I can unpack this a little bit, but the basic reason why the color episodes of "The Andy Griffith Show" don't run as often is because people don't like them as much.

"Stations have historically recognized that the first five seasons ... are the most popular and considered, as a grouping, better than the final three seasons, which happen to be the color seasons," Jim Clark of the Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club (yep, that's a real thing) said in an interview with the Winston-Salem Journal.

Recognizing this, stations often choose not to air the latter three seasons, instead just starting over at the beginning after Season 5.

The answer to why they don't like them is complicated somewhat by the timing. CBS began shooting the show in color in Season 6, which also happened to be the first season without Don Knotts as the lovable loser-y Deputy Barney Fife, one of the all-time great sitcom sidekicks.

Knotts left the show to pursue a film career. It turned out to be a good move for him -- he had a great run as a leading man in a series of late '60s farces -- but it left the show without a deputy, and left Andy somewhat lost (according to some accounts) as a wise, stable straight man lacking a goofball to get him into trouble (though he did retain his lovable little boy, Opie, played by now-famous director Ron Howard). Knotts was replaced, briefly, by a couple of new deputies (played by Jack Burns and Jerry Van Dyke), but it wasn't the same.

Knotts is one factor, but there are some who just think the show was better in black and white. "For the color issue, the debate seems to be centered entirely around preference," according to the Andy Griffith Show Wiki on Fandom.com. Clark from the rerun-watchers club said he even knows people who used to turn off the color on their TVs to watch the later episodes.

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