Super Saturday (Euro Republics)

Super Saturday is a programming block airing in the Euro Republics on TV3 on Saturday nights from 6:00pm to 11:00pm.

History
When TV3 announced three new deals with ABC, Fox and Nickelodeon in June 1997, It was announced that a new primetime kids block with presenters, competitions and cartoons would show on the main channel starting that October.

Super Saturday launched on TV3 on 11th October 1997 from 6pm to 11pm. The presenters were Steve Wilkinson and Emma Smith, who was poached from Children’s ETV. The block aired shows from Fox Kids, Cartoon Network, Kids WB, Nickelodeon and Disney (through the deals) alongside third-party series by HiT Entertainment and DiC. It was described by critics as "A Euro Republican answer to Snick, delievered in the style of Children's BBC in the UK." Despite this, It would prove to be more in style to the 1998-2003 era of rival CiTV.

The block proved so successful, that rival broadcasters began their own blocks to compete for the slot. ETV created Saturday Static, a block that drew programming from the libraries of Sony & CBS, but was dropped in February 1999 due to low ratings, only reaching 0.07 of the audience each week, compared to Super Saturday's 16.3 million viewers.

At Christmas time, it would also air Christmas themed movies.

In 2005, to allow room a new talk show, Talking To Mimi, the block for the first time in history moved, and now aired from 5pm to 10pm. After the show was pulled due to an influx of complaints (and being an MA15+ show replacing a block with mostly AA shows), Super Saturday moved back to it’s original time slot in November of the same year.

In May 2009, it was announced that in the autumn, Super Saturday would move to sister channel TV4 and run from 5pm to 11pm.

In August 2009, In an attempt to sooth an incident with scheduling (see below), the block was drastically revamped to target a slightly older female demographic, dropping preschool shows completely in favour of Disney & Nick sitcoms along with hiring presenters from adult shows. All New Super Saturday debuted on 26th September, 2009 to an audience of 16.9 million viewers although the reviews for the new version were mixed to negative, with The Euro Independent calling the show "too girly". Following the controversy, All New Super Saturday did not return for a 2nd year and the original format returned on 2nd October, 2010.

In 2018, the block was renamed as FKSN. It was announced that in September 2020, FKSN would revert to it’s original name and also move back to Three.

Around the same time, TV3 announced two multi-year deals with the BBC and ViacomCBS, which saw all currently airing CBBC and a selection of Nickelodeon originals come to 3C, and Super Saturday.

On 2nd January, 2021, Super Saturday went through another rebrand.

Beginning from September 2022, TV3 moved Super Saturday to 3C, after it was noted that the channel could potentially have financial gains showing more mature programmes on a Saturday night. TV3 still geared the schedule towards families, with the return of Pop Idol, Tom Worricker's TV Burp, and a reboot of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? incorporating the National Lottery draw which takes place at 8.30pm. Co-incidentally, the latter is presented by Steve Wilkinson, one of Super Saturday's original presenters.

Current lineup

 * Adventure Time (2010-present)
 * Gravity Falls (2012-present)
 * Bluey (2020-present)
 * SpongeBob SquarePants (2000-2012; 2020-present)
 * Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese (2020-present)
 * Deadly 60 (2020-present)
 * DuckTales (Original; 1997-2001, Reboot; 2018-present)
 * Danger Mouse (Original; 1997-1999, Reboot; 2020-present)
 * Phineas and Ferb (2008-present)
 * Mr Bean: The Animated Series (2002-present)
 * Blue Peter Euro Republics (2013-present)
 * Thomas & Friends (1997-present)
 * Milo Murphy’s Law (2018-present)
 * Oggy & The Cockroaches (1999-2004; 2018-present)
 * The Jason Report (2021-present)
 * Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed! (2018-present)
 * The Loud House (2020-present)
 * Arthur (1997-present)
 * Peppa Pig (2004-present)
 * The Amazing World Of Gumball (2011-present)
 * Apple and Onion (2019-present)
 * George Carlton (2020-present)
 * Charlie Matthews (2020-present)
 * The Owl House (2020-present)
 * Big City Greens (2018-present)
 * Regular Show (2011-2017; 2020-present)
 * Teletubbies (original series) (1997-present)
 * Teletubbies (rebooted series) (2015-present)
 * Class Dismissed (2016-present)

Former

 * Inspector Gadget (original series) (1997-2001)
 * Life With Louie (1997-2000)
 * The Simpsons (2005)
 * Tootuff (2003-2007)
 * The FairlyOddParents (2002-2012; moved to ETV 2)
 * Sam & Max: Freelance Police! (1997-2001)
 * Johnny Bravo (1997-2001)
 * The Secret World Of Alex Mack (1997-2009)
 * iCarly (2009-2010)
 * Hannah Montana (2009-2010)
 * Jonas (2009-2010)
 * The Suite Life On Deck (2009-2010)
 * True Jackson, VP (2009-2010)
 * Big Time Rush (2010)
 * The Troop (2009-2010)
 * The Naked Brothers Band (2009-2010)
 * Wizards Of Waverly Place (2009-2010)

Main

 * Steve Wilkinson (1997-2004)
 * Emma Smith (1997-2005)
 * Martin Smith (2004-2008)
 * Kaycee Young (2005-2008)
 * Stanley Olivier (2008-2015)
 * Alexa DeSanta (2008-2016)
 * Angelica Grant (2009-2010)
 * Andy Pearson (2009-2010)
 * Mandy Clinton (2015-present)
 * Benjamin Humphries (2016-present)
 * Alex Clark (2018-present)
 * Jake Willis (2020-present)

Relief

 * Marcus Morris (1998-2007)
 * Christian Fleming (1999-2006)
 * Jamie Ball (1999-2003)
 * Laura Price (2001-2013)
 * Jack Dougan (2002-2011)
 * Adrian Boyle (2010-present) (brother of Jason Boyle)
 * Jason Boyle (2012-present) (brother of Adrian Boyle)
 * Andrea Johnson (2016-present)

Trivia

 * The block is loosely inspired by Kuboia’s Bumper‘s Block which aired on Vision Network (now Vision One) in the 1990’s.
 * While on TV3, It would traditionally come after an episode of an adult animated series, mostly Duckman and South Park.

2001 Sam and Max
On 15th September, 2001, during a run of Sam & Max: Freelance Police, the episode entitled “Fools Die On Friday” was aired, in which Sam & Max attempt to foil a blimp hijacking aimed to crash into The Statue of Liberty, only to find the demented terrorist is Lorne, the Friend for Life. Whilst not a particularly offensive episode, it was seen as disrespectful to show it so soon after 9/11. Despite this, the episode has been reshown since on Fox Kids and The Fix.

2009 Carmit Arditi situation
In 2009, Super Saturday moved channels from TV3 to sister network TV4, since the former TV3 scheduler (Adrian Gibson) made the schedules for SS, TV4 controller, Carmit Arditi, was hired to do the schedules when the block moved to TV4. After two months, Arditi decided to add South Park to the block, with no censors applied, at 8.00pm. Younger children that watched the block without their parents began repeating swear words from these shows. Parents eventually noticed the shows and ratings also dropped by 10 thousand, causing a stir of controversy. Three weeks after, TV3 issued a public apology and as a result, Carmit was fired from EuroMedia. The channel was also fined £50,000. After the apology, viewers again rose back to around 13m viewers, higher than the figures prior to the incident.

In a 2012 interview in The Euro Republican Times, Arditi admits that he knew they were adult shows, stating he began to transmit these shows to "broaden the reach and appeal of Super Saturday to parents and teens."