The show featured reenactments of dangerous fugitives that are portrayed by actors, interspersed with on-camera interviews, with Walsh in a voiceover narration.

Each episode also featured photographs of dangerous fugitives, as well as a toll-free hotline number where viewers could give information at 1-800-CRIME-TV (1-800-274-6388), and they were allowed to remain anonymous.

Even earlier, however, CBS aired a three-month half-hour similar series hosted by Walter McGraw in the 1955–1956 season titled Wanted.

While Linder was shooting the pilot episode in Indiana, Chao and Fox attorney Tom Herwitz conducted a hurried search for a host.

Other potential candidates included former Marine Corps Commandant General P. X. Kelly, journalists Linda Ellerbee and Bob Woodward, and victims' advocate Theresa Saldana.

[12][13] America's Most Wanted debuted as a half-hour program on February 7, 1988, on the then-seven Fox owned and operated stations, located in New York; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Houston; Chicago; Dallas; and Boston.

The show's first logo ran from 1988 to 1990, which consisted of an eagle sitting on a tree branch in a circle, with lines, stars, and zigzags below, and it has "AMERICA'S MOST WANTED" written on it.

The program was canceled[16] for a month and a half in the fall of 1996, per a decision made the previous spring in the wake of high production costs.

However, protests from the public, law enforcement, and government officials, including the governors of 37 states, encouraged Fox to bring the show back, though low ratings for Married... and Love and Marriage ultimately sealed the return of AMW.

[18] For the next 15 years afterward, the America's Most Wanted/COPS combination made Saturday evening Fox's most stable night, along with the longest unchanged primetime schedule on U.S. television as of 2011.

On March 6, 2010, Fox aired the 1,000th episode of America's Most Wanted, and Walsh interviewed then President Barack Obama at the White House.

[19] The show expanded its focus so it could also cover criminals in the War on Terrorism when, on October 12, 2001, an episode which featured 22 most-wanted al-Qaeda operatives was aired.

The show was put together due to a request by White House aides after the same list of men had been released to the nation two days earlier.

On the final Fox episode, Walsh promised to continue the show elsewhere and told the Associated Press: "I want to catch bad guys and find missing children—and we're not done.

[26] In January 2021, Fox announced that it would revive America's Most Wanted, with a new host Elizabeth Vargas, with the full endorsement of John Walsh, who could appear if contractual requirements with Discovery for his series In Pursuit are relaxed.

An extension series hosted by Nancy Grace, America's Most Wanted Overtime, was also carried on the Fox Nation streaming service.

Given that a significant number of the fugitives on America's Most Wanted had yet to face trial in a criminal court, the show adhered to the presumption of innocence as afforded under the law.

During its entire run, Walsh refused to ever issue a retraction, and never updated viewers on any fugitives who were later found not guilty of the crimes to which they had been profiled.

In season six of The Golden Girls, the fictitious mobster The Cheese Man boasts that his most recent appearance on America's Most Wanted was the highest-rated episode ever.

[episode needed] In the 2019 science fiction action film Terminator: Dark Fate, Sarah Connor reveals that she was featured in an entire episode of America's Most Wanted and is wanted in fifty American states, due to escaping Pescadero State Hospital, destroying Cyberdyne Systems and allegedly killing Miles Dyson 25 years earlier.

In an episode of the sitcom 30 Rock, Liz Lemon mentions that she once appeared on America's Most Wanted, playing a woman who was strangled on the toilet.