KTEH

KTEH was a television station affiliated with PBS, based in San Jose, California. While many PBS stations broadcast Doctor Who, KTEH stood out by producing original content about the show, hosting personal appearances, and building on the show's popularity to introduce other similar or related programs to their audience.

KTEH's logo as it appeared in 1993.

History[[edit] | [edit source]]

KTEH was founded in 1964 to serve the South Bay (or Silicon Valley) region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Broadcasting on UHF channel 54, it added Doctor Who to its schedule in April 1981.

Beyond simply being a broadcaster, KTEH aimed to serve its local community by also producing original programming and running a Technical Volunteer program, in which people could learn television production by volunteering for roles with the station as camera operators and other technical staff. Because of this, KTEH had a high output of unique programming.

Among the original content in the 1980s were interviews with Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul Darrow, John Nathan-Turner, and Terry Nation, as part of a series titled An Interview With… ^[1]

In 1987, to coincide with the US debut of Time and the Rani, KTEH hosted a personal appearance by Sylvester McCoy and a visit by the Doctor Who USA Tour trailer.

KTEH was the first PBS station to air the BBC Wales episodes of Doctor Who, beginning with Christopher Eccleston's episodes in April 2007.^[2]

Beyond Doctor Who[[edit] | [edit source]]

Capitalizing on the success of its Doctor Who airings, the station also added other British sci-fi to its schedule, notably Blake's 7, Chris Boucher's Star Cops, and The Prisoner, the last of which it aired with original introductions and analysis by author & media critic Scott Apel.

KTEH was also one of the first stations in the US to air Red Dwarf, which was an immediate hit with its audience. Because of the popularity of the show, Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules were invited to host the station's pledge drives. During one of these drives in 1998, KTEH broadcast the entire run of Red Dwarf VII in a single night, premiering several episodes before they had aired on the BBC.

Outside of British television, KTEH was also notable for introducing anime to its audience. It was the first station in the US to broadcast Neon Genesis Evangelion with subtitles; it also presented other anime series with subtitles despite dubbing being the norm at the time for an American audience.

KTEH's Head of Programming, Karen Roberts, was the driving force behind the station acquiring rights to many of these series, also bringing EastEnders to the channel as well.^[3]

A 1984 advertisement from KTEH.

Broadcast Schedule[[edit] | [edit source]]

Typically KTEH would have two separate schedules for Doctor Who airings, one for weeknights and one for weekends.

Weeknights, a single episode would air at 7:00 or 7:30 pm.; these would typically start with Spearhead from Space and run sequentially to the most recent episode available, then begin again with Jon Pertwee's debut.

The weekend broadcast originally began Saturday night beginning between 11:00 pm to midnight, and would air an entire story. These would also rotate through the stories chronologically, but starting with William Hartnell's episodes. KTEH eschewed the "omnibus" format, instead showing the episodes back to back.

Later, the weekend broadcast would move to 11pm on Sunday, to cap off a "Sunday Night Sci-Fi" block that would include Blake's 7, Red Dwarf, or other similar series.