Cable and Satellite
Cable and Satellite Stations
Doctor Who has aired on a number of cable and satellite stations over the years, and this was the only method by which some countries - particularly those in Europe - could view the series on a regular basis.
Although BroaDWcast is primarily an index to the terrestrial broadcasts, it would be remiss not to at least mention (albeit briefly) Doctor Who on satellite and cable channels.
Contents
AUSTRALIA
Doctor Who screened on Australia's FOXTEL / UKTV from 1 August 1996.
Details about those screenings can be read on the dedicated Australia pages.
UNITED STATES and CANADA
Doctor Who aired on at least two (known) major cable channels in the US in the 1980s and 1990s:
- See US Cable channels for details
And of course most of the Canadian broadcasts of the series were on cable:
UK STATIONS
Doctor Who aired on two local UK satellite stations:
- BSB's Galaxy channel (short-lived run from 1 April 1990 to 29 December 1990)
- UK Gold (15 year run, from 2 November 1992 to 14 April 2007)
Since neither station transmitted beyond the shores of the UK, they fall outside the remit of BroaDWcast.
However, for detail about these stations we recommend the following websites:
- BSB – for images of on-screen idents, etc
- UK GOLD for the full background plus a downloadable schedule of all 15 years worth of airdates and screenings
UK / EUROPE
SUPER CHANNEL
Satellite television station Super Channel was launched on 30 January 1987, and broadcast across Europe.
TRANSMISSION
From 24 March 1987, Doctor Who was part of Super Channel's regular schedule, although they were limited to a 16 story / 66 episode package of just the first fourteen Tom Baker stories – Robot to The Deadly Assassin - plus The Robots of Death and Horror of Fang Rock, which were repeated a number of times, either episodically or as omnibus editions.
Some of these omnibuses, such as Genesis of the Daleks, had the Sylvester McCoy opening credits with Tom Baker's face superimposed over McCoys, as well as newly-created story title and writer captions, as illustrated here.
The final episode of Doctor Who to screen on Super Channel was the second airing of part four of Horror of Fang Rock on 6 August 1989.
In 1989, the channel was purchased by NBC. It was later re-branded as NBC Super Channel until 1996. The Europe broadcasts ceased from 20 December 1998.
Super Channel was available in most countries in western Europe. We know for sure that it was accessible in:
(And no doubt many others….)
BBC PRIME
This station was launched in 1987 as BBC TV Europe. It changed its identity to BBC World Service Television from 11 March 1991, then to BBC Prime from 26 January 1995. BBC Prime was replaced by BBC Entertainment from 11 November 2009.
The station transmitted via the IntelSat satellite, broadcasting on frequency 601 27.5º west, at 10,995 and 11,155 gigahertz.
It was the BBC's first entertainment channel available via satellite and cable across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, broadcasting 24 hours a day.
BBC Prime aired a selection of BBC as well as ITV programming.
TRANSMISSION
We are not sure when Doctor Who started on this station. For a time episodes aired twice on Saturdays, with the following episode later the same day – e.g. an episode would air at 1.05am, then repeated at 10.00am, with the next episode on at 5.30pm the same day. Sometimes, the early morning episodes were not available in Africa.
- According to a TV listing from a Spanish newspaper for Sunday, 4 April 1993 (see illustration), the Colin Baker era was airing at that time.
- By the middle of 1995 – around the same time the station was re-branded as BBC Prime – the Jon Pertwee stories (the standard mixed format package of all 24 serials) were screening.
- The Ambassadors of Death part one in colour and the re-colourised episode five aired in colour for the first time on BBC Prime.
- The Mind of Evil aired in September 1995.
- The Tom Baker stories screened from June 1997
- During the run of The Creature from the Pit, the 1996 TV Movie aired on 30 December 1999, the actual date on which the movie was set.
- Peter Davison stories played from September 2000
- The Sylvester McCoy stories concluded with Survival in August 2002.
- The McCoy era was followed by The Five Doctors, which lead into a further run of repeats.
It's unclear exactly when it was that the Doctor Who run ended on BBC Prime.
BBC Prime was available in the following countries, some of which also had previously aired Doctor Who on their own domestic stations:
- Belgium
- Denmark
- Hong Kong
- Malta
- Israel (from June 2000)
- Italy
- South Korea
- The Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Singapore
- South Africa
- Thailand
- Turkey
- Sweden
- Serbia
(And no doubt many others….)
- IDENTS: BBC PRIME IDENTS
EUROPE
As noted above, several European countries were able to receive Super Channel and BBC Prime, but one digital satellite station was established solely for the Scandinavian market:
TV4 SCIENCE FICTION
TV4 Science Fiction is a satellite and cable television channel dedicated to the science fiction genre owned by TV4 AB. It was launched on 29 February 2008, and was broadcast to Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway.
TRANSMISSION
TV4 SF screened all the available serials from the first seven Doctors. Episodes screened three times daily, usually early evening, just after midnight, then around 3.00am the following morning. It would appear that Doctor Who was part of the regular schedules since launch date in February 2008.
By May 2008, the Jon Pertwee stories were screening. By August, they had reached the Tom Baker stories, starting with Robot from the first Friday of that month.
By March 2009, the Sylvester McCoy stories were screening.
The series later moved to TV4 Guld (TV4 Gold):
LATIN AMERICA
HBO OLE
Doctor Who aired briefly on this Latin America station:
IMAGEN SATELITAL
Imagen Satelital, a Latin American broadcaster, licensed season 13 (Tom Baker's second season) and possibly also some of the Leela stories season 14, in 2001, and broadcast to:
- Argentina
- Bolivia
- Chile
- Paraguay
- Uruguay
- And possibly other countries within Central America, such as Belize (Terrance Dicks has mentioned at conventions that he once signed autographs during a visit to Belize in December 2003)
TRANSMISSION
From 1 October 2001, the series was (probably) available on the following satellite channels:
Episodes aired on Sundays at 9:30pm, and again on Monday, at 4:30am!
The serials were broadcast in English but with Spanish subtitles, the first time this method was adopted; previously, broadcasts in Spanish-language countries were dubbed. It would seem that by 2001, the original dubbed tapes that were used from the late 1970s (and owned by Time Life / Lionheart) were no longer available.
Regular screenings had concluded by January 2003.
Links
This category has the following 3 subcategories, out of 3 total.
