YTV
From Transformers Wiki
YTV (rumoured to stand for "Youth Television" at its founding, though their website denied this) is a Canadian specialty cable channel focusing on animated and live-action programs for school-age children and younger teenagers. Initially launched on September 1, 1988 by Rogers Commmunications, it was leveraged by then-rival Canadian cable producer Shaw between 1995–1998. In 1999, Shaw's media assets were spun off into Corus Entertainment, which owns the channel to this day.
In the late 1990s, YTV co-produced (and served as Canadian primary broadcaster for) the Beast Wars Beasties and Beast Machines cartoons, even maintaining a web page for the former series. They would continue to be the exclusive Canadian broadcaster for Transformers up until 2009, concluding with Transformers Animated. For the next decade, fellow Corus owned channel Teletoon began broadcasting Transformers shows in Canada. Aside from a Transformers: Cyberverse marathon in 2019, they wouldn't start airing Transformers again proper until 2022, with the release of Transformers: EarthSpark, due to YTV usually airing Nickelodeon shows as well as Teletoon being rebranded to Cartoon Network in 2023.
Transformers series
- Beasties: Transformers
- Beast Machines: Transformers
- Transformers: Robots in Disguise
- Transformers: Armada
- Transformers: Energon
- Transformers: Cybertron
- Transformers Animated
- Transformers: Cyberverse (temporarily)
- Transformers: EarthSpark
Notes
- Beasties and Beast Machines were rerun almost all throughout the 2000s, long after the toylines have ended, possibly due to being Canadian Content (CanCon) as well as being fan favourites of the network.
- Despite the name change from Beast Wars to Beasties, the show was left uncut otherwise in its broadcast, unlike in the United States which had far more censorship.
- On May 22, 2004, to celebrate the then 20th anniversary of the Transformers franchise, YTV hosted a all day marathon called Transformers Stormer, which also aired the The Transformers: The Movie later in the afternoon. The movie would air a few other times on the network over the years, usually late at night.
- YTV sometimes had world premieres of some episodes of Transformers shows.
