Missing Misterio

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The Mystery of the Missing Misterios

There is something amiss with the sales of Doctor Who / Dr Misterio to Central American and South American countries.

The big mystery is, did the series actually screen in all the countries purported to have purchased the series?

Latin America – green = Spanish; orange = Portuguese

BBC Records list the following Central and South American countries in a report (going up to December 1979) for which a payment had been made for the rights to use incidental music featured in the first 23 Tom Baker stories, Robot to The Invasion of Time:

Ecuador	by November & December 1978
Venezuela	by February 1979
Mexico	by February 1979
Chile	by February 1979
Brazil	by March 1979
Guatemala	by March 1979

For payments from Ecuador, most of season 14 is dated December 1978, the rest November.

The actual clearances payment memos do actually group the countries together on the same page: so Venezuela, Mexico and Chile (in that order) are on the same payment slip, and Brazil and Guatemala (in that order) are both on the same notice; this indicates that the sale to each group of countries was made at the same time.

The February 1987 memo mentioned in The Eighties - THE LOST CHAPTERS records sales to the following Latin American countries:

Chile	23 stories
Costa Rica	1 story
Dominican Republic	7 stories
Guatemala	24 stories *
Honduras	24 stories *
Nicaragua	24 stories *

[* We feel sure that 24 should be 23, as that was how many Baker stories were in the package.]

BUT

Is there any significance in the fact that Costa Rica's "1" plus Chile's "23" equals "24"? (Both countries start with the letter "C". Coincidence?) Could it be that for those other three countries allocated with "24", there is yet another country (not named) being the extra "1" in the total?

There is also the fact that three further Latin American countries screened the series, which are not named in either of those two documents:

Colombia

Peru

Puerto Rico

Airdates for Colombia have been found; Puerto Rico aired episodes in the "late 1970s", while those for Peru have yet to be researched...

Of note, only Chile and Guatemala appear in both lists, when in fact they all should. Why are the other sales of Dr Misterio missing? Mexico and Colombia should definitely be in the 1987 memo but are both conspicuous by their absence...

Costa Rica is recorded as buying only one story – and yet we have found over 330 airdates for that country.

Airdates have been located for Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia and Nicaragua only – all started in 1979 or 1980. Newspapers have been checked from 1978 to the mid-1980s for the other countries (with the exception of Honduras, for which only 1984 onwards have been accessed). But "El Dr Misterio" is missing from the published television listings for Venezuela, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Dominican Republic. And for Brazil, where Portuguese is the official language, no listings have been found for "Doutor Who". Sure, it's possible that the series aired outside the date ranges we've searched, but with 98 episodes to find, even if they were stripped five days a week, it is hard to believe that we couldn't find at least one listing even when viewing one week in every third month at random.

The fact that all the dated music payments are from December 1978 to March 1979, shortly after the grand launch of the series in the United States, suggests that Time Life wanted to exploit the new series to as many countries as possible, and all at the same time. Time Life handled sales to Latin America as well as North America, so did its deal include some sort of "bulk" sale / offer that encompassed not only the USA but also Latin America and South America? (Strictly speaking, Brazil is not Latin America, but being part of South America, it is still included in Time Life's catchment area.) There is no certainty that in all cases an actual sale ever took place. Some of these may have been prospective sales.

In the 1960s / early 1970s, some of the television stations in Latin America were supported financially by the major networks in the United States: for instance the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) had investment interests in stations operating from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela, although it's not known whether those financial interests continued into the late 1970s when Doctor Who was on offer, or even influenced the programming that those stations aired.

Did Time Life perhaps operate a "pool" system, whereby they bought in advance the rights for "X" number of Latin American countries (they "guaranteed" the BBC that they could sell the series to the minimum number of countries needed to make the endeavour worthwhile), and then opened those rights for tender on a "first come, first served" basis? And then, once all the advance sales had been reached, those countries got first 'dibs' on the number of episodes they wanted. (And based on the level of interest, Time-Life then undertook the long process of dubbing the episodes into Spanish.)

With the recorded "sales" to Ecuador, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and Guatemala all being within a very short space of time of each other (a five month period), it's possible the series was offered and "sold" to all of them "sight unseen". After the dubbed tapes had been received, all but Chile and Mexico decided to "pass" of the science-fiction series.

Any 'unsold' stories would then go back into the pool, to become available to a second batch of tenders? (Is this why Colombia only got nine serials?) Are the countries named in the music rights register therefore only those from the first advance offer (even if they subsequently declined to buy the series)? And are those named in the 1987 list those from a much later (partial?) offer? (Is this why Dominican Republic has only "(7)" sales recorded?) Are the countries from the 'second' (and 'third'?) offer (made after 1980) the ones missing (omitted in error?) from the 1987 memo?

