Kuwait

KUWAIT is a Middle Eastern country at the north of the Persian / Arabic Gulf.

Profile

Country Number (N/K)	?	SECOND WAVE?
Region	Middle East
Television commenced	1961
Colour System	1974	PAL
Language/s	Arabic and English	Dubbed or Subtitled

Television Stations / Channels

The Kuwaiti government's Ministry of Information launched the country's television service in 1961.

The station's transmitters were able to broadcast across the Gulf to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, but due to the distance, it was only on the warm summer months that reception in those countries was at its clearest. (The transmission of signals northwards from those countries to Kuwait was severely affected by temperature and other atmospheric conditions, meaning that Kuwaiti viewers could only on rarest of occasions view those broadcasts.)

Colour transmissions began in 1974 using the PAL colour broadcast system.

A second colour channel was launched in 1979. KTV One was an Arabic station, screening foreign programmes, mostly from the US, dubbed into Arabic; and KTV Two was generally an English language channel, featuring mostly UK and US imports, some of which were dubbed into Arabic.

Language/s

The principal languages of Kuwait are Arabic and English. As with the United Arab Emirates, half the population of the country are ex-patriots working in the oil industry.

DOCTOR WHO IN KUWAIT

الدكتور هو

BBC Records

Kuwait is not named in The Seventies, The Handbook, The Eighties or DWM.

It is noted in Richard Molesworth's book, WIPED!, that some of the PAL video tapes of Jon Pertwee stories that were returned to the BBC in 1991 from the United Arab Emirates may have been sent to Kuwait at some point.

TV listings

Several issues of the Kuwait Times from the mid-1980s were accessed, but the only listings for Doctor Who were from the United Arab Emirates.

The Bahrain Gulf Mirror, which also listed TV schedules for most of the Gulf countries, was viewed from 1977 onwards, but that also did not contain any listings for the series on Kuwait TV.

The lack of any clear BBC Records specifically naming Kuwait would seem to indicate that the series did not screen there. But this profile has been added to BroaDWcast because there is still some uncertainty...

Kuwait in Doctor Who

• Greg Preston worked on an oil well in Kuwait (Inferno)

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