International Broadcast
The series was shown in the UK by ITV, beginning in late August 1980 with the feature-length two-part episode "Planet of the Slave Girls" (the pilot film, which had been released theatrically in Britain in summer 1979, was not actually shown on British television until 1982). ITV broadcast Buck Rogers in an early Saturday evening slot, where it competed against, and beat, the BBC's long-running science fiction series Doctor Who, which started its 18th season on the same day. As a similar effect had occurred a couple of years earlier when several ITV stations screened Man from Atlantis against Doctor Who, this prompted the BBC to move Doctor Who to a new weekday slot for its next season in 1982 (even though Buck Rogers had actually been cancelled in the United States by that point). Ironically, the BBC would repeat the Buck Rogers series themselves (on BBC Two) in 1989 and again in the late 1990s.
Read more about this topic: Buck Rogers In The 25th Century (TV Series)
Famous quotes containing the word broadcast:
“Adjoining a refreshment stand ... is a small frame ice house ... with a whitewashed advertisement on its brown front stating, simply, “Ice. Glory to Jesus.” The proprietor of the establishment is a religious man who has seized the opportunity to broadcast his business and his faith at the same time.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)