And how do the music payments actually work? Could each music clearance fee actually cover more than one country? For instance, did the clearances for the February sale to Chile automatically include its neighbour, Venezuela, even if that country didn't subsequently purchase the series for itself? If a fee had been paid in advance – and thus recorded in the music payments register – did it get refunded if a sale of the series did not proceed? If so, why was the register not updated? Or was the cancellation / refund recorded somewhere else?

Is there any significance to the fact that Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica all lie in very close proximity to one another? These countries could have been able to receive television transmissions from their neighbours. Guatemala and Honduras lie between Mexico and Nicaragua; two countries for which airdates have not been found lying slap-bang between two countries for which airdates have been identified. Would that mean a country which did not buy the series still had to pay a small fee because they could pick up cross-border transmissions?

Of the twelve countries under examination, Chile is the only one that appears in the music clearances records, has the correct number of stories in the 1987 memo (23), and has its airdates confirmed. All three components are present and there are no conflicts; all the facts fit. So why is it not the same for any of the others?

Let's combine all the tables:

Country	music paid	airdates	1987
Ecuador	by Nov & Dec 1978	--	--
Venezuela	by February 1979	--	--
Mexico	by February 1979	4 May 1979	--
Chile	by February 1979	9 May 1979	23
Puerto Rico	--	late 1970s	--
Brazil	by March 1979	--	--
Guatemala	by March 1979	--	24
Costa Rica	--	4 Feb 1980	1
Colombia	--	13 Feb 1980	--
Nicaragua	--	6 Aug 1980	24
Dominican Republic	--	--	7
Honduras	--	--	24
Peru	--	--	--

- Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil appear only in the music report, and nowhere else. Did the series actually ever screen in those three countries? Are these merely potential sales that Time Life offered but which ultimately did not go ahead – hence their absence from the other two columns? Is it possible that Venezuela on-sold their unused rights to neighbouring Colombia? Was it the fact that Brazil broadcast in the PAL format, and would have to create their own language dubs (whereas all other countries in South America had distribution by Time-Life, and broadcast in NTSC and Spanish) the reason why the series didn't air?

- In terms of their first airdates, Mexico and Chile are in the same order in which they appear in the music clearance report. Coincidence?

- Mexico is missing from the 1987 memo list that's presented in The Eighties - THE LOST CHAPTERS. However it's entirely possible that Mexico was named in the memo itself, but was accidentally omitted from the published list. On that point, have any other countries been omitted? Problem is we cannot verify either way, as the authors of the book no longer have a copy of the memo...

- Puerto Rico is not named in any of the memos, and yet the series aired in "the late 1970s".

- Airdates for Brazil have been impossible to find; the country has over 50 private TV stations, which don't all have listings in newspapers.

- Newspapers have been checked for 1978 to 1980 for Guatemala, so it's possible that the series aired much later. But if music payments were made in early 1979, why hold off screening the series for more than two years? Both Chile and Mexico screened the series within a few months of the "payment" date. Costa Rica and Nicaragua also screened the series a very short time after the final entry on the music memo was recorded. If the music payment related to the start of broadcast, then Dr Misterio would have played in Guatemala around June 1979... Did Guatemala sell its rights to Costa Rica?

- Costa Rica, Colombia and Nicaragua are missing from the "music paid" list – but that's perfectly understandable since their broadcasts did not commence until 1980, and the documents examined when the music memo was compiled only went up to December 1979.

- Colombia is absent from the 1987 memo, and yet the series aired the same year as Costa Rica and Nicaragua which both are in the memo.

- Airdates for Dominican Republic have not been found despite papers covering 1980 to 1988 being checked...

- Peru is absent from the memo and the music clearances, and we only have anecdotal evidence to go on that the series had screened there. We are still searching...

- The jury is still out on Honduras; until 1979 to 1983 newspapers can be checked, we don't know for sure whether or not the series aired.

CONCLUSION

We may be completely overlooking something obvious here!

• Have we been looking in the wrong newspapers?
• Are the BBC records wrong / inaccurate / incomplete / being taken out of context?
• For those countries where no airdates have been found, were the 'sales' cancelled after the music payments had been made, and the money later refunded?
• Did some countries have to pay some sort of "proximity payment" to cover transmissions they received from their close neighbours?
• Did a sale to the first country in each region also cover the clearance costs of the second (and third?) country within that same region, which is why the second (and third?) country is not recorded in the 1987 memo?
• For sales and/or advance payments for screenings that didn't proceed, could the "sale" be transferred to another country that "refunded" the original purchaser instead of the BBC? (e.g. Venezuela "sold" its rights to Colombia, but only the former is recorded in the clearances register...)
• The "sales" were handled by Time-Life, who would have notified the BBC of all sales that had been completed; but how accurate was their communication with the BBC? Did they provide the BBC with details of every sale?
• Did a sale of Doctor Who to one of the non-PBS networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) allow that network to on-sell the programme to those Latin American stations with which they were affiliated?

A number of questions that can't be answered – so for now, the Mystery of the Missing Misterios will have to remain unsolved...

Links

• Central America
• South America
• Spanish