<P> The series made its North American premiere in January 1965 on CBC with the broadcast of William Hartnell's first 26 episodes, fourteen months following their first airing on the BBC . The CBC did not renew the program and it would not reappear on the network for 40 years . </P> <P> The BBC series was originally sold to television stations in the United States in 1972, with Time - Life Television syndicating selected episodes of Jon Pertwee's time as the Doctor . The series did not do well, despite an interesting write - up some years earlier in TV Guide . Apparently, program directors of the commercial television stations that picked up the Jon Pertwee series did not know that the program was an episodic serial, and so it was constantly being shuffled about in the programming schedules . </P> <P> In 1978, Tom Baker's first four seasons as the Doctor were sold to PBS stations across the United States . This time, though, Time - Life was ready to have the Doctor poised for American consumption, by having stage and screen actor Howard Da Silva read voiceover recaps of the previous episode and teasers for the next one which would inform the viewer as to what was going on . To accommodate the teasers up to three minutes of original material was cut from each episode . PBS program planners took the show at face value, but it soon achieved cult status . A few commercial stations including WOR in New York and KVOS in Bellingham also aired the show for a few years . </P> <P> In Canada, TVOntario aired the program starting in 1976 with The Three Doctors and continued with the rest of the original series on a weekly basis until 1990 with series airing two to three years behind the BBC . TVO was also available to many viewers in the United States living in states bordering the Great Lakes . In order to fulfill the network's originally strict mandate as an educational broadcaster, TVO's transmissions of the Third Doctor's stories were hosted by Dr. Jim Dator, a futurist teaching to the University of Toronto, while the first three seasons of Fourth Doctor stories were hosted by science fiction writer Judith Merril, who called herself the "UnDoctor". Both hosts would fill out the show's half - hour time slot through introductions and longer extros which would analyze and discuss the episode critically for several minutes often explaining how a story was at variance with scientific concepts, how it related to science fiction genres, or putting the episodes in a socio - political context . Afterward, this broadcast requirement was relaxed and the extra time was used for the network's standard short subject programming such as Eureka! . TVO continued to broadcast Doctor Who until it lost the rights to the programme in 1990 . </P>

When did doctor who became popular in america
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