DR WHO is now the most popular BBC TV series on American television.
The long-running science-fiction show can now be seen in 109 cities in the United States — way ahead of hs nearest river Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
Also well-liked by the Yanks — perhaps surprisingly — are those very English comedies To The Manor Born and The Good Life.
The sales are, however, only the tip of the iceberg that is BBC Enterprises. This limited company, whose main function is to sell the Beeb's TV shows abroad, made an operating profit of £11m, during the last financial year -- and promptly ploughed £6m of it back into the programmes.
In other words, this relatively small "arm" of the BBC giant has become, with the main company, a co-producer of programmes- but its policy is to invest only in shows that it thinks will be able to sell to its overseas customers.
BBC Enterprises money went into recent nuclear-attack drama Threads and the forthcoming serial Bleak House as well as into lighter material like The Hot Shoe Show, the zoo-vet series One By One and the strip cartoon Jane.
Enterprise has also manage to sell, sight unseen, another of its co-productions -- the series of whodunnits solved by Agatha Christie's elderly sleuth Miss Marple.
The potential size of the marke place can be judged by the fact that the BBC's best selling programme of all time, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, has been seen in 78 countries -- and by the fact that Enterprises' tournover in the last financial year was £31m.
Caption: Tom Baker as the Doctor as Lalla Ward as Romana in Dr Who -- BBC's top series in America
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