Zoom (1999 Series)

Zoom is an American television program for ages eight and up, created almost entirely by children. It was produced by WGBH-TV in Boston and originally aired on PBS from January 4, 1999 to May 6, 2005. It was a remake of a 1972 TV series by the same name.

Home Media
The 1999 revival of the series ZOOM was never released on Home Media, but a few special VHS tapes "The Making Of...Featurette" and "Party With..." and by the second half of 2007 had been taken off the air completely, and has not returned since. Those tapes can be extremely hard to find on eBay and more easier to find of Amazon.

Availability Online
Eventually, a number of individual segments were released onto YouTube by various users, and in 2011, about half of season 2 was as well by user ZOOMerTube.

As of the summer of 2015, all episodes from seasons 2-7 and 11 episodes of season 1 have been found, uploaded onto YouTube by user ZOOMFan1, who had gone to the lengths of recording them all twice while they were on the air.

From August to October 2017, YouTube user Dylan Herrera uploaded clips from the VHS tape “Party With Zoom” as well as the DVD version of Season 1’s the Making of Zoom.

Click this link if you want to see part of one of the segments that is listed as lost:

Here is another link to a slightly different version of the “When Things Go Wrong” segment:

And on March 16, 2018, YouTube user Wispier Tetrahedrons uploaded the entire version of the VHS tape "Party With Zoom" to YouTube.

Season One
Unfortunately, by the time ZOOMfan1 started watching, season 1 would only be syndicated once more (in late 2002/early 2003), and 29 episodes that were originally a part of the season would be skipped over. Many individual segments from them were uploaded in 2008-2009 by user KrisTheKnight. In March 2018, the "headstand zinger" clip was unfortunately taken down, due to violations of YouTube's Community Guidelines.

A handful of other segments have been uploaded by EngineersWeek2008 (from a website some science-related clips were officially released onto), comeonandzoomazoom, and kejennings13. However, the episodes in their entirety are still at large. The episodes were respectively episodes 105 through 133. Additionally, ZOOMFan1 accidentally taped over one of the episodes that aired during the time he recorded season 1 (136) and the episode also has yet to surface online in its entirety.

Below is a list of known lost and found segments from the missing 30. The list mainly complies from segments listed on the website in 1999. Since games and plays were not listed at the time (and zingers and ZOOMAlongs never were) those listed as "lost" come mainly from outtakes, memories of those who saw the season when it aired, the "ZOOMerang" magazines available as printouts online, and two books ("Fun With Friends" and "ZOOM Zingers") that were tied-into the season.

Also, it should be noted that the episodes that segments are listed as appearing in are in some cases approximation, due to the limited available information of the 30 episodes. These approximations of which segments went in their respective episodes are based on the order and quality of the segments KrisTheKnight uploaded. Those that aren't for sure in the respective episode listed will have (?).

Additionally, some of the lost segments listed as appearing in "unknown episode" may not have even been aired.

ZOOMplayhouse
Additionally, a shot from another unknown play or skit is featured at the 9:16 mark in "The Making of ZOOM"; it is unknown if it was aired. Also, the ZOOM wiki lists two unidentified plays as being in season one: "Riddles" and "The Atlantic Ocean: Sea of Mysteries".

Additional Segments
In addition to the above, most segments that didn't feature the ZOOMers ("ZOOMGuest", "What's Zup?", etc.) are at large. Other miscellaneous things, such as jokes, poems, the "Today on ZOOM" openings (some of which, in season 1, would feature a ZOOMer introducing the episode's ZOOMAlong) and the stingers after the credits also remain at large.

Remastering Of Earlier Seasons
In 2002, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation began to fund ZOOM. For continuity's sake, the funding credits of all previous episodes were updated to include this.

Season 1 returned to PBS stations in January 2002 to be shown regularly for the first time since September 2000 (a few episodes had been broadcast on some stations in March 2001, but the season had otherwise disappeared from rotation since). Advertised as an "encore presentation" on the website, the season was broadcast on Mondays through Thursdays from January 21 to June 7. Aside from the first episode and the special "The Making of ZOOM", which began and ended the cycle, respectively, all episodes were aired twice on most stations. At the same time, a new, fourth season of the show began premiering on Fridays and aired new episodes up to that point.

