Some films, such as Ben-Hur and How the West Was Won, were of such length that an entire week was devoted to running the whole movie.
Variations of The 4:30 Movie were aired on other stations around the United States, most notably those also owned and operated by WABC-TV's parent network, ABC.
(From the autumn of 1966 to the 1968 time change, it was called The 6 O'Clock Movie, a title which was also used by sister stations KABC-TV in Los Angeles and KGO-TV in San Francisco until 1971.)
In its first twenty months in its soon-to-be titular time slot, The Big Show / 4:30 Movie was two hours, but after the early evening Eyewitness News was expanded from 30 minutes to an hour on September 8, 1969, the movie show's length was set at 90 minutes, which it would remain for the rest of its run.
The announcer and off-camera host for The Big Show, and The 4:30 Movie was Scott Vincent from January 1968 to December 1978.
Following Vincent's death, announcing on promos was divided among Hodges, Fred Foy, Joel Crager and Ernie Anderson.
The piece was commissioned by ABC in 1968 for use on flagship station WABC-TV and was later applied to the local movie shows of the network's O&Os.
The "rotating cameraman" footage originated from the opening titles for the weekend edition of the ABC Movie of the Week in 1971 [1].
As with many once-popular movie shows on both the networks and local television stations, the factors most commonly cited in The 4:30 Movie's demise ranged from the proliferation of cable television channels such as HBO, Cinemax and Showtime, to the increasing popularity of videocassette recorders.