Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When did Sábado Gigante first air?
Sábado Gigante (English translation: "Giant Saturday" or "Gigantic Saturday"; known officially as Sábado Gigante Internacional outside Chile) was a Spanish-language television program broadcast by Spanish International Network in the United States. It was also Univision's longest-running program and the longest-running television variety series in history.[2] Sábado Gigante is an eclectic and frenetic mix of various contests, human-interest stories, and live entertainment. From its start in 1962, it was hosted by Chilean TV star Mario Kreutzberger under the stage name of Don Francisco. Rolando Barral began serving as a co-host in 1986; that role was taken over by Javier Romero in 1991.
Studio Gigante was a Chicago-based video game developer established in 2000 by John Tobias, Dave Michicich, and Joshua Tsui, several developers of Midway's popular "Mortal Kombat" fighting game series. Its name is a play on the name of the television series "Sábado Gigante". The company only released two games, both exclusive to the original Xbox. Its first release was "", which debuted in 2003 to mixed reviews. The company's sophomore effort, 2005's "WWE WrestleMania 21" was critically panned. The studio folded in 2005 shortly after the game's release.
Every hour of the show, recording artists and bands (usually from Latin America) perform songs live in front of the audience. Notable non-Spanish language artists/groups that performed in Sábado Gigante have included Pitbull, No Mercy, Eden's Crush, i5, Dream, Tony Bennett and Psy.
Estefan first came to the spotlight in 1986, when she was hired by Univision to participate as a model on the television show "Sábado Gigante". She quickly became a favorite of the audience and the show host, Don Francisco, himself (as he admitted in his 2002 autobiography). Estefan even appeared on Francisco's program "Don Francisco Presenta" on numerous occasions.
The Spanish-language variety show known as "Sábados Gigantes" (forerunner of the U.S. "Sábado Gigante") began in 1962 with Don Francisco and lasted into the 1990s. His daughter, Vivianne Kreutzberger, currently hosts the program under the title "Gigantes con Vivi", while Don Francisco has hosted the U.S. version since April 12, 1986 until the end of the show's run on September 19, 2015.
Super Sábados ("Super Saturdays") was a TV game and variety show of Telemundo Puerto Rico, which aired from 1984 to 1991. From 1987 to 1989, was also broadcast by Telemundo Network in the United States. In many cities, it competed with the Univision game show "Sabado Gigante".
It is also well known for the song "Mueve la colita", where the idea of the contest was conceived from; it has been an unofficial "hymn" of Sábado Gigante. Don Francisco had stated that the popularity of the song (and its accompanying dance) saved the program from an early cancellation in 1987, although this was not publicly revealed until 2012, during the show's 50th anniversary celebration.
After the "licitación" of 1997, Caracol did not receive any timeslots on Saturdays. This meant that Caracol's signature Saturday programs were presented for the first seven months of 1998 under the auspices of other "programadoras"; Sábados Felices was presented by Coestrellas, CPS and Proyectamos Televisión. The 1998 move of Caracol from a "programadora" to a private television channel, after 1,323 episodes had been aired, marked a format change for the program.
On January 23, 2010, Canseco was amongst more than 50 Univision personalities who solicited live donations for the "Unidos Por Haití"(United for Haiti) 2010 Haiti earthquake relief effort. The live show aired during Sábado Gigante.
Throughout the show's run on Univision, a disclaimer said by either Don Francisco, Javier Romero or one of the co-presenters precedes the car games by stating: "Neither Sábado Gigante or Univision ask for money in exchange for prizes, if you receive a call asking for money in exchange for a prize [from someone claiming to be on behalf of Univision or Sábado Gigante], please call the corresponding authorities." while the same disclaimer is shown on-screen at the end of the program. A similar disclaimer is also used for the Chilean version of Gigante hosted by Don Francisco's daughter, Vivi. Contestants must be 18 and older to compete for the car. It has been revealed that the winning contestants have to wait 30 days for their cars to be delivered to them and that the actual car varied from the one shown in the program.
These gags would later carry over on Don Francisco's later programs (Don Francisco Te Invita and Siempre Niños, both on Telemundo) after the cancellation of Sábado Gigante, whenever Magill is a guest on them.
The network's signature program, the variety show "Sabado Gigante", hosted by Don Francisco, aired on Univision every Saturday night from April 11, 1987 to September 19, 2015 (its final episode was broadcast live in the U.S., Mexico and in Chile, where the program originated in 1963); in addition from September 2004 to May 2015, Univision aired "Clásicos de Sábado Gigante" ("Giant Saturday Classics"), an early Sunday morning program consisting of condensed two-hour episodes of the series on an approximately one-year delay from their original broadcast. After "Sabado Gigante" ended its 29-year run on the network, Univision continued the Saturday evening variety tradition with its move of the Televisa-produced music and game show "Sabadazo" – which it had aired on Saturday afternoons since the show moved from sister network TeleFutura (now UniMás) in September 2012 – into part of "Gigante"s former time slot on October 17, 2015, before reverting to an afternoon slot and being replaced by the investigative news program "Crónicas De Sábado" after four months due to low ratings. As such, Univision is one of only two American television networks that airs the first-run program during Saturday prime time (CBS is the only other, although ABC, Fox and occasionally NBC broadcast live sporting events during Saturday prime on certain weeks of the year).
The program's broadcasts were subsequently moved to Saturdays, and henceforth, was renamed Sábados Gigantes in 1963 and quickly developed a loyal following in Chile, and then throughout Latin America. In Chile, during the 1970s and 1980s, the show reached peak audiences of 80%. During this period, some episodes of the program lasted up to eight hours.
