Kuwait
KUWAIT is a Middle Eastern country at the north of the Persian / Arabic Gulf. It shares a land border with Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
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 were sent via Kuwait. That in itself does not mean much, since the BBC did have at that time an enquiries office in Kuwait, so the tapes may have just been sent there from the UAE for forwarding on to London.
Stories bought and broadcast
Transmission
TV listings
Several issues of the Kuwait Times from the early 1980s to 1990 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.
If the country is not named in The Eighties, then the series probably screened after 1987 - if at all...
Kuwait in Doctor Who
- Greg Sutton worked on an oil well in Kuwait (Inferno)