After this, season four aired exclusively on weekdays until August, when season 2 began to reair. As was the case with season 1, it aired on Mondays through Thursdays while the show's fourth season took the Friday timeslot. This continued until December. All episodes of the season were reaired twice on most stations aside from the first; a re-airing of "The Making of ZOOM" on the Thursday of the final week signified the end of the cycle.

During these airings of the first two seasons, the episodes were shown in their remastered forms on local stations. Both of the seasons had originally contained a short segment known as "ZOOM a Cum Laude", in which the ZOOMers would give kids acknowledgment and credit for their work on certain things. During the third season, this segment was removed and replaced with a new one called "ZOOM Into Action", which was similar but focused more on volunteering.

For continuity's sake, local airings of the first two seasons removed the original "ZOOM a Cum Laude" segments and replaced them with "ZOOM Into Action" ones. Because these new segments were made well after the first two seasons were filmed, they didn't show the cast of those seasons or have them narrating, like the original "ZOOM a Cum Laude" segments did.

In addition to this, season 2 saw many of the 30-second stingers originally shown at the end of the episodes shortened to 15 seconds or replaced with a short, 15-second web advertisement.

After a short period from December 2002 to January 2003, season 1 was rerun on Mondays through Thursdays, with season four once again taking the Friday timeslot. Season 3 began re-airing immediately after. Following the pattern of the first two seasons, it aired on Mondays through Thursdays, while season 4 took the Friday timeslot as usual. The show's fifth season premiered on March 31, 2003, and interrupted the cycle for a week of new episodes; it was regulated to Fridays only the following week, while the third season returned to the Mondays through Thursdays timeslot. This continued until early June. During this time, all episodes of the third season except for episodes 301, 321, 322 and 340 were aired twice on most stations.

Like season 2, local broadcasts of season 3 saw the original stingers for the episodes shortened to 15 seconds or replaced with 15-second website advertisements. In addition to this, a short clip originally shown at the beginning of the first episode was removed. Taking the place of the standard "Today on ZOOM" opening, it featured returning ZOOMers Kenny and Caroline welcoming viewers back to the show and introducing the new season. In later airings, this was replaced with a standard "Today on ZOOM". (It should be noted that this was only used a few times before the episode's final airing on local stations, which preempted it for "ZOOM Out The Vote!" promos.)

WGBY Airings and Availability
Despite these edits remaining permanent in all further airings of the episodes on local stations, WGBH's own station, WGBY, continued to show the episodes almost exactly as they were originally shown. Although ZOOMFan1 started recording the show in 2002, he mainly recorded it on the WGBY station.

Although two episodes of season 1 and one episode of season 2 in his uploaded collection are local versions, they appear to be no different from the WGBY versions at the time. There is no "ZOOM Into Actions" on any of them, suggesting no "ZOOM a Cum Laude" was shown on WGBY, and episode 234 has its 30-second stinger intact.

The season 3 recordings, meanwhile, contain six local episode broadcasts. They are episodes 306, 307, 311, 315, 326, and 329, respectively. Interestingly, the recording of episode 326 contains a 30-second stinger and the original funding credits, while the recording of episode 318, despite being a WGBY broadcast, contains the updated funding credits and a 15-second stinger.

While it is unknown for sure what the true stingers for episodes 306, 307, 311, 315, 318 and 329 are, it can be approximated. Episode 306 contains an "Ubbi Dubbi Man" skit, and the true stinger for all other episodes containing said skit was a website advertisement relating to it. So 306 most likely featured that. Episodes 307 and 311 contain shortened versions of stingers that appear as regular, 30-second ones on WGBY recordings of other episodes; it's fairly safe to assume that those were the original stingers for these episodes. Episode 315 most likely featured the web advertisement relating to the play "Time-Out!" that is shown at the end of episodes 324 and 326, as 315 was the episode that featured said play. The recordings of episodes 318 and 329 each feature 15-second clips that are continuations of games shown earlier their respective episode. Several other true stingers feature these, so it's safe to assume that the true stingers for these episodes were simply longer versions (ZOOMFan1 remembers 318's containing another round of the game shown). If so, these are the only material from season 3 (aside from the local opening used for episode 301) that are currently missing.

