The 1939 American musical fantasy film The Wizard of Oz, shot mostly in Technicolor, has become, since its first telecast in 1956, one of the two or three most popular American films ever made,[1] although it has been a famous film ever since it played in movie theatres years before its TV debut. Like Gone with the Wind, The Ten Commandments, and The Sound of Music, the film has never been sold to isolated local stations across the country for TV showings, although it was first telecast more than half a century ago. Instead, it has been shown respectively on CBS, NBC, the now-defunct WB Network, and several of Ted Turner's national cable channels. This is in complete contrast to the average film, which in the pre-cable era, would generally be sold to hundreds of local television stations after being telecast once or twice by a major commercial TV network. In April 2011, The Wizard of Oz achieved the rare distinction of being one of the few live-action films shown on the Cartoon Network. ABC is the only one of the big three television networks on which the film has never been shown, and PBS and its predecessor NET have never telecast it either.
Made for theaters and first released in 1939 by MGM, reissued theatrically in the U.S. in 1949 and 1955,[1] again as part of the MGM Children's Matinees series in 1970 and 1971,[1], re-released theatrically in Portugal in 1981 and in Finland in 1988, [2] and reissued in 1998 to U.S. theaters in a re-mastered edition, the movie, before its television audience was established, was, like many films, simply a well-remembered motion picture that many people loved, but not one of the icons of cinema.[3] From 1959 to 1991, it was an annual tradition on United States commercial network television, always presented as a special program. It is quite possibly the first theatrical film to have become a long-running tradition on American network TV, and it is also quite possibly the first family film nearly two decades old (at the time) to be telecast nationally. Most family television specials of the 1950s were either live, or productions that had only recently been filmed for TV, such as the 1954 Shower of Stars musical production of A Christmas Carol, or 1957's The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
At least one source has claimed that The Wizard of Oz is the most watched film of all time.[4] After 1959, telecasts of the film quickly became a much anticipated family event in the United States, drawing extremely large audiences annually for many years.[5] From the 1960's to about the 1980's, the film became as much of a family ritual in the U.S. as the program which, in the U.S. between 1959 and 1968, always followed the Oz telecast - The Ed Sullivan Show. This was due not only to what many feel is the excellence of the film, but also to the fact that between 1959 and 1980, television was virtually the only means by which families were able to see it, unless they attended the MGM Children's Matinee in 1970. At that time, people were able to watch it on TV only once a year; there were no videocassette, DVD, or television on-demand options.[6][7]
The film was a top ratings winner on television even for a few years after it was first issued on videocassette in 1980. However, from about 1986, the sense of anticipation that viewers throughout the U.S. felt on days when the film was telecast annually began to gradually diminish to almost nothing, due to the film's now-easy availability on home video. Its television audience has also been substantially reduced, especially so because video and DVD enables viewers to always see the film uncut and without commercials or pop-up ads running at the bottom of the screen. The film is now a bestseller on DVD, as it once was on VHS. However, in 2006, it did place # 11 in the Nielsen ratings among cable television programs for the week of November 11, partly perhaps because this was the first time the film was shown on TV in high-definition.[8]
Between 1959 and 1989, the film was nearly always telecast on a weekend, making it easier for children to see it.
Until 1999, the film, when telecast, had been shown only on commercial broadcast television, not on cable. Cable showings began in 1999. The tradition of annual showings of the film in the U.S. has, as of now, vanished,[7] and TV showings of the film have become rather frequent in comparison to telecasts in earlier years, now that Turner Entertainment owns the rights to show it.
The Wizard of Oz has become perhaps the most famous film to be regularly shown on U.S. television, and one of the most cherished.[9] Of all the many family-aimed musical fantasies telecast immediately after the huge television success of the Mary Martin Peter Pan, the 1939 Oz is the only one which is still shown regularly to this day, and the only one to have been shown on U.S. network television for such a long period of time. Because The Wizard of Oz has been televised nearly every year since 1959, gaining more than half of the U.S. TV audience in the days before videocassettes, the vast majority of people who have seen the film have seen it this way rather than watching it on the big screen. The film It's a Wonderful Life has a similar history of relative neglect and then becoming popular because of frequent showings on television, although It's a Wonderful Life was much less successful on its original 1946 theatrical run than The Wizard of Oz was in 1939.[10][11]
The film's first telecast, on November 3, 1956, took place shortly after Halloween. The 1959 to 1962 telecasts of The Wizard of Oz occurred later in the year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, beginning in the 1963–64 season the showings would occur in the early months of the year. As a result the movie did not air at all in 1963. But its 1964 showing was only 13 months after the 1962 showing. So even minus 1963 the movie still aired then once a year per TV season.
