Movie 4

Movie 4 (also known as Movie Four) was a television program that aired at various times, but predominantly weekday afternoons, on various television stations on channel 4, including WNBC-TV in New York City from 1956 to 1974. WNBC's program aired top-rank first-run movies and other future classics from Hollywood, as well as foreign films. As with other movie shows of 90-minute length, films that ran longer were often divided into two parts.

Though it achieved a degree of success, for most of its run the WNBC show usually ran in the shadow of rival WCBS-TV's The Early Show on weekdays and The Late Show on weekends. Despite its being a major player among the local movie shows for nearly 18 years, the program today is largely forgotten in relation to WABC-TV's better-known The 4:30 Movie.

The Movie 4 title was also used at varying times until the 1970s by NBC's two other owned-and-operated stations on channel 4, WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. and (to a considerably lesser degree) KNBC in Los Angeles. The network's Chicago outlet, WMAQ-TV, used the title Movie 5 for its movie shows from the late 1950s up to the 1980s; and during NBC's ownership of Philadelphia station WRCV-TV (now KYW-TV), their movie umbrella was known as Movie 3.

What became Movie 4 debuted on what was then WRCA-TV on June 4, 1956. In its first eight months on the air, the program was known as Evening Theatre, and was hosted by staff announcer Johnny Andrews. Prior to its debut, WRCA-TV had been the least committed to airing old movies among the New York television stations. The show was started in large part as the station's attempt to compete with WCBS-TV's aforementioned movie shows and WOR-TV's Million Dollar Movie, as well as capitalizing on the recent release of major pre- and post-1948 films from the top Hollywood studios for television. Only a month into the show's run, and to show that the station was in the game for keeps, WRCA-TV appointed whom they called a "film director" to oversee the purchase of first-run feature films, and to advise NBC's O&O's and affiliates. The program's title switched to Movie 4 on or about February 3, 1957.

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