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From Wikipedia's article on Oz:
"It was also very common (and even an FCC requirement for early color broadcasters) for TV stations to turn off the color portion of their transmission when broadcasting a black and white show or movie. This was because unusual colors or "color noise" could be seen during the showing of black-and-white programming under some conditions. Though the opening Kansas scenes in The Wizard of Oz were meant to be shown in sepia and though the sepia was restored to the film in 1989 for the film's 50th anniversary VHS and laserdisc reissue, a few local CBS affiliates still showed the sepia portion of the film with the color signal disabled for many years.[citation needed] Most of these were small market affiliates that ran some syndicated black-and-white shows as these stations were used to turning the color modes off during black-and-white programming. One CBS affiliate, WGNX, transmitted the opening Kansas scenes in black and white as recently as its 1996 showing because this station was an independent station that ran a moderate number of black-and-white films before becoming a CBS affiliate.
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