is a
Canadian Cable Television Specialty Channel aimed at
Youth , available nationwide through
Cable and
Satellite Television . Presently it is wholly owned by
Corus Entertainment . "YTV" presumably stands for "Youth Television", although YTV itself
denies this.
YTV's schedule is primarily children's programming, with target audiences ranging from pre-schoolers to young adults. At the upper end of this range are repeats of
Drama s such as ''
Smallville '' and ''
Gilmore Girls ''. Until recently it aired a significant number of British
Sitcoms in late night; it now only airs ''
My Family ''. Among its claims to fame, it was the first to air the first completely computer-animated series, ''
ReBoot '', and the Anime show, "
Sailor Moon ".
YTV's flagship programming block is ''
The Zone '', aired on weekday afternoons; Carlos Bustamente and
Stephanie "Sugar" Beard currently host the interstitial segments.
While it produces or commissions a substantial portion of its programming, YTV also acquires and airs most of the original series of the similar ''.
Launched on
September 1 ,
1988 , YTV was the successor to two prior special programming services operated by various Ontario cable companies beginning in the late
1970s . Not surprisingly, then, the two largest shareholders in YTV were two cable companies,
Rogers Cable and a company known as CUC which would later be acquired by
Shaw Communications . By about
1995 , through various acquisitions and trades, Shaw had secured full control of YTV; it was spun off as part of Corus in
1999 .
After Corus took control of the station in 1999, YTV began to utilize a Nickelodeon-style "gross-out" factor in its branding, albeit with much less slime, with its mantra (and former slogan) being "Keep It Weird". Over the years YTV used a number of different on-air logos, featuring the same arrangement of white letters on various bizarre and imaginative creatures. The logo used on production credits - and thus presumably the "official" logo - features said arrangement on a red screen on a stylized purple television set, as viewed at an angle. The station's advertisements often focused on promoting the brand through crude humour, often at the expense of the programs being advertised. As this advertising style permeated the station at all hours of the day, it was heavily criticized, especially by older fans of the station.
In fall of 2005, a new post-6pm advertising style was developed for older audiences which used a much simpler logo and much sleeker packaging with barely any gross-out tactics. In the spring of 2006, this look was adapted for the entire station.
