Colombia
COLOMBIA shares borders with Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, and Peru on the South American continent.
Profile
| Country Number (N/K) | 1980 | SECOND WAVE |
| Region | South America | |
| Television commenced | 13 June 1954 | |
| Colour System | 11 December 1979 | NTSC |
| Population | 1980 | 25,050,000 |
| TV Sets | 1980 | 1.7 million |
| Language/s | Spanish | Dubbed |
Television Stations / Channels
Colombia began its television service on 13 June 1954.
The government issued licences (usually for periods of three years at a time) to independent and privately-owned production or television companies who would bid for timeslots on the state channel, Canal 8.
The first licencee was Bogotá-based company Radiodifusora Nacional de Colombia.
From 1964, administration of the Canal 8 licences was handed over to the Instituto Nacional de Radio y Television, Colombia's first national public broadcasting organization, colloquially known as Inravisión.
In January 1966, a second television station was launched, broadcasting on Canal 9 / Channel 9. But only five years later, the privately-owned Teletigre closed down. In 1972, Inravisión took over ownership of Canal 9. Shortly after this, Canal 8 was renamed Canal 7.
In the late 1970s, a licence on Canal 9 was granted to Colombiana de Televisión.
It was on 11 December 1979, during Colombiana de Televisión's licence for 1 January 1978 to 31 December 1980, that the station began regular colour transmissions. However, to begin with, only imported foreign material was available in colour. It wasn't until the start of the next licence period - 1 January 1981 to 31 December 1983 – that all programming, including locally-produced fare, was in colour.
A third government channel – Canal 11 – was later launched purely for educational purposes.
Language/s
The principal language of Colombia is Spanish. Foreign television programmes are dubbed.
DOCTOR WHO (EL DOCTOR MISTERIO) IN COLOMBIA
In Spanish-language countries, the series was known as Doctor Misterio. The series was sold to Colombia during the Second Wave of sales (see Selling Doctor Who)).
BBC Records
Colombia is not named in any of our regular BBC Records sources. With the first recorded broadcasts occurring in 1980, the country is understandably not named in the 1979 music clearance memo. However its omission from the 1987 memo is odd.
- See also THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MISTERIOS
BroaDWcast became aware of the screenings in Colombia from the forum called DOBLADO AL ESPANOL (DUBBED INTO SPANISH).
One of the Colombian posters recalled seeing on one of the Colombian stations Jon Pertwee in 1978/79, Tom Baker on weekends in 1981, and Peter Davison in 1984.
But our research only unearthed details about the Tom Baker screenings:
Stories bought and broadcast
TOM BAKER
Nine stories, 38 episodes, screened out of order:
| 4B | The Sontaran Experiment | 2 |
| 4L | The Seeds of Doom | 6 |
| 4T | The Invisible Enemy | 4 |
| 4E | Genesis of the Daleks | 6 |
| 4C | The Ark in Space | 4 |
| Unknown 4 parter | 4 | |
| 4D | Revenge of the Cybermen | 4 |
| 4V | Horror of Fang Rock | 4 |
| 4G | Pyramids of Mars | 4 |
- For the Spanish story titles, go to: SPANISH
It appears Colombiana de Televisión bought only part of the standard package of Spanish-dubbed Tom Baker stories distributed by Time Life Television. (It's possible they acquired the full package of 23 stories / 98 episodes, but only had time to air some of the serials before their first licence expired at the end of 1980.)
Origin / Fate of the Tapes?
The tapes would have been sourced through Time Life Television. Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua also screened Tom Baker stories dubbed into Spanish supplied by Time Life around the same time.
Transmission
TOM BAKER
The first episode of Dr Misterio on Canal 9 was El Experimento de Sontaran, on Wednesday, 13 February 1980, at 4.00pm.
The papers for the next two weeks are missing. There is no listing in the 5 March paper. It is not until Saturday, 8 March 1980, that a billing for Dr Misterio appears again. But oddly the listing is under programming for Canal 7, which was not tendered to Colombiana de Televisión!
It's highly unlikely that a rival broadcaster would screen just that one episode. It is probably nothing more than a printing error, with the text for Doctor Misterio (from the 20 February paper?) accidentally appearing in the box intended for the actual programme scheduled on Canal 7 for that 6.00-6.30pm slot.
