The Zone is the flagship weekday afternoon programming block on the Canadian television channel YTV. It currently airs between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. ET and PT in Canada. On Saturday mornings, it is called The Zone Weekend (formerly Crunch). Occasionally, guests appear on The Zone, such as children's author Robert Munsch and environmentalist David Suzuki. Current version Currently, the hosts of The Zone are Spencer Litzinger, Melony Manikavasagar and Kelsey Liem. History and current developments The Zone began its life as the Afterschool Zone on YTV, debuting on September 2, 1991, with its first host Gordon Michael Woolvett (aka Gord the PJ Man). Other PJs would take turns hosting the block including PJ Phil, PJ Robb and PJ Rockin' Chan. 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 a variety of hosts, labelled "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 the late 1980s/early 1990s), the idea of devoting several minutes between programs to an interaction between live-action hosts was used and has proven successful to this day. Eventually, the PJs were joined by a variety of puppets named the Grogs in 1992. The "Afterschool" portion of the title was dropped in 1993 and PJ "Fresh" Phil was sometimes joined by another PJ, Jenn (although she featured more prominently during weekend morning programming and was rarely on The Zone). The segments usually involved discussion or banter on various topics, video clips, previews, and viewer mail. July 1994 saw the introduction of the animatronic character Snit (Atul N. Rao), which displayed a pair of moving teeth on a television screen covered with what appeared to be purple bubble gum. When a primetime version of The Zone, YTV Shift, was cancelled, its former host Paul McGuire joined Phil. On October