The hilarious thing is Americans would have never seen it if it weren't for the advent of cable television. We had four networks - ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS, with ABC NBC and CBS being the equivalent of ITV while PBS is the equivalent of BBC1 and BBC2, except Republicans have been trying to murder it since its inception.

Inject into that cable tv - stations that have no broadcasting, but are getting paid a carry fee, and need to find content anywhere anyhow. This is why rich kids were exposed to Tomorrow People (and Danger Mouse!) while poor people made do with badly dubbed and recut anime.

Doctor Who, meanwhile, was broadcast on PBS, generally late at night, so the whole "kids sci-fi" nature of it was completely obscured from the whole of the US. It was obviously shittier than Star Trek by a country mile but since it was "foreign" it's what snooty grown-ups watched. To this day, an affinity for Red Dwarf and an ability to quote Monty Python are very much social signaling of upper-middle-class pretentiousness, while the proletariat mostly quotes Saturday Night Live at each other.