Feature films by nearly all of the major Hollywood studios were not broadcast on network television before 1955, due to the studios' reluctance to anger theatre owners with a competing venue.[12] The one exception was Walt Disney, who, understanding the potential of the medium as a promotional tool, did not hesitate to begin showing some of his films on ABC-TV once his long-running television anthology series premiered in late 1954. Disney films first shown on the program in the 1950s (in one-hour edited versions) included Alice in Wonderland (1951), So Dear to My Heart (1948), and Dumbo (1941), although occasionally a full-length Disney film such as Treasure Island (1950) would be split into two one-hour episodes shown a week apart.[13] Several of these films were re-run on the Disney program in color when the program moved to NBC in the 1960s, and nearly all of these mentioned were re-released to movie theatres even after being shown on television. Some of the most famous old Disney films, however, such as Bambi (1942) and Pinocchio (1940), were not shown complete on television (or even in one-hour edits) until the 1980s, and Fantasia (1940) and Song of the South (1946) are the two remaining Disney classics which, even today, have never been televised complete or in one-hour versions. (Most segments of Fantasia, however, have been televised separately on Disney's long-running anthology series.) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was telecast complete for the first time ever (but with commercials) in February 2010.[14] However, it also made its television debut on the commercial-free Disney Channel.
In the early to mid-1950s, American television relied on features from the minor Hollywood studios, independent U.S. producers, and British films. By 1956, the other major Hollywood studios aside from Disney were in the process of selling their films to local television stations, but not to the networks.
The Wizard of Oz was chosen to be the first Hollywood film to be shown uncut in one evening on an entire television network [15] rather than just a local station. British films such as the Laurence Olivier Hamlet, released in 1948, were being shown on American network television in the 1950s as part of the Famous Film Festival program on ABC , but, like the Disney films, these were also either severely cut or shown in several installments. NBC had telecast the 1955 British film The Constant Husband as a prime time special a year and a half prior to its theatrical release in the U.S., but with twenty minutes cut so that the 88 minute film could be shown in a ninety minute time slot with commercials. [16] On March 11, 1956, Richard III, Olivier's 1955 British film production of Shakespeare's play, made its simultaneous U.S. theatrical and NBC television network debut as a three-hour color special, but that was a matinée, not a prime time showing, and parts of the film had been edited due to censorship.
The first telecast of The Wizard of Oz was as the last installment of the CBS anthology series Ford Star Jubilee on November 3, 1956.[17] The network paid MGM $225,000, a huge amount in 1956, for the rights to televise the film and to re-broadcast it if the telecast was a success.[18]
This 1956 telecast was intended by network executives as a response to the then-recent hugely successful telecast of the Broadway musical Peter Pan with Mary Martin, which had been restaged especially for TV at NBC Studios as part of the anthology series Producers' Showcase. Peter Pan had first been shown live on TV by NBC in 1955, and been repeated (again live) by public demand in 1956. These first two telecasts of the 1954 musical based on the J. M. Barrie classic were so successful that other live-action adaptations of fantasies, several of them now forgotten, were telecast over the next few years, including:
All of these shows except Peter Pan, The Sleeping Beauty, The Wizard of Oz and The Nutcracker were especially created for television, and led to a sort of temporary trend for this type of entertainment. The Alice in Wonderland, although originally produced onstage, featured an almost entirely new cast in its television adaptation. Only Eva LeGallienne reprised her original stage role.
For the first telecast 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. The main reason that CBS arranged for a host for the film was that a 101-minute motion picture was at that time not considered long enough to run in the allotted 120-minute time slot without some "padding". This was because, until about 1968, commercial breaks were much shorter on television than they are now, usually lasting no more than two minutes,[28] and there were fewer breaks during a program — perhaps eight in a two-hour span as opposed to about ten or twelve today. This telecast marked the only time that anyone actually connected with the film was selected to host it. Bert Lahr, who had played both the Cowardly Lion and farmhand Zeke in the film, the then ten-year-old Liza Minnelli, daughter of Wizard of Oz star Judy Garland, and young Oz expert Justin G. Schiller, appeared as hosts to introduce the movie. Contrary to some internet information claims, Lorna Luft, Minnelli's half-sister, did not appear on the telecast, as she was only four years old at the time, although she did have her picture taken with Minnelli in a promotional photo. Unlike several of the other Oz telecasts, no stills were taken during the hosting sequences of the 1956 telecast.[29] The practice of a show business celebrity regularly "hosting" The Wizard of Oz lasted from the film's first television showing until 1968, when the film went to NBC after being telecast on CBS nine times.
