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The show would begin at noon with Supe's On!, an hour-long warm-up to the movies, with a Laurel and Hardy short sandwiched between two Three Stooges shorts. Superhost would appear during commercial breaks, cracking jokes, showing skits, and talking to the TV audience. Superhost greeted fans with his famous "Hello, dere" and follow with sketches like "The Moronic Woman" (a parody of The Bionic Woman) "Caboose Supe" (a Boxcar Willie takeoff), and "Fat Whitman" (a spoof of Slim Whitman). His most famous sketch was a takeoff on the popular trucker song Convoy. He was also known for referring to the movies as "flicks" as in "Let's get back to da flick." After Supe's On was finished, he would host an afternoon of films under the Mad Theater banner. Generally two films were shown, going from 1 to 4 p.m. The movies would be old horror films like Frankenstein or Japanese monster movies such as Godzilla. As the 1980s went along, with WCW Wrestling and other more contemporary syndicated weekend programming becoming available, the show began getting trimmed. First to the Supe's On hour (11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.) plus one movie (12:30 to 2 p.m) in 1985, then in 1987, the entire show was shortened to one hour under the Supe's On! banner, with Superhost appearing during commercial breaks during one episode each of The Munsters and Batman from 11 a.m. to noon. From 1988 until its finale in December 1989, the show was then changed to an hour of Three Stooges shorts (including a cartoon thrown in to help fill out the hour), with Superhost appearing during commercial breaks, all under the Supe's On with the Three Stooges! banner from 11 a.m. to noon (then towards the end moved to 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.) In addition to playing Superhost, Sullivan was a longtime floor director and staff announcer for WUAB, and without the Superhost costume, also occasionally hosted the daily afternoon Prize Movie, when usual host John Lanigan was off. Even post Superhost, he would continue to fill in for Lanigan until Sullivan retired in 1993. He also filled in anchoring news breaks during the primetime Star Movie when usual anchor Gary Short was off. In a story Sullivan likes to tell, he would sometimes be pressed into service on a Friday night when taping the Superhost show, and have to also do the live news breaks. So he'd quickly put on a jacket, shirt, and tie to do the news, while under the desk, he'd still have his Superhost costume on. He served in this capacity until 1988, when WUAB began their nightly Ten O'Clock News newscast. Sullivan would later joke that "it took an over thirty person news staff to replace me". In 1991, Sullivan was inducted into the Ohio Radio/TV Broadcasters Hall of Fame. |
