The Zone (YTV)

The Zone is the flagship weekday afternoon programming block on the Canadian television channel YTV. It airs between 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. ET in Canada. The block itself can be considered a show as it consists of a short jockey that airs in the space between the actual television shows, often in lieu or unison of commercials. On Saturday mornings, it is called "The Zone Weekend" (formerly CRUNCH).

Currently, the hosts of The Zone are Carlos Bustamante, Mark "Suki" Suknanan, Lisa Gilroy, Jesse Beam and Meisha Watson.

The program usually features the hosts and the addition of one "real" guest host. The "guest host" is sometimes just an inanimate or personified object that is spoken to by Nayan Patel. Some examples would be "the Hand in the Toilet" (the toilet was embedded in the wall; a hand came out the hole once in a while) and "the camera-man." Also a seen but never heard voice, Egghead (the director). In its early history, the Zone had featured a group of puppets known as Grogs as the co-hosts. A large television with a frame resembling a piece of purple bubble gum with eyes and other mechanical miscellany called Snit (Atul N. Rao) was once a "host" on The Zone; after him came Elvayz, a talking bust of Elvis Presley, although this character has been removed as well. Occasionally, real-life guest hosts would appear on The Zone, such as children's author Robert Munsch and environmentalist David Suzuki.

While usually following a certain theme throughout the week, there are scheduled events that have occurred during The Zone, such as:

The Zone began its life as the Afterschool Zone on YTV, debuting on September 2, 1991, with its first host Phil Guerrero, a lone speaker seated on a stool in front of a spartan orange backdrop. The Afterschool Zone was simply a small segment that played between airings of regular television programming, primarily as an entertaining segue into the next programming block to retain viewers and to provide some level of interaction with its young audience. Similar programming existed on YTV's weekend morning broadcasts, also starring variety of hosts, labeled "PJs", or program jockeys, as a take on DJ (disc jockey) and VJ (video jockey). This was done primarily as a tactic to comply with Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission restrictions on advertising in children's programming: popular imported programming would run a few minutes short due to fewer ads being permitted compared to US stations. Instead of filling the time with public service announcements or other filler material (which had been the previous practice of YTV in 1992 in the late 1980s/early 1990s), the idea of devoting several minutes between programs to interaction between live-action hosts was used, and has proven successful to this day.

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