Regular Canal 9 listings for Doctor Misterio return from Wednesday, 2 April 1980, with The Seeds of Doom part three (the papers for the two previous Wednesdays were missing), and episodes continue without interruption every Wednesday until 19 November 1980.
In terms of just the Canal 9 listings, there were nine Tom Baker serials / 38 episodes in total, albeit airing in a purely random order, as noted in the story and Airdates tables. (We can't discount the unidentified 4-parter from being Robot; on Chile's Canal 13, Tom Baker's first adventure screened fourth...)
These Wednesday 1980 dates, of course, completely contradict the FORUM posting that Tom Baker aired in 1981 on Saturday and Sunday mornings! The only possible explanation is that the forum-poster has miss-recalled the year and day of the week - it was, after all, over 30 years ago!
(We checked online newspapers from Bogotá from 1978 to 1985, but outside 1980 there were no further listings for "Dr Misterio". Granted, newspapers for the first third of 1981 were not available, so if any episodes did screen on weekends for the first four months of 1981, there are only enough airdates to cover around 32 of the remaining unaccounted for 60 Baker episodes. If omnibus editions aired, such as was the case in Chile in 1980, it is only just possible for 14 serials to air, two per week, squeezed into the period not covered by papers.)
PAUL McGANN
The 1996 TV Movie was available in Colombia via the HBO OLE cable station in 1999.
TV listings
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← AIRDATES ...... (CLICK ICON TO GO TO TABLE SHOWING EPISODE BREAKDOWN AND AIRDATES - N/S = story title is Not Stated) |
Listings are from the El Tiempo archive, online at GOOGLE NEWS ARCHIVE.
The series is named "Dr Misterio" or "Doctor Misterio". Some of the billings noted it was in "COLOR". The series is described as being a "Pelicula", which means "Film". This might suggest that the programme was broadcast from film, but the term appears with other programmes billings, more as a generic description for a drama series or movie, rather than describing its physical format.
The majority of listings give the story title, sometimes with episode number (in Roman numerals), making it possible to determine what aired on the dates for which the paper was missing from the archive. A four-parter that screened during August 1980 is the only one without a title given for any of its episodes.
Some of the published story titles differ from the "usual" ones appearing in other Spanish newspapers, such as "Las Creación de los Daleks" and "La Venganza de los Cyberman". There were also unusual ones such as "El Hombre Invisible " ("The Invisible Man") and "El Arco en el Cielo" ("The Ark in the Sky" / "The Sky Ark")), and "Misterio "Dr Terror"", all of which must be printing or editorial slip-ups, rather than the titles under which they were dubbed and broadcast.
All the available archived papers from 1978 to the end of 1984, and some from 1985 to 1987 were accessed, but apart from the episodes identified above, there were no further listings for the series.
JON PERTWEE? and PETER DAVISON?
As noted above, the DUBBED INTO SPANISH FORUM reports that Jon Pertwee episodes aired in late 1978 / early 1979, around the time that colour was introduced (which was actually a year later, in December 1979), and a run of Peter Davison stories played in 1984. But we could not find any listings for "Dr Misterio" during those two date ranges.
It does seem odd that Pertwee and Davison episodes would have been translated into Spanish for only one country; there is no firm evidence of screenings of the third or fifth Doctor in any other Latin American country at that time...
It's likely the poster got the years 1980 and 1981 mixed up for the Tom Baker serials, but that he's certain it was weekend mornings not mid-week afternoons is baffling. It's not unreasonable of us therefore to wonder whether his memories of seeing Pertwee in 1978/1979 and Davison in 1984 are equally muddled 30 years on... If Pertwee and Davison didn't screen on Colombian TV, and there is no likelihood he was viewing broadcasts from a neighbouring country, a local private station or on video, what was it he was watching if it wasn't "Dr Misterio"? (He also claims to have seen "Los Siete Corsarios de Blake" (Blake's 7) on the same channel around the same time, and yet there were no listings at all for that series either in the mid-1980s dates we viewed…)
If anyone is able to clarify the situation regarding Pertwee and Davison in Colombia, please drop us a line.
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