In short, season 3 remained entirely unedited from its original broadcast when WGBY aired it after the remastering. The first two seasons, however, are a different story.

Permanent Disappearance of Material From First Two Seasons
One thing notably absent from most of ZOOMFan1's ten seasons is the ZOOM a Cum Laude segment. The only episodes to feature it are 102 (as a stinger), 103, and 137. According to ZOOMFan1, episode 136 did not feature one either.

While the episodes to feature the ZOOM a Cum Laude segment run 28:25, all but two of the episodes that don't feature it (138 and 140, respectively) run about 30 seconds shorter. Since ZOOM a Cum Laude were about this length in the first season, it can be assumed that they were featured in the original broadcasts for these episodes, only to be permanently removed from all stations after the remastering. A very abrupt cut in the recording of episode 135 (at the 24:06 mark) appears to be evidence of the episodes being edited.

Additional evidence of edits in the remastering comes from KrisTheKnight's 2008-2009 clips from the season. In 2016, YouTube user Adam Suckenick discovered that the ending to the "Gelatin Molds" Cafe ZOOM segment contained different music in ZOOMFan1 and KrisTheKnight's respective uploads of the clip and the episode featuring it and that the screen faded purple on the former's version and green on the latter's. Because of this, the ZOOM a Cum Laude segment in episode 139 after the "Gelatin Molds" Cafe ZOOM segment was cut out in the 2002 remastering. Some months later, in 2017, user BirdOfPrey12 found another difference in clips that both KrisTheKnight and ZOOMFan1 had uploaded: the fact that the "feather zinger" segment (the first segment of the entire series) ended with the zinger logo appearing in KrisTheKnight's version of the clip, despite being followed by a ZOOMDo in ZOOMFan1's upload of the episode. This suggests that some segments were rearranged in the 2002 remastering. To further confuse matters, it appears that some things were even moved to different episodes. Evidence of this comes from the fact that ZOOMFan1 claims to have seen a skit in episode 136 that KrisTheKnight posted, but in the latter's clip, appears to come after a segment that ZOOMFan1 never saw.

In short, there is a lot of mystery surrounding the remastering of season one, in addition to some of the season being a mystery itself, as 30 episodes are missing in any complete format, and there isn't a ton of information about them online.

Season 2 doesn't appear to have gone through nearly as many permanent edits in the remastering. Aside from episode 234, all the episodes of the season posted are from WGBY recordings. Episodes 202-233, 235-237, and 239 appear to be unchanged from their original broadcasts. The remaining four episodes, however, are a different story.

Episodes 201 and 240 notably feature short, 15-second stingers. They aren't shortened versions of anything, simply short website promos that were featured in the middle of some episodes. So the original stingers were clearly something different. It's possible that different episodes also used them, due to stingers advertising the website often being reused. While this is quite possibly the case for episode 201, it's less likely for episode 240. The last episode prior to episode 240 to have a website advertisement as the stinger was episode 229, meaning 240's was more likely something original. However, a website advertisement used in episode 214 is related to a skit featured in episode 240; at about 23 seconds, it could possibly be a slightly shortened version of 240's stinger. It's also worth noting that several later season 2 episodes contain bloopers at the end, making that a possibility if the stinger was something original.

There also appear to be several missing "ZOOM a Cum Laude" segments for the season. This is evidenced by the fact that four episodes run undertime. The first, episode 201, runs nearly a minute undertime; this is partly due to the replacement stinger. The second, episode 234, runs about 40 seconds undertime, about the length of a "ZOOM a Cum Laude" in the season. The third, episode 238, runs nearly a minute undertime; this is partly due to a shorter version of the funding credits being used at the end of this episode and the next two (it is unknown if these shortened funding credits were featured in the original broadcast). The fourth and final one, episode 240, runs about a full minute undertime; this is again in part due to the shortened funding credits, as well as the replacement stinger. It should be noted that in the season 2 episodes containing "ZOOM a Cum Laude", each ZOOMer announces five or six apiece, except for Alisa, who only announces three. This seems to be further evidence that there were originally "ZOOM a Cum Laude" segments in these episodes.

