. Replacing it was the 1991 Nickelodeon cartoon, Rugrats. I've talked about this before, but for whatever reason occasionally Canada will get a show from the U.S. late. In my experience this mostly happened with early 90's Nickelodeon shows like Rugrats, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and Clarissa Explains It All which all debuted in 1991 on Nickelodeon, but we didn't get them here in Canada until later. We got Rugrats in 1994, Clarissa Explains It All in 1999, and The Adventures of Pete & Pete in 2000, with Rugrats the only one to have any staying power as both Clarissa and Pete & Pete only lasted two years each here. While Rugrats aired on YTV from 1994 to 2004, taking it to the end of the show's run.

One of the more ridiculous shows I ever watched on YTV was Samurai Pizza Cats, which is an Anime that got an English dub/adaptation. And the producers of this adaptation was Saban Entertainment, and aired on YTV from 1992 until 1993, while it would air in the U.S. in syndication, but not until 1996, a full three years after it finished airing here in Canada. Unlike other Anime dubs at the time, this one wasn't meant to be taken seriously. The opening theme even alludes to the fact that the show is basically a cat themed parody of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was still hugely popular when the original Anime, Kyatto Ninden Teyandee began airing in Japan in 1990.

With the success of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in 1993, naturally there would be many attempts to adapt other Tokusatsu shows. One of them was Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, starring Matthew Lawrence, who would later go on to play Jack Hunter on Boy Meets World, as Sam Collins, who gets zapped into Cyberspace to become Servo. Tim Curry voiced Kilokahn, the cyber-villain of the show. As this show was an adaptation of Denkou Choujin Gridman, or Gridman the Hyper Agent, which was produced by Tsuburaya Productions, the creators of Ultraman (hence why Servo looks like an Ultraman character), and being that the show was only 39 episodes long, Samurai Syber-Squad aired for 53 episodes, and that was it. It was only on for a year.

The next block of shows that I want to talk about is The Woody Woodpecker Show, which was a TV repackaging of old Woody Woodpecker cartoons from the 1940s, which aired on ABC, NBC, and in Syndication from 1957 to 1977, and Sailor Moon, which is one of the first Animes to become hugely popular in North America alongside Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, and Digimon. I don't have very much to say about The Woody Woodpecker Show, but Sailor Moon was awesome! Every afternoon in the summertime and on March Break my siblings and I would sit in the basement and play Batman: The Video Game on the Nintendo Entertainment System and then change the channel to YTV for The Woody Woodpecker Show and Sailor Moon. 

This was before Teletoon was even a thing, though it wasn't far behind, and by this point Kids TV on Global was starting to wind down, we weren't watching PBS, the CBC children's programming block, or TVO Kids on TVOntario (TVO) as much anymore, if at all, and Family Channel was still a premium cable channel. So there was only YTV and Fox Kids for children's programming here in Canada as even BBS Master Control was starting to wind down for us as well, as Jenn Beech, who had been PJ Jenn on YTV until 1994, would leave Master Control in 1997, and shows like Goof Troop, Gargoyles, The Lion King's Timon and Pumbaa, and Aladdin: The Animated Series were all starting to wrap up as well.

As a result Sailor Moon became THE show my siblings and I would watch on The Zone, along with Rugrats since both the Batman reruns and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers weren't on the channel anymore, with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers having become Power Rangers Zeo in 1996. Though reruns of MMPR would continue on Fox Kids throughout the late 90's under the Power Rangers: Power Playback title. Sailor Moon was great though and even though it had its roadblocks with new episodes going on hiatus in the middle of the second season, not long after we started watching the show on YTV, having watched the whole thing on Global from 1995 to 1996, up to when the show went on hiatus. Sailor Moon eventually moved to 7 o'clock in the morning when the show returned for the remainder of the second season, and then returned to that timeslot in the early 2000's for seasons 3 and 4 before dropping off YTV for good.

The next big show my siblings and I watched on YTV together was Pokemon. specifically the first three incarnations, Indigo League, Adventures in the Orange Islands, and The Johto Journeys. I don't think we missed a single episode of any of the seasons. Though personally, I couldn't tell you that I remember the episodes where Brock left and was replaced by Tracey or the episodes where Brock returned, replacing Tracey. I do remember when Togepi hatched though. I also remember the Jigglypuff episodes, the "Who's that Pokemon?" bumper segment and of course, the Poke Rap at the end of the episode. That first season was the height of Poke-Mania for me for sure though. 

By this point I was almost in my teens and more interested in shows like Animorphs, Radio Active, reruns of The Odyssey, which I will talk about at a later time, Incredible Story Studios, and The New Addams Family, all of which were airing on YTV in the evening after The Zone had ended. Plus Teletoon had started, reruns of Batman began airing on Space Channel alongside its short-lived sister series, The Green Hornet, reruns of The Waltons were airing on TNN, and on Friday nights we were watching Boy Meets World, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Teen Angel, You Wish, and Two of a Kind on TGIF. So there was alot to keep me occupied and The Zone was no longer a big draw for me. Especially because PJ Phil was no longer the host, though I did enjoy Jenny's interview with Savage Garden, which I mentioned earlier.

Now, Digimon was apparently on during The Zone, but this must've been when The Zone was extended, because I honestly don't remember it being on during the programming block's main time period of 3 pm to 6 pm, or 4 pm to 6 pm, however long The Zone was on during that 1999-2001 period. Again, this was pretty late into The Zone's lifespan as I was a teenager by this point and already begun watching shows meant for my age group like Radio Active. I loved Digimon though.

After this period, I watched The Zone less and less, especially once Sailor Moon moved to the early morning slot in 2000 for Sailor Moon S and Sailor Moon SuperS and Digimon Tamers ended its run in 2002. But, again, Sugar was the host of The Zone, and I really liked seeing her, especially because she was the voice of Rini/Sailor Mini-Moon in those final two seasons of Sailor Moon.

While The Zone is still around today, it has greatly been diminished as, sadly, thanks to budgetary cuts made by Corus Entertainment last year, The Zone is now without any hosts. Corus fired the hosts, Melony Manikavasagar, Spencer Litzinger, and Kelsey, in the summer of 2023, 32 years after The Zone debuted. No matter what era they were part of, I honestly feel like the PJs were an important part of YTV and it's success in the early days of the channel. 

Whether it was Phil, Snit, the Grogs, the Fuzzpaws, Paul, Sandra, Ashna, and Jenn in the early days, Jenny and Pat in the heyday of Anime on YTV, Sugar and Carlos in the Teen Titans, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), and The Batman era, or Spencer, Melony, and Kelsey in the modern day, each PJ brought something unique and cool to YTV, which has now been lost thanks to that decision to cut costs by firing the hosts, making it just like Cartoon Network Canada (formerly known as Teletoon) and Family Channel. Which is unfortunate. Especially since broadcast television is very much on its last legs.

That's it for me for today. I'll be back soon to talk about the early days of Star Wars comic book publishing at Dark Horse to wrap up my early Star Wars comics discussion that I started last week with my look at the original Marvel Comics lineup from 1977 to 1987. So until then have a great night. Take care.