TV Movie in the USA
The 1996 TV Movie starring Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor debuted in the US on the Fox Network on Tuesday, 14 May 1996.
In the lead-up to the broadcast, it was promoted as a "Motion Picture Event" and "World Premiere" - the latter being the generic description often used by Fox to describe first-runs that aired in that early evening slot.
That latter statement also wasn't entirely true - since the Movie had already aired several times in Canada - on 12 and 13 May, as well as in parallel on 14 May. See our dedicated profile for further details:
After the 14 May screening, the Movie did appear a few more times on other Fox affiliates - see below.
Fox held the exclusive licence over the US broadcast rights in the Movie until the end of 1999, so the Movie was not available for general syndication in the States until then - and yet we did find some out of place listings that we feel sure were errors. (See bottom of the page.)
This profile summarises just the known screenings in the USA, from listings extracted from Canadian and US newspapers that were clearly identifiable as being the TV Movie. It's possible there were further screenings of the film but these couldn't be distinguished from the thousands of generic and non-story specific billings for the regular classic series episodes still running in syndication across the US at that time.
Fox Network
The Movie was promoted as and aired in the weekly "Fox Tuesday Night Movie" slot on the network's own stations and various affiliates on Tuesday, 14 May 1996.
The 85-minute presentation aired "In Stereo" and was given a two-hour timeslot to accommodate commercials. It featured "Closed Caption" subtitles where available.
Most major cities had at least one local Fox station plus one or more independent affiliates; in some areas, the Movie was available on multiple channels at the same time.
- List of Fox stations in 1996
- Fox Television Stations
- Current Fox affiliates by State
- Articles about the Movie in 1996
To cover the whole country, Fox broadcast its programmes three times each day. In terms of the TV Movie, this was:
(1) a "wild feed" sent at 5pm on 14 May via AT&T's satellite Telstar 4 (T402R) on Transponder channel 17, to be recorded onto tape for later play-back by "secondary affiliates" - i.e. those that were not participating in the "live" broadcast later that same night. This version of the Movie did not have squeezed end credits
(2) a "live" 'East feed' sent out on 14 May, which was seen simultaneously in Eastern (at local time 8pm), Central (at the 'earlier' local time of 7pm) and Mountain (6pm local time); some stations in Mountain instead took the West feed (which was at 7pm local time)
(3) a "live" 'West feed' sent out three hours later, which was seen in Pacific states (shown at the local time of 8pm), some stations in Mountain (at 7pm), plus time-delayed in Alaska (8pm) and Hawaii (local time of 7pm)
The East and West feeds both had compressed end credits to enable stations to inlay "coming up next" continuity announcements and other in-vision promos.
(Affiliate stations close to the northern border were sometimes able to access Fox's "international" uplinks. On 11 May 1996, the TV Movie was being uploaded to AT&T's Telstar 401 satellite on Transponder channel 5 for CITV in Alberta. Staff on duty that afternoon at WFTC, the Fox affiliate for twin cities Minneapolis-St. Paul in Minnesota, were able to record the uplink onto two Sony Beta tapes and watch the Movie three days early! See TV Movie in Canada for more on this.)
For the TV Movie, the scheduled and advertised start times in each of the US zones were:
- Eastern 8.00pm
- Central 7.00pm
- Mountain 6.00pm / 7.00pm
- Pacific 8.00pm
- Alaska 8.00pm
- Hawaii 7.00pm
From first to last, these broadcasts were staggered over a seven hour period...
A few days later, the Movie re-appeared on a handful of other US stations - but all of them were Fox affiliates...
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KTMJ (Kansas)
18 May 1996
The TV Movie aired on several Fox stations across Kansas on 14 May 1996, at 7pm.
Four days later, KTMJ aired the feature on Saturday, 18 May 1996 at 5pm.
KTMJ was a Fox affiliate based in Topeka, Kansas. It broadcast on Channel 43, but was available also on channel 6 in Junction City and Manhattan (a city in Kansas, not to be confused with the New York borough), and channel 15 elsewhere.
It would have been one of the "secondary affiliates" (noted above) that had pre-recorded the "wild feed" for later play-back.
KODE (Missouri) ?
18-19 May 1996?
