United Kingdom

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Radio Times regional edition listings for 4 January 1982 show different start times for Castrovalva ep 1
BBC TV listing in a Spanish newspaper: Dr Who Survival at 8.35pm - timeslot adjusted for one time zone east (this is part 1, 22 November 1989)

The United Kingdom covers England, Wales, Scotland, the Channel Islands and Northern Ireland, all of which receive BBC signals by transmitter relay.

Because of variations in the TV schedules due to alternative regional programming, BBC Northern Ireland, BBC Cymru (Wales) and BBC Scotland sometimes aired programmes at times or dates outside the rest of the network. For example, on 4 January 1982, part 1 of Castrovalva aired at different times in different regions: on BBC Scotland it screened at 3.30pm, in England at 6.55pm, while viewers in Wales saw it at the much later time of 7.45pm.

Variants like this were far more common in Wales than in Scotland; one extreme example of BBC Cymru's alternative scheduling was when they screened the bulk of Jon Pertwee's final season in 1974 on Sundays rather than in the traditional Saturday slot.

For the 1993 repeat of Planet of the Daleks, BBC Scotland aired it on BBC2 while the rest of the network saw it on BBC1 -- although BBC Northern Ireland screened the episodes in a much later timeslot.

See the dedicated pages for more on these variances:

BBC signals are also available in parts of the Republic of Ireland, while during the 1960s and 70s some viewers in coastal areas of Belgium, France and the Netherlands were also able to view BBC transmissions (albeit weak signals) coming across the English channel.

From the mid-1980s, BBC broadcasts -- including Doctor Who -- were seen "live" in certain countries in Europe via analogue cable link and satellite feed (with the published start/end times in newspapers adjusted to allow for the different international time zones).

Satellite broadcasts from Europe were likewise available in the UK, such as the German station RTL Plus.

Repeats of Doctor Who were also available on a number of analogue cable and satellite channels owned and operated by the BBC itself -- see our dedicated BBC page and the list below.

Several non-BBC independent cable and satellite and online platforms also screened Doctor Who -- see our dedicated Cable and Satellite page and the list below.

In the late 1990s, Doctor Who appeared on the BBC's new digital channels, such as BBC Choice.