Contrary to what is sometimes claimed,[30] the film was always telecast uncut in a two-hour time slot between 1956 and 1968, despite having commercials and hosted segments.
The day after the film's first telecast, newspapers reviewed the presentation ecstatically. Variety prophetically suggested that in the future the film could be telecast annually and at an earlier time, which, of course, is exactly what happened.[31]
It was in the years following its second telecast that the fame (and even the cultural influence) of the film gradually began to grow greater than anyone connected with it had ever dreamed of. By the time of the fifth and sixth showings, cartoonist caricatures of its four leading characters - Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion - were appearing in scores of newspapers all across the U.S. in anticipation of that year's telecast of the movie. According to the 50th Anniversary book commemorating the film, these were also the years that newspaper Op-Ed columnists, who had never before written about the movie, began making references to it in their columns.
For telecasts from 1959 - the year of its second telecast - up until 1998, the film was always shown as a stand-alone TV special instead of as part of an anthology or movie series. Between 1959 and 1968, CBS would choose its hosts from its then-current prime time lineup. In 1959, the host was Red Skelton (The Red Skelton Show); in 1960 it was Richard Boone (Have Gun, Will Travel), in 1961 and 1962 it was Dick Van Dyke (The Dick Van Dyke Show), and from 1964 through 1967, it was Danny Kaye (The Danny Kaye Show). Skelton, Boone and Van Dyke brought their then-young children along to appear in these hostings; this was CBS's way of emphasizing that the film's showing was a family event.
Although the hosting segments for the 1956 telecast of the film had to be done live, all of the others were recorded on video tape in advance of the telecasts.[6] It is not known if any of these hosting sequences still survive. CBS and the other networks were often in the habit of erasing videotapes they felt that they did not need in order to be able to use the tape again, and a mere hosting segment for a classic film was/is considered fairly unimportant when the main attraction was the film itself.
The hosting sequences for the 1959-64 telecasts were all done in creative ways, not as the usual perfunctory introductions (Danny Kaye actually taped only one hosting segment; his hosting sequence was the only one rerun three times - for the 1965 to 1967 telecasts of the film, while Dick Van Dyke, who also hosted the film more than once, had actually videotaped two different hosting sequences for the 1961 and 1962 telecasts respectively.)
Often some humor would be incorporated into these segments, notably when a television and/or film comedian was the host. Red Skelton was seen as two characters: before the film began, he was seen in a studio set of an early twentieth-century library, in costume as a Victorian-era storyteller who introduced L. Frank Baum's original 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (on which the film is based) 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. Richard Boone, one of the three dramatic actors (as opposed to comedians) who has hosted the film, was taped on the set of his television series Have Gun, Will Travel, where he was shown in a "living room" with his real son. Dick Van Dyke was shown in what was reportedly a studio recreation of his living room, where he was seen with his children, and Danny Kaye appeared sitting on a prop toadstool against a painted backdrop of the Yellow Brick Road and the Emerald City.[32] However, no matter how humorous they were, no directors or writers were ever credited for the hosting sequences, just as none are ever credited for the ones done prior to the showing of a film on Turner Classic Movies.
The Wizard of Oz did not become an annual television tradition immediately — only after the 1959 showing, when, because of the earlier hour at which it was shown (6:00 P.M., E.T.), more children tuned in to the broadcast, and it gained an even larger television audience than before. The 1959 telecast was especially welcomed by media critic John Crosby, who commented in the New York Herald Tribune, "Television - any television - looks awfully ordinary after The Wizard of Oz".[33]
Between 1959 and 1968, telecasts of the film, which at that time always took place on Sunday evenings, invariably pre-empted that week's showings of The Twentieth Century (which ran from 1957 until 1966), and Lassie (which ran from 1955 until 1974). From 1959 through 1962, they also pre-empted the sitcom Dennis the Menace, and from 1964 through 1966, in addition to Lassie and The Twentieth Century, the sitcom My Favorite Martian, which premiered when Dennis the Menace 's run ended. Only once did they pre-empt the short-lived 1966 caveman sitcom It's About Time, which replaced My Favorite Martian. There were no pre-emptions in 1963 because the film was not televised that year. In 1967, for the first and only time, the film pre-empted the CBS family series Gentle Ben, in addition to Lassie.
