On 24 August 1994, with
Jeffrey Katzenberg's resignation, a reorganization of
The Walt Disney Company took place in which
Richard Frank became head of newly formed
Disney Television and Telecommunications (DTT), which included Walt Disney Television International, which held Disney's Super RTL stake. The Luxembourgish
CLT (owners of the German RTL channel) made a deal with Disney to form RTL Disney Fernsehen GmbH & Co. in 1995.
Super RTL Super RTL was finally launched on 28 April 1995, with
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh as its first ever program (aside from showing
Disney Channel's "TV" ident, Super RTL is not owned by
Disney Branded Television, instead, it was owned by Disney's Buena Vista International Television Investments division). The Disney-CC/ABC merger led to DTT being split up in April 1996, Walt Disney Television International was transferred to
Capital Cities/ABC in that same month. CC/ABC combined the international units, Walt Disney Television International and ACIBG, into
Disney–ABC International Television (DAIT) in July. Around the same time, in the 1990s, Bertelsmann ultimately came out on top after having gradually increased its stake in the German television channel RTL. Following a legal dispute with RTL/CLT, Bertelsmann announced plans to merge the television businesses of
UFA to form the joint venture CLT-UFA in April 1996. A merger agreement was signed on 8 July 1996. It was approved by the CLT board of directors on 5 December, and the formation of CLT-UFA was completed on 14 January 1997. As a result, German television channels such as RTL Television, Super RTL and VOX and international broadcasting services, including M6 in France, were all brought together under one roof. The Fun & Action Tour, a Germany-wide roadshow event for children, was started in 1997 featuring TV program characters. The tour was later renamed the Toggo Tour. The following year, the channel became the top view channel by the 3-to-13-year-old target age group. In 1999, the joint venture saw its channel make a net profit of
DM 4.5 million, launched its website and started the Super RTL Licensing Agency to make more revenues from TV licensing. A new managing director, Claude Schmit, took charge of the venture in 2000. Bertelsmann turned over the learning platform Scoyo to Super RTL in 2009.
Program contents' changes, and post-Disney era (2014-present) With the announcement of the launch of a free-to-air
German version of Disney Channel causing a loss of Disney programming, Super RTL signed volume deals in October 2013 with
Warner Bros. Worldwide Television Distribution and
Sony Pictures Television for a slate of animated features and
DreamWorks Animation (DWA) for 1,200 hours of programming until 2020. The DWA deal included shows from the
Classic Media library. The channel also acquired programming to expand its views in the evenings with more adult TV shows to debut in its fall 2014 schedule:
ABC Family's
Pretty Little Liars, ABC's
Once Upon a Time and Scandal and Syfy's
Lost Girl supernatural series. As of 1 January 2014, Disney programming left the channel, because the broadcast version of Disney Channel launched on 17 January. However, Disney continued to hold its stake in the station.
Sale of Disney stake and rebranding of Primetime block to RTL Super (2021-present) On March 3, 2021, the RTL Group announced it had fully acquired Disney's stake in RTL Disney Fernsehen GmbH & Co. KG, putting Super RTL under its full control for the first time. At the end of July 2023, it was announced that Super RTL would be renamed to "RTL Super" in the middle of August 2023. However, it was later confirmed that only Super RTL Primetime would rebrand under the name, and that the existing Super RTL channel wouldn't be affected. In October 2024, it was announced that the Toggolino brand would cease to exist, with all children's programming being branded under the singular "Toggo" name.
Scrapped merger with Nickelodeon Germany (2024) On April 24, 2024, Super RTL entered into a new major partnership with
Paramount Global to secure a new free-to-air broadcast deal for Nickelodeon programming in Germany, and to fully acquire
Nickelodeon Germany and replace it with a standalone Toggo branded network, subject to approval. On 18 September, it was announced that the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) had blocked the Nickelodeon channel deal. ==Programming==