Disney-ABC to cancel 'At the Movies,' Siskel and Ebert's old show

Disney-ABC to cancel 'At the Movies,' Siskel and Ebert's old show
Share | "At the Movies" is fading to black after 24 seasons.The cancellation brings down the curtain on the Chicago-based nationally syndicated TV showcase for dueling film critics that traced its lineage to WTTW-Ch. 11's mid-1970s pairing of the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert and Tribune's Gene Siskel.

Disney-ABC Domestic Television and ABC Media Productions finally yelled cut Wednesday, announcing the final show with current reviewers Michael Phillips of the Tribune and A.O. Scott of the New York Times will air the weekend of Aug. 14. But it was anything but a surprise ending.

The plug nearly was pulled last year after one season with poorly received Ben Lyons of E! Entertainment Television and Ben Mankiewicz of Turner Classic Movies in the critics' chairs. That pairing was installed following a bitter divorce from Ebert and Richard Roeper, the Sun-Times colleague Ebert picked to succeed Siskel after Siskel's 1999 death from a brain tumor at age 53.


Instead, last August, just weeks before the new TV season, Disney-ABC announced it had hired Phillips and Scott. Respected print reviewers, they were a throwback to the tradition and standards of Ebert, Siskel and Roeper. But their earnest, sometimes bookish approach -- a sharp contrast to the slick, too often superficial approach of Lyons in particular -- failed to restore the viewership the two Bens squandered in Disney's misguided bid to revitalize the program.

"To their credit," Phillips said Wednesday night, Disney-ABC "never tried to make us anything we weren't."

Scott and Phillips -- each of whom sat across from Roeper in the earlier incarnation of "Ebert & Roeper" after 2006 health issues that stole Ebert's voice and kept him off the air -- at least allowed "At the Movies" to die with dignity.

"This was a very difficult decision, especially considering the program's rich history and iconic status within the entertainment industry," Disney-ABC Domestic Television and ABC Media Productions said in a statement. "But from a business perspective it became clear this weekly, half-hour, broadcast syndication series was no longer sustainable."

Public broadcaster WTTW first paired Siskel, who was reviewing films for the Tribune and WBBM-Ch. 2, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Ebert for "Opening Soon ... at a Theater Near You" in 1975. The show began airing monthly almost a year later. WTTW eventually made it a weekly a program and took it national via public television in 1978 as "Sneak Previews."

A dispute with WTTW led Siskel and Ebert to commercial television through Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co.'s TV syndication wing in 1982, and they got a better deal from Disney four years later.

From the very start, even when they lacked performance skills and a comfort in front of the camera they would later acquire, Siskel and Ebert were such a natural point-counterpoint that they came to define in many ways the genre of sparring experts on TV.

Siskel, thin, tall with a receding hairline, and Ebert, shorter, more stout with a mop of hair, not only were a physical study in contrast. Each could intelligently, passionately and persuasively argue their views with authority, a sense of perspective and history and the certainty the other guy was just plain wrong. They never indicated they didn't respect one another, even if the depth of their affection was not always apparent.

"Gene Siskel and I were like tuning forks," Ebert wrote on the 10th anniversary of Siskel's death, noting he thought of him daily. "Strike one, and the other would pick up the same frequency. When we were in a group together, we were always intensely aware of one another. Sometimes this took the form of camaraderie, sometimes shared opinions, sometimes hostility. But we were aware. If something happened that we both thought was funny but weren't supposed to, God help us if one caught the other's eye. We almost always thought the same things were funny. That may be the best sign of intellectual communion."

Despite his on-air absence, Ebert's name and imprimatur remained with the program until the formal split with Disney in the summer of 2008. A hint of the trouble to come had surfaced a few months before, however, when the show dropped its use of "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" as shorthand for a recommendation or rejection of a film. Ebert and Siskel's estate owned the trademark on the thumbs.

"We gratefully acknowledge the outstanding work of the program's current co-hosts, A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, and top-notch production staff (at Chicago's ABC-owned WLS-Ch. 7)," the syndicator and production company said in its statement. "And it is with heartfelt appreciation that we extend very special thanks to the two brilliant, visionary and incomparable critics that started it all, Roger Ebert and the late Gene Siskel."

It is not known if Disney or WLS have plans for a replacement show in the old "At the Movies" slots. WLS has aired the program after the late local news on Saturday nights and on Sunday mornings. A spokeswoman for Disney-ABC and ABC Media declined comment beyond the prepared statement.

Ebert continues to review films for the Sun-Times, and has talked recently of efforts to launch a new show of some sort. Roeper, a general columnist at the paper, has been reviewing movies for his cable's Starz channel, with the video segments available on his richardroeper.com Web site, as well as on You Tube and Hulu.