Conversely, then-CBS affiliate WISN-TV in Milwaukee opted not to carry the network's yearly Oz telecast in 1961, the year that WISN began its affiliation with CBS, running Green Bay Packers football instead. However, due to viewer outcry, WISN was able to get permission to run the film locally at a later date.
Years later, in 1978, after the film had returned to CBS, a computer malfunction at CBS owned-and-operated WBBM-TV in Chicago accidentally cut off most of the ending to that year's Oz telecast, interrupting the final minute with a commercial block that wasn't supposed to air until after the movie had ended (because the break was only 42 seconds long, no attempt was made to override the computer, for fear of making the problem worse). For several hours thereafter, the WBBM switchboards were flooded with angry calls from viewers, while those unable to get through chose to voice their displeasure through the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times newspapers.
The film, as telecast on U.S. television between 1959 and 1968, was arguably given a much more elaborate TV presentation than it has received since then. It would always have special "wraparound" opening and closing credits segments devised by CBS, accompanied by the network's own specially recorded opening and closing music based on the film's score. 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, would first be shown in CBS's own format, 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]". These specially-devised opening credits would never mention that the film was made by MGM or any other studio. From 1959 to 1964, CBS created different "wraparound" credits for each showing, but because the same hosting segment - the Danny Kaye one - was shown between 1964 and 1967, audiences saw the same "wraparound" credits from 1964 until the film went to NBC.
This special CBS introduction would be followed by the host speaking about the movie for about three minutes or so. His remarks would lead directly into the actual film, beginning with all of its original 1939 opening credits (which are shown against a background of moving clouds), including the MGM Leo the Lion logo, the name of the film, the cast list, and the film's principal technical staff, exactly as MGM had created them, with the film's main title music heard. The host would reappear just before the film's second half began, to say a few more words about it, before the telecast proceeded with the rest of the film, commercials included (The second half of the film always began with the poppy field sequence).
However, at the end of the movie, the film's closing credits, as created by MGM, would not be shown. Instead, immediately after Dorothy spoke her last line ("Oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!"), and the camera faded out on her, television viewers once again saw CBS's specially made title card The Wizard of Oz, this time accompanied by some of the film's end title music, exactly as heard on the soundtrack. After a final commercial, the host would then be seen once again, bid farewell to the TV audience, and CBS would show their own version of the cast list which appears during the film's end credits. At the end, referring to both the film and the hosting segments, the same announcer that read off the special "wraparound" opening credits would declare that This has been a film and videotape presentation.
From the beginning the film was telecast in color, although very few people owned color television sets at that time.[34] (An exception, however, was made in 1961, when it was ruled that color telecasts had to be paid for by their sponsors, which, at the time, they refused to do.) [35]The fact that the film was telecast in color most likely seemed much more striking to home viewers in the late 1950s and early '60s, when there were still relatively few color programs on television, than it does now, when color TV is taken for granted.[36]
Because of the increase in commercial time during programs, the idea of regularly having hosts to introduce the film was permanently dropped when the film went to NBC in 1968, where no "wraparound" sequence was shown. The presentation simply consisted of the film itself, with its original opening and closing credits, and no special NBC "wraparound" credits or hosting segments. The famous NBC peacock would be 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). However, one NBC telecast did feature an on-screen host: the 1970 showing, which opened with veteran actor Gregory Peck paying tribute to the recently deceased Judy Garland (a segment directed by Oz producer Mervyn LeRoy, marking his first TV work), although this segment consisted of only a few brief remarks, while the older opening hosting segments went on for about three minutes or so.
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.[37] The film stayed on NBC until 1976. When CBS, realizing its error in allowing it to go to another network, bought back the rights, their viewer ratings shot up, and one executive was heard to remark, "That picture is better [for the network] than a gushing oil well".[38]
After its 1976 return to CBS, the film was hosted on that network by a celebrity only once more, in a filmed segment featuring Angela Lansbury (star of CBS's Murder, She Wrote) 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 and the sponsors were being announced, and immediately before and after commercial breaks. Angela Lansbury also narrated a documentary about the making of the film, originally entitled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: 50 Years of Magic and years later retitled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The Making of a Movie Classic.[39] It was first shown immediately after the movie's 1990 telecast, and is included as a supplement on all the DVD releases beginning with the 1999 DVD release. Jack Haley, Jr., the documentary's director, was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work.[40]
In recent years, when shown on Turner Classic Movies, The Wizard of Oz is usually hosted by Robert Osborne, though, in this case, since TCM is commercial-free, it is obviously not done in order to pad out its running time. When telecast now, the film never has any "wraparound" credits created by a network or a national television station.
