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 and cartoons would show on the main channel starting that October. Super Saturday launched on TV3 on Saturday October 11, 1997 from 6pm to 11pm. The presenters were Steve Wilkinson who was a famous presenter on sister channel Ch4Children on weekday mornings and Emma Smith, who was poached from Children’s ETV. The block aired shows from Fox Kids, Nickelodeon and Disney (through the deals) alongside third-party series by HiT Entertainment and DiC. At Christmas time, it would also show 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 timeslot in November of the same year. In May 2009, it was announced that in Fall, Super Saturday would move to sister channel ZTV and run from 5pm to 11pm.

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. It unexpectly returned earlier on June 6, 2020.

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.

Current lineup

 * Adventure Time (2010-present)
 * Gravity Falls (2012-present)
 * Bluey (2020-present; heavily censored)
 * SpongeBob SquarePants (2000-2012; 2020-present)
 * Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese (2020-present)
 * Deadly 60 (2020-present)
 * Danger Mouse (Original; 1997-1999, Reboot; 2020-present)
 * Phineas and Ferb (2008-present)
 * Blue Peter Euro Republics (2013-present)
 * Thomas & Friends (1997-present)
 * Milo Murphy’s Law (2018-present)
 * Oggy & The Cockroaches (1999-2004; 2018-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)

Super Saturday: The Sun Has Rose
Between 1999 and 2018, during most nationally recognised ER school holiday periods, after Sunrise, a Super Saturday branded block would air to provide continuity into and out of unrelated shows aimed primarily towards children. This would last throughout the morning, usually until around midday. Although typically presented to the viewer as simply a programme on TV3, most of Super Saturday: The Sun Has Rose is perhaps better classified as an informal style of in-vision continuity.

The strand also acted as an umbrella brand for the programming which it linked to, by use of Super Saturday style break-bumpers and Digital On-Screen Graphics. The expanded format always featured the regular content of Sunrose from 6am to 9 am. The first run of Super Saturday: The Sun Has Rose during the summer of 1997 was titled as such all the way from its 6 am start, presented throughout by Richard May and Lou Evans. Future editions would see slight separations made from the 7 am to 9 am content, by way of this portion of the show being branded and scheduled as Sunrise, with all content after 9 am taking on the expanded The Sun Has Rose name. After a while, a further distinction was made by using a different set of presenters from that of Sunrise.

Programming was primarily composed of reruns of TV3 shows and US imports. The line-up changed frequently.
 * Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1999-2007)
 * Babylon 5 (1999-2002)
 * Batman (2000)
 * Bewitched (1999)
 * Biker Mice from Mars (1999-2005)
 * Boy Meets World (1999-2010)
 * California Dreams (1999-2001)
 * CatDog (1999-2000)
 * City Guys (1999-2003)
 * The Crystal Maze (1999-2013)
 * Dennis and Gnasher (1996 series) (1999-2009)
 * Dennis and Gnasher (2009 series) (2009-2014)
 * Eerie Indiana (1999-2002)
 * Fantastic Four (1999-2004)
 * Inspector Gadget (1999-2007)
 * Hang Time (1999-2005)
 * Johnny Bravo (1999-2008)
 * Moesha (1999-2004)
 * The Monkees (1999-2000)
 * Pugwall's Summer (1999 and 2000)
 * Renford Rejects (1999-2006)
 * Sam & Max (1999-2001)
 * The Simpsons (1999-2018)
 * Sister Sister (1999-2010)
 * The Secret World of Alex Mack (1999-2010)

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)
 * Mandy Hibbert (2015-present)
 * Benjamin Williams (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.

2010 Carmit Arditi situation
In 2009, Super Saturday moved channels from TV3 to sister network Viasat 4, since the former TV3 scheduler (Amanda Govern) made the schedules for SS, the Viasat 4 scheduler, Isreal born Carmit Arditi, was hired to do the schedules when the block moved to Viasat 4. After two months, Arditi decided to add South Park and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (rated MA in the Euro Republics) to the block, with no censors applied, at 7:15pm, sliced inbetween a triple bill of Peppa Pig, and Tituef. 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. Three weeks after, TV3 issued a public apology and as a result, Carmit was fired from EuroMedia. He was also fined £50,000. The then presenters, Alexa DeSanta and Stanley Olivier said that “the horrible, filthy shows must not be placed with innocent, fun cartoons, Carmit!”.

In a 2012 interview in The Euro Republican Times, Arditi admits that he knew they were adult shows and wanted to make Super Saturday an adult block and that he hates everyone at EuroMedia.

2019 Carmit Arditi
In 2019, Carmit was unexpectedly rehired by the staff of EuroMedia, as the head of scheduling at Fox.

2001 Sam and Max
On September 15, 2001, in a change to the schedule, an episode of Teletubbies was replaced with an episode of Sam & Max: Freelance Police (a series that not seen on Super Saturday since 1999, due to low ratings) entitled “Fools Die On Friday” 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. The broadcast of the episode was seen as disrespectful to those who died on 9/11. The episode will not be shown when FOX ER reairs the series in 2020.