Guam
GUAM is a small island to the south of the Philippines in the western Pacific Ocean (Asia). It is a territory of the United States.
Profile
| Country Number (34=) | 1972 | SECOND WAVE |
| Region | Australasia/Asia | |
| Television commenced | 1956 | |
| Colour System | 1967 | NTSC |
| Population | 1974 | 85,000 |
| TV Sets | 1974 | 42,500 (5,000 colour) |
| Language/s | English |
- Since the island is technically part of the United States (which was the 34th country to screen the series), we haven't separated it in the Selling Doctor Who profile, and have counted it with the USA.
Television Stations / Channels
The island had two local television stations: KUAM Television (Channel 8) and KGTF Television (Channel 12), which was launched on 20 October 1970. Both were PBS stations. The island also had a direct cable feed that gave it programming from three local Los Angeles stations. In later years, the number of "cable" feeds from the US increased.
Doctor Who aired on KGTF.
DOCTOR WHO IN GUAM
BBC Records
Guam is named in a memo listing overseas sales of Doctor Who, dated 10 December 1973.
Guam is not named in The Seventies, The Eighties - THE LOST CHAPTERS, or DWM.
Stories bought and broadcast
JON PERTWEE
13 stories, 72 episodes:
| BBB | Doctor Who and the Silurians | 7 |
| CCC | The Ambassadors of Death | 7 |
| DDD | Inferno | 7 |
| EEE | Terror of the Autons | 4 |
| FFF | The Mind of Evil | 6 |
| GGG | The Claws of Axos | 4 |
| HHH | Colony in Space | 6 |
| JJJ | The Daemons | 5 |
| KKK | Day of the Daleks | 4 |
| MMM | The Curse of Peladon | 4 |
| LLL | The Sea Devils | 6 |
| NNN | The Mutants | 6 |
| OOO | The Time Monster | 6 |
Guam therefore bought the standard 13 story / 72 episode package of colour Jon Pertwee stories that was sold to the US by Time-Life Films.
Origin of the Tapes
The television distributor for Guam was Time-Life Films. They supplied the programme on colour video tape in the NTSC format.
Transmission
JON PERTWEE
The first newspaper billing for the series was on Tuesday, 29 August 1972 at 6.00pm, and the second the following week - however there was no billing the week after that, or indeed again for the next three months, so it appears that the intended 29 August debut of the series was dropped before anything had been shown.
Of note, had the 29 August screening gone ahead, KGTF would have been the second US station to air the series (the first being WPHL in Philadelphia).
The series did subsequently reach the screens on Monday, 20 November 1972, at 6.00pm. Although this makes KGTF the fourth US station to show it, it was the first PBS station.
There was no episode listed on Friday, 24 November 1972, but the following Friday, 1 December 1972, the series was in the 8.00pm slot; this was a repeat of the Monday edition. (It's possible that an episode did air on 24 November, being a late replacement for the scheduled cookery show.)
This twice per week cycle continued for the entire run, although the days of the week did later change.
It's clear from the listings (see below) that the serials did not play in the correct story order, with the three season 7 serials airing towards the end of the run, rather than at the start. The identity of the first story to air is not known, but would be The Curse of Peladon, The Sea Devils, or The Mutants, as these are the only three serials that are not identified by title in any of the newspaper billings.
From 13 October 1973, the Friday repeat shifted to Saturday afternoons at 3.30pm, and the Monday episode shifted to a 6.30pm timeslot.
Two of the Friday repeats – 9 March and 20 April 1973 - were pre-empted. There was also a pre-emption (by a Christmas show) of the Monday episode on 24 December 1974, which should have been the first showing of Inferno part 1. (If the episode didn't air on this day, then its "repeat" on the Friday was actually its first screening!) These missed episodes do not appear to have been rescheduled.
The final episode and repeat aired 1 and 6 April 1974; the series had run virtually uninterrupted for 17 months, with four pre-emptions, taking the episode tally to 140 out of the full 144 (i.e. 72 first runs, plus 68 repeats).
There is no clear record that Guam screened Doctor Who again after 1974.
Fate of the Tapes?
The nearby Philippines commenced screening the series in March 1976; it's more than likely that that Guam sent its tapes there.
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) |
TV listings have been obtained from the issues of the Pacific Daily News. The Sunday issues also sometimes had the listings for the full upcoming week.
Listings initially gave the series name as the usual abbreviation of "Dr Who". None of the listings for the first few months identify any episodes by title.
The first episode to be named by title was that on 16 April 1973 - Colony in Space. After a break of a week, the next episode is labelled only as "(New Series)". Since the next story after that is named five weeks later, we can take it that the 5-part The Daemons aired after Colony in Space.
The 28 May episode is titled just "The Daleks", although this is actually Day of the Daleks. (Publicity material for this package of Pertwee stories issued by Time-Life referred to Day of the Daleks by that abbreviated title; an 'error' that many US newspapers repeated in the 1970s.)
Some of the listings have (C) printed next to the title, indicating it is Colour. Although only some listings have this, all the episodes would have been shown in NTSC.
From 6 July 1973, the newspaper was generally better with providing titles - and on some occasions a story synopsis - through to the end of the run. A few printing errors crept in, with "Mine of Evil", "Time Monsters" (plural), and just "The Ambassadors" appearing on occasion.