On June 3, 2007, Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants, hosted a telecast of the film on Turner Classic Movies, as part of a special summer series of family movies.
On July 27, 2008, the film was shown twice in a row on Turner Network Television without a host, but with commercials, and with "pop-up" animated ads for other TNT programs at the bottom of the screen just before and after commercial breaks.
Now, when the film is shown on TBS, the image sizes for the opening and closing credits are often "marginalized", so that the credits for the preceding show, or the credits or opening scene of the show following the film, may be shown alongside them.
Between November 15 and 16, 2008, the film was shown on TBS a total of three times. There was no host, and, rather than having a pop-up ad before a break, the network chose to make extremely abrupt transitions to commercials - something that had rarely, if ever, had been done before with as popular a film as The Wizard of Oz. The pop-up ads for other programs did, however, make appearances after the breaks.
The showing in 1983 was the 25th network prime-time showing, a record then for any film or television special. In the first nine showings, all on CBS, The Wizard of Oz gained at least 49% of the television audience.[41] In 1966, it ranked #1 in the ratings for the week that it was shown. [42] Between 1960 and 1965, the film even beat out ABC-TV's Walt Disney Presents (in 1960) and NBC's Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (from 1961 to 1965), which aired opposite the film.[43] Between 1965 and 1967, the Disney program was not shown at all during the same week that The Wizard of Oz was telecast by CBS.[13] The reason is unclear, but it is conceivable that NBC, which aired the Disney program at that time, had grown tired of being regularly beaten in the ratings by Oz whenever the film was telecast. When the film moved temporarily from CBS to NBC, it would frequently preempt the Disney program altogether, and when CBS bought the film back from NBC in 1976, it again began to beat Disney in the ratings. And, on one occasion, it preempted Disney yet again, after the series moved to that network in the 1980s.) [44][45]
From 1968 to 1984, very minor cuts were made to the film to make room for added commercial time and in order to have the film "clock in" at two hours. The film was carefully edited so that no actual dialogue or singing was removed, only moments such as camera pans and establishing shots, as well as MGM's written foreword to the film: For nearly forty years, this story has given faithful service to the Young in Heart, and time has been powerless to put its kindly philosophy out of fashion, etc. However, it is possible that the cuts may have alienated at least some of the viewing audience, especially since they were able, starting in 1980, to see the uncut film on videocassette.
On a few occasions beginning in 1985, again because of the increased time spent on commercial breaks, the film was time-compressed to fit it into a two-hour running time without cutting it.[46] (In "time compression", the film is run at a slightly faster speed which is supposedly undetectable, but observant viewers can apparently notice a distinct "chipmunk"-like alteration of the voices when this is done. It has been observed that film aficionados strongly oppose this method of televising a movie.) However, The Wizard of Oz is now always shown complete and at its regular speed on television, both with and without commercials. When shown with ads, the film now runs about two hours and fifteen minutes, simply because of the increase in commercial time.
The March 1991 showing was the first after the film gained protected status from the Library of Congress and the National Film Preservation Board. Networks opted to no longer shorten the film by "microcutting" a few individual moments throughout the movie as had been done from the late 1960s to the early 1980s to make room for commercials and keep it in a two hour broadcast. This extended the running time of the film from 8 P.M to 10:07 P.M., and sometimes even longer, depending on the amount of time spent on commercials. It was one of the first 50 films selected for this protection.[47]
From 1959 to 1991, the film was shown on television only once a year, except, as previously noted, in 1963, when it was not shown at all. From 1968 to 1991, whether telecast on CBS or NBC, the film was always shown during or just before the spring months.[1] In 1991, it was shown twice during the year for the first time. The reason for this was that CBS wanted to switch the date of the film's TV showing so that it would be run around Thanksgiving rather than late winter/early spring. 1991 also marked the first time since 1956 that the film was shown in November. This also happened in 1993, when the film was telecast in both February and November of that year. The film was not shown on television at all in 1992, 1995 and 1997, marking the first time since 1963 that a year was skipped in showings of the film. Turner, which owned most of the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television library at the time (now 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 next year.
