The Zone is an afternoon programming block on YTV. It airs between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM (Eastern Time) in Canada.

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 (previously a 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.

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, and "Gord the PJ man" (Gordon Michael Woolvett), 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). 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 and Snit, when YTV Shift (a primetime version of The Zone) was cancelled, Paul joined Phil, and the two sent Snit into space and Snit was replaced with Elvays (a plastic Elvis head with a digataly added moving mouth) A whole week's plotline involved Paul and Phil alien hunting and finding somthing. It was revealed to be Snit, who returned and was upgraded by Paul and Phil. Snit went on to host Snit Station (weekend morning programming) YTV had a format change ("You Rule" to "Keep it Weird") and Paul and Phil were replaced with Pat and Jenny (previously PJ Katie on Treehouse) and Elvays was replaced with the Hand in the toilet. Jenny left, and Pat was left to host The Zone by himself. Pat soon protested, and Sugar joined Pat as his co-host. But soon Pat himself left, and Sugar was left to host by herself until one day she found that one of the janitors was playing with the cameras pretending to be a Zone host. Sugar spent quite some time trying to track down this Janitor, before eventualy finding Carlos and inviting him to be her Co-host

External links

• The Zone's website on YTV.com

The Zone can also refer to the Zone of Alienation, the exclusion zone around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident.