Jordan

JORDAN is a land-locked country, bordered by Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Profile

Country Number (31)	1969?	FIRST and SECOND WAVE
Region	Middle East
Television commenced	28 April 1968
Colour System	April 1974	PAL
Population	1969	1.869 million
TV Sets	1969	500
Language/s	Arabic, French and English	Dubbed and subtitled

Television Stations / Channels

Jordan began its television service on 28 April 1968. (The June 1967 Middle East war had delayed the official introduction of television by several months.)

There is just one television station: Jordan Television (JTV), a government-owned commercial broadcaster, originally operating for just three hours daily. It has two channels -- channel 3 and channel 6.

After the 1970 Jordan Civil War, the station was restructured, with both channels featuring a mix of Arabic, French, Hebrew and English programmes.

Colour transmissions began in April 1974 using the PAL colour broadcast system.

Signals from Jordan TV could be received in Israel.

Language/s

The principal languages of Jordan are Arabic and French. Television was broadcast in Arabic, English, French and Hebrew.

Subtitling was more prevalent than dubbing, with Arabic text superimposed manually during broadcast, but in the case of Doctor Who, the William Hartnell episodes were dubbed in Lebanon.

DOCTOR WHO IN JORDAN

الدكتور هو

Jordan was the 31st country to screen Doctor Who (Al Doctor Who); it was the fourth in the Middle East (see Selling Doctor Who).

BBC Records

Jordan is identified in the 1972 edition of The Making of Doctor Who.

Jordan is not named in The Seventies or The Handbook.

The Eighties - THE LOST CHAPTERS records a sale (by 10 February 1987) of "(4)" stories. These four do not include the Hartnells; most likely all are Tom Baker stories, however only three Baker stories are known to have screened on Jordan TV.

In 1992, researcher Richard Molesworth was informed by Jordan Radio and Television Corporation that they aired Robot, The Ark in Space and The Sontaran Experiment from 7 April to 9 June 1981, a run of ten weeks.

Jordan is named in three of the DWM Archives,: L for Hartnell (with a sales date of 1969), and 4A and 4C for Baker (in 1981); the two Baker serials and the date have been derived from Molesworth's research rather than from official BBC sources.

Stories bought and broadcast

Generic late 1960s Jordan TV listings in Arabic from Al-Dustar – Doctor Who not included

Tom Baker episode at 6.20pm, 14 April 1981; Jordan Times

Tom Baker episode at 6.25pm, 26 May 1981; Jordan Times

WILLIAM HARTNELL

Presumably Jordan aired the standard Arabic package of nine stories, 37 episodes:

A	An Unearthly Child	1
B	The Daleks	7
C	Inside the Spaceship	2
E	The Keys of Marinus	6
F	The Aztecs	4
G	The Sensorites	6
J	Planet of Giants	3
K	The Dalek Invasion of Earth	6
L	The Rescue	2

The programme would have been supplied as 16mm black and white film prints with Arabic soundtracks.

Origin of the Prints?

Saudi Arabia was the previous Middle Eastern country to screen the series in Arabic – a year earlier - so it's possible that Jordan was sent the same set of dubbed prints from Saudi Arabia.

TOM BAKER

Three stories, ten episodes:

4A	Robot	4
4B	The Sontaran Experiment	2
4C	The Ark in Space	4

Transmission

WILLIAM HARTNELL

We have not been able to determine the airdates for these episodes, but based on BBC sales records, it was circa May 1969.

Fate of the Prints?

Jordan may have sent its prints to Libya, or it was the last country in one of the Middle East Bicycling Chains to screen the package of nine William Hartnell stories.

TOM BAKER

Doctor Who was shown on Jordan TV's channel 3. According to Molesworth's research, the first episode aired on Tuesday, 7 April 1981, however there was no listing for Doctor Who on that date. The following week did have "Dr Who" listed at 6.20pm. (The 7 April paper just had "Cartoons" listed from 5.45 to 6.35pm.)

The series is listed every Tuesday; the timeslot shifted to 6pm on 21 April, then 6.20pm for the next four weeks, then to 6.25pm from 26 May. The 2 June paper was missing, but the slot was still 6.25pm for the final listing on 9 June 1981.

There were only nine listings for "Dr Who", so presumably the first episode did indeed air on 7 April, possibly as a last minute replacement for the cartoons that were listed, or if it aired at 6pm, then it screened within the 50 minute "Cartoon" slot that was published.

Fate of the Tapes

The ten Tom Baker episodes were sent to Bahrain soon after transmission. And indeed, a longer run of Baker episodes aired on Bahrain TV, starting at some point prior to 8 December 1981.

TV listings

We have not been able to access English language Jordanian papers that would have listings for the William Hartnell stories. The Arabic paper Al-Dustur did have listings in Arabic (sample of a late 1960s TV listings reproduced here), but no listings for Doctor Who could be identified for the dates accessed.

The Tom Baker listings (all printed as "Dr Who") are from an online edition of Jordan Times; the dates correspond with those advised to Molesworth.

The TV listings did not have story titles. Foreign stations tended to show the serials in production code order, which means The Sontaran Experiment was usually shown before The Ark in Space, which may have also been the case here.

All of the April to June 1981 issues of the Israeli English newspaper Jerusalem Post have also been accessed. But they only had "Unofficial" listings for Jordan TV's channel 6 and not for channel 3, so Doctor Who was not included in those TV schedules.

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