A Childhood Television Ritual Is Finally Coming Home
The Yellow Brick Road leads to MeTV! For those of us who grew up watching The Wizard of Oz on terrestrial television as kids, one of broadcast TV’s most cherished family rituals is coming back.
MeTV has secured the exclusive free broadcast television rights to the 1939 MGM classic and will air the movie multiple times in prime time throughout October 2026 as the centerpiece of the network’s expanded Halloween BOO-Nanza. Exact dates and times have not yet been announced, but the network says the movie will be shown unedited and surrounded by additional surprises still to come.
That might sound like a simple programming announcement in the streaming age, but The Wizard of Oz and television share a much deeper history. For decades, Dorothy’s return to Kansas was not something audiences pulled up whenever they felt like it. The movie arrived once a year, the family gathered around the television and everyone made the trip to Oz together.
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There Is Still No Place Like Oz
Find MeTV in your area, then revisit the movie, music and original story that turned one annual broadcast into a childhood tradition.
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The film first reached American television on November 3, 1956, when approximately 45 million viewers tuned in. CBS began presenting it annually in 1959, helping transform the movie from a celebrated theatrical release into a shared piece of childhood for multiple generations.
Parents planned around it. Children waited for it. Some viewers first saw the famous transition from sepia-toned Kansas to Technicolor Oz on black-and-white sets, only discovering the full visual trick years later when a color television finally entered the house. The Wicked Witch and those flying monkeys frightened a fresh group of kids every year, while “Over the Rainbow” sent everyone back again the following season.
That annual appointment helped make the film part of the American cultural memory long before VHS tapes, cable marathons and streaming libraries made repeat viewing ordinary. MeTV says this October will mark the movie’s first appearance on free broadcast television since its final CBS telecast on May 9, 1998 — nearly three decades away from the medium that helped turn it into a household tradition.
The timing also makes perfect sense. Oz is everywhere again, from the continuing cultural wave surrounding Wicked to theatrical screenings and new generations discovering Dorothy, Glinda and the Wicked Witch through different doors. But there is something especially fitting about the original movie returning through an antenna, landing in living rooms the old-fashioned way.
Streaming can give us almost anything at any time. What it cannot quite recreate is the feeling that everyone is watching the same thing tonight. This October, MeTV is giving The Wizard of Oz back a little of that magic — and giving those of us who remember the annual broadcast a reason to gather around the television one more time.
Watch MeTV Announce ‘The Wizard Of Oz’ Broadcast Return
MeTV previews the classic film’s October return to free television as part of its Halloween BOO-Nanza celebration.
Sources: MeTV; PBS American Experience; Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
