The Wizard of Oz on television

Since that telecast, The Wizard of Oz has been shown by CBS, NBC, The WB, and several of Ted Turner's national cable channels.

After the film's second broadcast on U.S. television, subsequent network telecasts became a highly anticipated family event for many.

[4] The Wizard of Oz, which had been a critical but only modest financial success during its theatrical run, was chosen to be the first Hollywood film to be shown uncut in prime time on a coast-to-coast television network.

[5] The first telecast took place on Saturday, November 3, 1956, as part of the final program in the soon-to-be-canceled CBS anthology series Ford Star Jubilee – a rotating potpourri of highly budgeted but low-rated specials, including a well-publicized debut hour hosted by Judy Garland.

The network paid MGM $225,000 for the rights to televise the film and committed to showing it again for the same price with an option to re-broadcast if the telecast was a success.

[7][8] This 1956 broadcast was shown as CBS's response to the successful color telecast of the Broadway musical Peter Pan with Mary Martin, which had been re-staged especially for television at NBC Studios as part of the anthology series Producers' Showcase.

Its enormous success on television ushered in a temporary "fad" of mostly live family-oriented specials based on fantasy tales, such as Aladdin (1958), Alice in Wonderland (1955) (a live-action version), Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (1957), The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1957), and Pinocchio (1957, no relation to the Disney film).

For the first television broadcast of The Wizard of Oz, the normally 90-minute Ford Star Jubilee was expanded to a full two hours to accommodate the entire film, which, in addition to having commercial breaks, was celebrity-hosted.

[9] The 1956 television debut of the film marked the only time any actor who had appeared in the movie was selected to host the broadcast: Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion (and his Kansas farmhand counterpart Zeke) in the film, appeared alongside the daughter of Judy Garland, a then 10 year-old Liza Minnelli, and young Oz expert Justin G. Schiller.

Dick Van Dyke was shown in a living room set with his children,[13] and Danny Kaye's hosting segment featured him sitting on a prop toadstool against a painted backdrop of the Yellow Brick Road and the Emerald City.

Red Skelton was seen as two characters: Before the film began, he was seen in a studio set of an early 20th-century bookstore, in costume as a Victorian-era storyteller who introduced L. Frank Baum's original 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to a young girl played by Skelton's real daughter, and at film's end, he appeared in a studio recreation of a modern living room as himself.

The Wizard of Oz did not become an annual television tradition immediately — only after the 1959 showing because of the earlier hour at which it was shown (6:00 P.M., E.S.T.).

[citation needed] Because the break was only 42 seconds long, no attempt was made to override the computer, for fear of making the problem worse.

For the opening "wraparound" credits, the title The Wizard of Oz and the names of its five leading actors, Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr and Jack Haley, were first shown in CBS's own format and font, while an anonymous announcer read them off and then followed this with an announcement of the film's sponsor(s): "This portion of The Wizard of Oz is brought to you by...[name of sponsor mentioned]".

After a final commercial, the host was then seen once again, to bid farewell to the TV audience, and CBS showed its own version of the cast list that appears during the film's end credits.

[17][18] Between 1956 and 1965, the Wizard of Oz showings were rare exceptions to the black and white program schedule at CBS.

During this period, the competing network NBC was owned by RCA, which by 1960 manufactured 95% of the color sets sold in the U.S.

Partly because commercial time during programs increased beginning in the late 1960s, the idea of regularly having hosts to introduce the film was dropped when The Wizard of Oz went to NBC in 1968, where no "wraparound" sequence was shown.

The famous NBC peacock was shown immediately prior to the beginning of the film, with announcer Mel Brandt saying that "the first 22 minutes of this program [i.e. the Kansas and tornado sequences] will be shown in black-and-white", a not quite accurate statement, since the final three minutes of the film also took place in Kansas, and were at that time also shown in black-and-white, rather than in the sepia tone in which they originally had been made (the sepia was not restored to the Kansas and tornado scenes until 1989, the film's 50th anniversary).

The switch in networks resulted because CBS was unwilling to meet MGM's increased price — fostered by the film's ever-increasing popularity — for renewal of the rights to telecast it.

[20] After its 1976 return to CBS, the film was hosted on that network only once more, in a filmed segment featuring Angela Lansbury in 1990, but the CBS "wraparound" opening and closing credits were not - and have never been - revived, although, during those years, a blue card featuring a painting of a rainbow and the title The Wizard of Oz was shown on the screen while the night's pre-empted programs or programs to be shown at regular time following the movie and the sponsors were being announced, and immediately before and after commercial breaks.

Perhaps the best remembered examples were the telecasts sponsored by Procter and Gamble and promoted when the company gave free premiums of hand puppets with packages of some of its most popular products.

Many also remember the 1970 telecast presented on NBC by Singer Manufacturing Company as a tribute to Judy Garland, who had died in June 1969.

When shown with ads, the film now runs about two hours and fifteen minutes, simply because of the increase in commercial time.

Networks opted to discontinue shortening the film by "micro-cutting" a few individual moments throughout the movie as they had done from the late 1960s to the early 1980s in order to make room for commercials and keep it in a two-hour broadcast.

Turner, which owned most of the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television library at the time (later owned by Warner Bros.), began moving to make its properties exclusive to Turner-owned outlets in the late 1990s; as such, in 1998, The Wizard of Oz made its last appearance on CBS, moving exclusively to Turner-owned properties the following year.

Beginning in 2004 (and every year since), the film has exclusively broadcast on TBS several times in a row on certain days around Thanksgiving weekend.

[citation needed] The 1955 and 1998 theatrical re-releases were matted in movie theaters to produce a widescreen effect for the Academy-standard aspect-ratio film.

[30][31] Eastern Time (taken from TV Guide and The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History).

CBS was unable to find a sponsor willing to pay the extra expense needed for color, so it went out only in black and white.)