However, that might not be the case for episode 201. User BirdOfPrey12 claims to remember a short skit in the middle of an early season 2 episode that isn't in any of ZOOMFan1's uploads. As episode 201 is the only early episode of the season to run undertime, it's highly likely that it was this skit that was removed from the episode in addition to the full stinger. This means that the episode either never contained a "ZOOM a Cum Laude" to begin with, or featured it as the stinger, like in episode 102.

Also of note is the fact that episode 234 reuses a non-standard shot of the cast saying, "Send it to ZOOM!" at the end of the closing rap, the only time a non-standard shot is reused. This could possibly mean that something different was originally used. Additionally, episodes 236, 238 and 239 go back to using the original standard shot featured in the first 21 episodes. However, as two of these three episodes appear to be unedited, it's highly likely that that was simply the way they were always shown.

As of March 2018, wiki user Lukesams has a total of all 41 episodes of season 1 (including all 30 missing episodes from that season), as well as the original airings of the available episodes from the first two seasons before the edits. Because of this, all the segments from the missing 30 season 1 episodes will be completely found. Currently, he is extremely busy. Also, wiki users Argulor, KennySzeto617 and Matt22Austin posted lots of comments in his message wall and he has never responded most of them. But pretty soon, he will hopefully upload them to YouTube.

Missing Things from Seasons 4-7
Because WGBY was the main station ZOOMFan1 recorded from, almost everything from the original airings of seasons 2 and 3 are available online. Some "ZOOM Into Action!" segments from seasons 4-7 narrated by the ZOOMers aren't, however, as WGBY featured it's own version of the segment that didn't feature the ZOOMers and focused on different volunteers from those shown on the local versions. Currently, episodes 401, 404, 405, 410, 412, 413, 501, 503, 505, 507, 508, 509, 512, 518, 716, 717 and 718 are the only local ZITAs from the seasons available.

All episodes of season 6 notably showed the ZOOMers backstage during the credits, but on WGBY it showed a select group of kids thanking viewers for "ZOOMing on WGBY". Episodes 703-709 of season 7 do this as well. All of the remaining uploads aside from 701, 712, 718 and 720 show standard credits (the first two were specials). Since several of the episodes with the groups of kids are from WGBY, it's possible that some of those featured the ZOOMers on the local versions. Meanwhile, episodes 602 (from a different source), 603, 616 and 618 are the only episodes with the local credits available. Both versions of the credits for episode 604 are missing, as ZOOMFan1's recording reuses episode 603's credits. It's also worth noting that episodes 610, 612, 615, and 620 are all under 28 minutes long; it's unlikely anything was removed in certain broadcasts, and merely due to the fact that season 6's episodes didn't have a standard length.

Local airings of seasons 4 and 5, interestingly, also featured brief shots of scenes from the respective episodes in the openings. Currently, only the versions of episodes 401, 405, 408, 503, 505, 507, 508 (from a different source) and 518 are available.

"ZOOM Out The Vote"
From August to November of 2004, promos to support the election featuring current ZOOMers were featured on local airings in place of "Today on ZOOM" and the stingers. A few have been found and uploaded by ZOOMFan1, although some are still at large.

As ZOOM also aired during the 2000 election, it's possible that similar promos were aired at the time.

Miscellaneous Things
In ZOOMFan1's recordings, there are two instances when the recording blacks out. Approximately 40 seconds of the ZOOMGuest segment in 236 is missing due to a glitch in the recording. It also blacks out briefly in episode 301 right after Caroline eats the edible spiders.

It's possible that the special "The Making of ZOOM" featured a regular "Today on ZOOM" in airings after the remastering; half of ZOOMFan1's recording of it comes from a local station, but the beginning isn't featured. Of note is the fact that the recording doesn't contain the original stinger for the episode, a preview of season 2. ZOOMFan1 has confirmed that the WGBY version contained it, however. This means it was likely removed during the remastering due to being outdated, like the opening for 301. If so, this supports the idea that the local version contained a "Today on ZOOM" at the time.

