The Zone
From Freepedia
This article is about Canadian television. For the diet, see Zone diet.
The Zone is an afternoon programming block on YTV. It airs between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM (Eastern Time) in Canada. It is the longest-running programming block on YTV. The Zone has gone through many hosts, but the general amount is 2 hosts, and 1 leaves at a time (although not always at the same time as someone else joins, both Pat and Sugar have hosted The Zone by themselves).
Currently, the two hosts are Sugar (voice actor for Rini from Sailor Moon) and Carlos (allegedly a former janitor for YTV).
Also adding to the current cast is Pretty Tiffany (Sugar's cousin or Sugar with a southern accent?), Titto Lemmey (who seems an awful lot like Carlos), and Gorrilla Stan (Also known as G-Stan).
The regular hosts pretending to be other people and the addition of one "real" guest host is common for The Zone; the "guest host" is sometimes just mentioned or just an inanimate object that is spoken to. Some examples would be "the toilet" (a toilet in the wall; a hand came out the hole once in a while) and "the cameraman". A plastic piece of purple bubble gum with eyes and a television screen for its mouth called "Snit" was once a "host" on The Zone alongside Phil Guerrero.
While usually following a certain theme throughout the week, there are scheduled events that usually occur during The Zone, these are:
- E-mail Mondays (Reading fan e-mails)
- Interactive Wednesdays (A poll is opened on The Zone’s site on YTV.com, people vote in deciding what sort of random thing should happen on the last segment of The Zone)
- Footloose Fridays (Sugar and Carlos do something involving feet, usually dancing, but not always)
Previous Zone hosts, Pat and Jenny, formed a band called Nuclear Donkey, which still exists today.
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History
Originally named The After-School Zone, this programming block featured a program jockey (originally just one) and set aimed at kids getting home from school. Original hosts included "PJ Fresh Phil" Guerrero (the name having derived from earlier convention that had all on-air hosts named as PJs), and "Gord the PJ man", among others.
Eventually, the block was rebranded as simply The Zone, with an eyeball acting as the o in Zone.
Spin-offs included The Breakfast Zone which used similar visual effects as The Zone at the time. This was an attempt to break into breakfast television for kids. The Breakfast Zone was cancelled after a couple years, however the hosts were given a new timeslot during weekday evenings (after The Zone), called YTV Shift. However, this did not last very long either.
YTV tried hosted segments during the mornings one more time with the launch of the B-Zone, however this never really took off and no longer exists either.
Hosts
At first The Zone was hosted by Phil Guerrero (who by this time had dropped the "Fresh") and Snit, a stylized television which displayed a pair of teeth. When a primetime version of The Zone, YTV Shift, was cancelled, Paul McGuire, the host of Shift, joined Phil. The two sent Snit into space, and Snit was replaced with Elvays, a plastic Elvis head with a digitally added moving mouth.
A whole week's plotline involved Paul and Phil alien hunting and finding something. It was revealed to be Snit (minus its familiar purple coloring), who returned and was upgraded by Paul and Phil. Snit went on to host Snit Station, a weekend morning programming block, replacing Brainwash - the block has since been renamed to The Vortex.
When YTV had a format change, replacing "You Rule" with "Keep it Weird", Paul and Phil were replaced with comedian Pat Kelly and Jenny Katie Racicot (previously PJ Katie on Treehouse, an early-afternoon programming block - there was another PJ with the name of Jenny), and Elvays was replaced with the Hand in the toilet. The move was seen as questionable by many fans, as the "Keep it Weird" slogan did not seem to fare well to the audience (but by being the only Canadian TV station that caters to their target demographic, viewers had little choice but to embrace and accept it). One of the most memorable moments in the "Jenny and Pat" era was the formation of Nuclear Donkey, a band featured at the end of the YTV's compliation album Big Fun Party Mix, as well as its Superheroes and Superstars promotion, which had the two pose as heroes (Pat's character held a deep hatred for Corey Hart, while Jenny's character hated the word "chesterfield", which someone would inevitably say).
Jenny left, and Pat was left to host The Zone by himself. Pat soon protested, and Sugar joined Pat as his co-host. However, Pat himself soon left, and Sugar was left to host by herself. One day she found out that one of the janitors was playing with the cameras pretending to be a Zone host; she spent quite some time trying to track down this janitor, before eventually finding Carlos and inviting him to be her co-host.
External links
Other uses
The Zone can also refer to the Zone of Alienation, the exclusion zone around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident.
The Zone is also the name of a popular diet.
