In 1956, MGM sold the television rights for "The Wizard of Oz" to CBS, which scheduled it to be shown in November of that year. In a landmark event, the film became the first American theatrical fiction film to be shown complete in one evening on prime time television over a major American commercial network. (Olivier's version of "Hamlet" was shown on prime time network TV a month later, but split in half over two weeks, and the 1950 film, "" was telecast by ABC in 1952, but that was a documentary.) Beginning in 1959, and lasting until 1991, telecasts of "The Wizard of Oz" became an annual tradition, drawing huge audiences in homes all over the U.S. and earning additional profits for MGM. The studio was all too happy to see "Oz" become, through television, one of the two or three most famous films MGM has ever made, and one of the few films that nearly everybody in the U.S. has seen at least once. Today "The Wizard of Oz" is regularly shown on the Turner-owned channels, no longer just once a year.