On April 12, 1986 Kreutzberger and the program moved to Miami, Florida where it began to be produced by KMEX-DT (formerly Spanish International Network, or SIN). At that time, the show's title was changed to the singular Sábado Gigante, although some longtime fans in Chile still call it by the pluralized title. On June 18, 2005 the series celebrated its 1,000th episode on Univisión, and on May 20, 2006 it celebrated its 20th anniversary in the U.S. and on May 21, 2011 it celebrated its 25th anniversary on the Univision. On October 27, 2012, Sábado Gigante celebrated its 50th anniversary (counting both its runs in Chile and the U.S.).
The three-hour program aired on Univision each Saturday night at 8:00p.m. A new episode was produced every week throughout the show's history, with no reruns and only rare pre-emptions due to special programming (most notably by Teletón USA, an annual 24-hour telethon held each December, which Kreutzberger has hosted since its inception in 2012). On April 17, 2015, Univision announced that Sábado Gigante would end after 53 years, with its final episode (titled Sábado Gigante: Hasta Siempre; English translation: "Giant Saturday: Forever" or "Gigantic Saturday: Forever") airing on September 19, 2015.[3] For the first time during the show's run, the final episode aired live in Chile, Mexico and the U.S.[4] After the finale, Univision replaced it with a prerecorded Mexican show, Sabadazo, which premiered on October 30, 2010 on Televisa and September 2012 on Univision. It was later replaced with Crónicas de Sábado and Sal y Pimienta on Univision as Sabadazo was moved back to its original afternoon time slot on KMEX-DT (both shows were later replaced by 2-3 Liga MX football matches broadcast on the network under the name Sábado Futbolero broadcast during that league's season; Sabadazo was then cancelled in 2015).
There has been one instance where infidelity was not involved in this segment, when a woman believed to had an encounter with extraterrestrial life in Battle Ground, Washington.
Barral is perhaps best remembered as co-host of SIN's long-running variety show "Sábado Gigante" from January to March 1987, when he abruptly moved back to WSCV (which then became a Telemundo affiliate), where he hosted "Super Sábado". In September 1987 he moved back to Channel 23, with "Lunes y Viernes with Barral" ("Mondays and Fridays with Barral").
There are games similar to The Price Is Right's "3 Strikes" pricing game, but gameplay varied depending on that game's concept (with the El Chacal de la Trompeta character image used as the "strikes"; if the contestant finds the Sábado Gigante logo, it will eliminate one strike and awards a $500 bonus, which the contestant gets to keep regardless of outcome). Each wheel adds $1,000 to the player's score, and if the contestant successfully finds all 4 wheels, the contestant wins $4,000 and a brand new car and the prizes they have accumulated. A variant of this game uses people holding large cards containing El Chacal, the Wheel and the Sábado Gigante logo. This version appears only in special episodes of the show and wherever the show is broadcast remotely outside Miami. Notable participants have included Nuestra Belleza Latina/Miss Venezuela contestants, Sábado Gigante characters, Miss Colita contestants among others.
In September 2009, comedian Adonis Losada, who played Doña Concha on the show, was arrested and subsequently charged with 30 counts of possession of child pornography after detectives in Boynton Beach, Florida alleged that he uploaded one of the images to a social networking site. Police found 18 images of child pornography on a hard drive in his home.[7] Following the arrest, the Doña Concha character was scrapped from Sábado Gigante. On July 7, 2016 Losada was found guilty and sentenced to 153 years in prison.
Afterwards, she appeared in a tribute to Roberto Gómez Bolaños (Chespirito) in 2005 and in famous variety show "Sábado Gigante - Don Francisco Presenta". She was also chosen as one of the leads in the musical Peter Pan which had a long run in Buenos Aires.
Kreutzberger originated the weekly program on August 8, 1962, airing on Canal 13 in Chile as Show Dominical ("Sunday's Show"). He had been inspired by television shows he had seen in the United States and Argentina but, as he explained, "My idea was mixing all the programs that I saw into one program."
In 2011, following the Haiti earthquake, the show aired a special three-hour telethon benefiting the American Red Cross.
The Spanish-language networks also joined in on the celebration. SIN/Univision's coverage of the event is called ¡Feliz (Year Number)! hosted by Don Francisco from "Sábado Gigante". It became the biggest New Year's Eve program on the network since its original run and it currently airs at 10:00pm since 1986. For ¡Feliz 2006!, the show starts after "Sábado Gigante" at a special time of 7:00pm instead of the original 8:00pm time slot to finish 2005. ¡Feliz 2009! only covers the New York City at EST portion of the program. in 2011 for the first time ever Univision Communications was announcement to Live from Disneyland Resort at PST for ¡Feliz 2011!. ¡Feliz 2017! was on air at 3:00pm in the afternoon to though 9:00pm at finish 2016 including Los Angeles, California, U.S., Hong Kong, China, Dubai, UAE , Baghdad, Iraq, Cairo, Egypt, Moscow, Russia, Berlin, Germany, London, England, UK, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Pitbull participated in the 2018 edition, after his own "Pitbull's New Year's Revolution" special for Fox was cancelled.
It is noted that Magill had also been frequently criticized by Don Francisco, as well as (in some occasions) made fun of by the audience due to his poor Spanish-speaking ability (despite Magill's first language being Spanish during childhood). However, Magill has stated that he re-learned the language through his tenure on Sábado Gigante. During an interview, Magill (jokingly) stated that if he was fluent in Spanish, he would have not been allowed to participate in the show. Another running gag during these segments had Don Francisco constantly annoy Magill while holding certain animals (mostly those potentially dangerous to humans) by constantly asking questions about the animal held.
This segment is a dance competition. The first round has contestants perform a freestyle dance before a panel of judges. Only three are selected for the final rounds of the contest.