Classic Dr Who write-up in TV Guide - circa 1972

[Mikey]

Just found this and thought it was very interesting a huge American TV magazine had a Dr Who write-up as early as 1972.

I always thought Dr Who was basically unknown in the US until Tom Baker hit the scene.



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[phil]

Thanks for posting this. It's great to see this sort of thing.

[johnmiic]

So Mike, this proves that DW was shown in NY/NJ with Pertwee episodes before Tom Baker episodes premiered?

[Mikey]

So Mike, this proves that DW was shown in NY/NJ with Pertwee episodes before Tom Baker episodes premiered?

It said it was being played in syndication.
That means if it played in our area it would be on channel 5, 9 or 11

The earlist Dr Who memory I have is channel 9 airing Tom Baker's Robot on Saturday mornings in parts.
I'm guessing this was around 1977-ish

I do have a very old foggy memory of seeing Death to the Daleks even before 9's broadcast of Robot but my memory isn't strong enough that I can't say I really did see it before 76-ish or even what channel it was on.

I found this on wiki ......

The 1970s: Doctor Who comes to the United States

The BBC series was originally sold to television stations in the United States in 1972, with Time-Life Television syndicating selected episodes of Jon Pertwee's time as the Doctor. Unfortunately, the series did not do well, despite an interesting write-up some years earlier in TV Guide. Apparently, program directors of the commercial television stations that picked up the Jon Pertwee series did not know that the program was an episodic serial, and so it was constantly being shuffled about in the programming schedules.

In 1977, Tom Baker's first four seasons as the Doctor were sold to PBS stations across the United States. At least five commercial stations (WOR in New York, WSBK-TV in Boston, KUHT in Houston, WTVQ in Lexington, KY and WVEC in Norfolk, VA) also aired the show for a few years. This time, though, Time-Life was ready to have the Doctor poised for American consumption, by having stage and screen actor Howard Da Silva read voiceover commentaries and teasers for the next episode which would inform the viewer as to what was going on. To accommodate the teasers (which were made out of clips from the next episode), up to three minutes of original material was cut from each episode. Originally mistaken for a British comedy (along the lines of Doctor in the House, Good Neighbors, Benny Hill, and Monty Python),[citation needed] PBS program planners took the show at face value, but it soon achieved cult status.

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