Unaired Footage
In addition to all of the above, many segments that were filmed for the show remain unaired. Some, if not all of them, are available on the website.

Until the entire first season is uploaded, it can be presumed that all unaired segments from it were released on the "Party With ZOOM" VHS. Here is a list of lost segments from seasons 2-7, gathered from information provided on the website over the years.

Season 2

ZOOMDo Cafe ZOOM ZOOMSci ZOOMGames ZOOMPhenom Season 3
 * Kaleidoscope (made by Kenny; briefly seen in episode 233 at the 26:33 mark)
 * Bubble Stationary and Homemade Envelopes (made by Zoe)
 * Purple Cow (made by Jessie)
 * Banana Juice (made by Jessie)
 * Orange Dream Soda (made by Jessie)
 * Root Beer Float
 * Mirror Maze
 * Rota
 * Hop The Pawn
 * Category Cards
 * Indoor Bottle Blowing
 * Thrower
 * Alphabet Conversation
 * Blanket Ball
 * Charades (also played in season 1)
 * Odds and Evens Match
 * ZOOM and Erp
 * ZOOMRoom Card Trick (with Kenny and (?))
 * Keep In Chair (with Ray and Claudio; also done in season 3 with Frances and Rachel)
 * Compass (with Claudio)
 * Paper Fold (with Alisa (?) )
 * House Number Game (possibly unfilmed; website does not provide image)
 * Hand/Foot Coordination (with Zoe, Jessie, Kenny and (?) )

ZOOMDo Cafe ZOOM ZOOMGame Season 4
 * Sponge Stationary (with Frances)
 * Pocket Pouch
 * Masks (with Eric)
 * Apple Sailboat
 * Celery Wagon
 * Trail Mix
 * Mouse In a Cage
 * Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich (with Eric)
 * Salsa
 * Equation Bingo
 * Squat Relay
 * Water Tug of War
 * Nim
 * Rhyming Pairs
 * Jump The Creek
 * Carolyn's Word Game

ZOOMDo ZOOMGame Season 5
 * Collage (all ZOOMers)
 * Recycled Junk Creature (with Kaleigh, Aline, Rachel, and Matt)
 * Jean Pocket Bag and Jean Leftovers
 * On a Roll (a brief shot of this is seen in the opening)
 * Going On a Picnic
 * Pass The Stick
 * Mixed-Up Sports Relay

ZOOMDo Cafe ZOOM ZOOMGame ZOOMSci Season 6
 * Marionettes (with Estuardo)
 * Yarn Cards (made in season 7 by Kyle and Kortney)
 * Tuna Canoes
 * Nana's Cookies (with Caroline)
 * Musical Clothes
 * Tails (a brief shot of this is seen in the opening)
 * Dictionary Game
 * Drop on Pennies II
 * Pennies and Water

ZOOMDos Cafe ZOOM ZOOMSci ZOOMGame
 * Potato Beads (also made by Shing Ying and Emily in season 7; a shot of Emily holding up a bead-lined skewer looks similar to the website photo; however, as that photo was first released in April 2004, it may have still been made in season 6)
 * Buffalo Wings
 * Corndogs
 * Eggboats (not to be confused with the sci in season 3 of the same name)
 * Game Timer
 * Secret Candy Safe

None, although The Cup Game (originally played in season one, also played in season 7) and All About You (played in season 5) were listed as "new" when season 6 premiered.

Season 7

ZOOMDo Cafe ZOOM ZOOMGame ZOOMSci ZOOMPlayhouse
 * Balloon Badminton (with Noreen)
 * High Bouncy Ball
 * Sweater Mittens (with Taylor)
 * Monkey Bread
 * Lettuce Boats
 * Homemade Applesauce
 * 3-Ball Football
 * Balloon Badminton
 * Deliver a Message (with Nick and Francesco)
 * Clever Jackyl (briefly shown in episode 709 at the 14:02 mark)
 * How Ubbi Dubbi Was Started