2000 marked the first time that the film was shown on U.S. television during the summer. 2002 marked an unusual frequency of showings when, for the first time, it was shown on television five times in one year. And in 2003, if one counts up all the showings on the several Turner-owned networks, it was shown a total of seven times within one year - a far cry from the once annual-only telecasts.[48]
On November 6, 2011, TBS became the American television channel on which The Wizard of Oz has been shown most often, when the film had its 32nd showing on that channel, finally breaking CBS's long-held record of thirty-one showings. CBS's thirty-one showings of Oz once held the all-time television record for prime time telecasts of a feature film on a commercial television network. It was broken only as recently as 2004, by ABC's annual TV airings of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), which that network has been telecasting since 1973.[49] However, despite being shown annually, The Ten Commandments has not had nearly as much impact when telecast as has The Wizard of Oz. As opposed to the forty-two years it took for CBS to reach a total of thirty-one telecasts of Oz, TBS, by frequently showing it several times in one week instead of once annually, has surpassed CBS's record in a mere twelve years.
In addition to being shown on cable several times in one week, another difference between showings on NBC, CBS, the WB network, and cable channels is that when the film was shown on CBS and NBC, it was always presented as a "special" instead of just a televised film, no matter what time of year. This meant that the film would pre-empt two hours or more of regular television programming on the specific network which showed it just for that one night. Today, especially when shown on Turner Classic Movies, it is frequently presented as just another film in a time slot already reserved for the showing of a movie, not a true television special, and no longer just annually. And it is often shown twice in a row on the same day, so those who missed the first showing might catch the second. This was something that television executives would have considered unthinkable during the years that the film was annually telecast.
Some might argue that the method of presenting Oz as an annual television special gave the telecasts a certain aura which today's showings of the film do not retain, especially since it has been easily available on video in one form or another since 1980. Promos for the CBS and NBC showings during the 1960s would begin airing on television as far as two weeks in advance of that year's telecast; today's television showings of the film receive little, if any, advance publicity at all. The 1960's CBS promos, especially, de-emphasized the fact that The Wizard of Oz was actually a theatrical motion picture being shown on television; the film was treated as if it were a beloved special program rather than a mere film. On the major commercial networks, the film was never termed a "CBS Movie Special" or an "NBC Movie Special", as movie specials shown on those networks are frequently termed, but as simply The Wizard of Oz - the only identification that viewers needed to know what was being referred to.
In November 2007, the film was accorded the unusual honor of being shown literally simultaneously on two Turner-owned channels, TBS and TNT.
One of the advantages of The Wizard of Oz for television sets made prior to the HDTV era is that it was not made for the wide screen like today's films. This means that the film's visual dimensions when shown on an analog TV set were almost exactly the same as they were when the film was originally shown in theatres. The 1955 and 1998 re-releases, however, were matted in movie theatres to produce a fake widescreen effect.
Today, when shown on an HD channel, the film is pillarboxed so that its aspect ratio is preserved. On DVD, the film has always been issued only in its original 1939 aspect ratio, despite the "fake widescreen" 1998 theatrical re-release.
TNT showed the film in High-Definition in November 2006.
The movie has also been shown on television successfully in Great Britain, Canada and is shown every year in Australia, but it has not become the television phenomenon there that it has in the U.S.[50]
Times are mostly Eastern Standard Time (taken from TV Guide and from The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History). However, the late spring and summer showings are all Eastern Daylight Time.
November 21, 1999, TBS
July 3, 2000, TCM
November 19 and 25, 2000, TNT
July 4, 2001, TCM
December 1 and 2, 2001, TNT
July 4, 2002, TCM
November 28, 2002, TBS
December 8, 13, and 25, 2002, TNT
July 5 and 6, 2003, TCM
November 16 and 21, 2003, TBS
December 13 and 14, 2003, TNT
July 2 and 3, 2004, TCM
December 8 and 12, 2004, TNT
November 19, 20, and 24, 2004, TBS
July 3 and 4, 2005, TCM
November 11, 12, and 13, 2005, TBS
July 3 and 4, 2006, TCM
November 10, 11, and 12, 2006, TBS
December 11 and 17, 2006, TNT
June 3, 2007, TCM
November 9, 10, and 11, 2007, TBS
July 27, 2008, TNT
December 20 and 21, 2008, TNT
July 2 and 3, 2009, TCM
September 27, 2009, TBS
November 13, 14, 15, and 22, 2009, TBS
December 19, 20, and 27, 2009, TNT
July 2 and 3, 2010, TCM
November 26, 27, and 28, 2010, TBS
December 17 and 18, 2010, TBS
December 25, 2010, TBS
February 12, 2011, TCM
April 17, 2011, TBS
April 24, 2011, Cartoon Network
November 4, 5, and 6, 2011, TBS
December 17 and 18, 2011, TNT