KODE (Channel 12) was an independent ABC affiliate based in Joplin, Missouri, which served that area as well as parts of neighboring Kansas.
Several hours after the KTMJ screening (above), the Movie was (apparently) shown by KODE starting at midnight, Saturday 18 May 1996 running into Sunday 19 May 1996.
Since KODE was not affiliated with Fox, it's not clear how they were able to acquire and screen the Movie, if indeed they did.
The only listing for this screening was in the Kansas paper Iola Register; it's possible this billing was for one of the Peter Cushing Dalek films instead?
This listing should perhaps fall under the "Incorrect Billings" category? - see more below...
KTMF and KTGF (Montana)
19 May 1996
The 14 May network broadcast was available in Montana on local Fox stations. (Of note, Montana was one of the handful of states where the classic series had never been shown by a local TV station!)
The Movie reappeared five days later on two sister stations 165 miles apart. This was on Sunday, 19 May 1996 at 10pm.
KTMF was in Missoula, western Montana (launched in 1990, the initials stood for 'Missoula-Flathead'). This was an ABC and Fox affiliate. It aired locally on Channel 23, and on channel 11 elsewhere in the state.
It would have been one of the "secondary affiliates" (noted above) that had pre-recorded the "wild feed" for later play-back.
KTGF was KTMF's older sister station (launched in 1984, four years earlier); it was an NBC affiliate only, based in Great Falls, north-central Montana. It aired locally on Channel 16, and elsewhere on channel 12. (It has since been rebranded as KJJC.)
Since KTGF wasn't a Fox affiliate, it's likely this was a piggy-back off the KTMF signal.
The broadcast from KTGF was also available in Alberta, Canada.
The billings in the newspapers from both cities call it a "Premiere". This is true only in terms of it being the first time they had aired it!
Like this and KTMJ above, there may well be other instances that we haven't detected where one Fox affiliate carried the 14 May broadcast and a secondary affiliate in the same city screened it 'again' a few days later...
Fox Network Repeat - Cancelled
Although Fox's exclusive US broadcast rights over the film didn't expire until 31 December 1999, it did have an option to play the Film for a second time during 1996.
To fulfil that obligation, Fox scheduled a repeat of the Movie across its network on the evening of Tuesday, 31 December 1996 - however, it changed its plans at the eleventh hour and instead played the 1994 made-for-TV comedy Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love.
Not informed in time of the late change, many US and Canadian newspapers from that day still carried listings for the Doctor Who movie.
In May 1998, a Fox spokesperson confirmed to fans in the US that they still had the rights to screen the Movie "one more time over the next two years" (meaning 1998 and 1999) and that they could perhaps repeat it "nearer to the year 2000 (when the movie takes place)" - i.e. before the end of December 1999 before the rights ran out.
But ultimately this did not happen, and their rights lapsed without Fox ever screening the Movie for a second time.
Syndication Screenings
Since Fox had the exclusive US broadcast rights to the film until 31 December 1999, BBC Worldwide couldn't include it in its syndication packages until after that date.
A year and a half after the rights had reverted to them, Worldwide finally released the Movie into US syndication - but only on cable and satellite channels:
- Sci-Fi Channel - from 15 July 2001
- Starz - from 3 June 2004
- BBC America - on 31 August 2013 as one of The Doctors Revisited series of specials
Incorrect Billings
We found some other out of place listings that were clearly incorrect - such as on WTBU in October 1996 where it was listed instead of what should have been a different Master story - Castrovalva; while on Sci-Fi Channel in 2007, it was billed in place of what was actually the New Series John Simm Master episode "The Sound of Drums" - and as such we have not included those here.
There have been reports that some TV listings in the US and UK called the movie "Doctor Who The Enemy Within". ("Enemy Within" (no 'The') was an unofficial title that producer Philip Segal had offered as an alternative.)
However, the only billings we could find under that name were for the 1994 political thriller starring Forest Whitaker, and the fourth of the five continuation movies based on the Fox series Alien Nation, which first aired the same year as the TV Movie - on 12 November 1996.
Indeed, the only direct mention of that alternative title we found were in the preview sections of two Australian newspapers when the Movie aired down under in July 1996 - one of these stated it was "known to fans as Enemy Within (although never titled as such on screen)". Well, that's that sorted!
