That pairing was installed in a misguided bid to bring a new sensibility to the program following a bitter divorce from Ebert and, the Sun-Times colleague Ebert picked to succeed Siskel after Siskel's 1999 death from a brain tumor at age 53.

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.

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. It was anything but a surprise ending.

The cancellation will bring 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 .

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 "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."

Chicago 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." It was one of the most popular shows in PBS history.

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



On Twitter, Ebert said Phillips and Scott "can be very proud of their work on 'At the Movies.' If it had to die, it's going out with class." Ebert praised current producer David Plummer, a holdover from the "Siskel & Ebert" and "Ebert & Roeper" days.

Ebert wrote in an early Thursday blog post that Roeper "didn't fancy following the show in a 'new direction" and called Lyons "the victim of a mistaken hiring decision." Mankiewicz, Ebert Tweeted, was "a good guy who knew his stuff ... an innocent bystander in the 'At the Movies' situation."



The show's demise, Ebert noted, was tied to the changes in the TV industry since the show's heyday.



"Blame the fact that five-day-a-week syndicated shows like 'Wheel of Fortune' went to six days," Ebert wrote. "Blame the fact that cable TV and the internet have fragmented the audience so much that stations are losing market share no matter what they do. Blame the economy, because many stations would rather sell a crappy half-hour infomercial than program a show they respect."

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, full-bodied with a mop of hair, were more than mere physical study in contrasts. 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.

"On television, you get a whole lot of fake people ... fake friendliness, phony smiles ... I think there is a reality level that makes our show interesting," Siskel told the Associated Press in 1983, with Ebert adding that "what appears to be a conversation between two people who have just seen 'Zelig' " is actually that.

Their affection for the films was more obvious at the time than their affection for each other. "Gene Siskel and I were like tuning forks," Ebert wrote on the 10th anniversary of Siskel's death, noting he thought daily of his old sparring partner. "Strike one, and the other would pick up the same frequency."

TV critic Tom Shales of the Washington Post, in 1983, called the duo "the two best-known movie critics in the country, and, now that Archie and Edith (Bunker of 'All in the Family') have left us, probably the country's most celebrated squabblers as well"

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 own the trademark on the thumbs.

The parting with Disney was not pretty, and to some the program linked to Siskel and Ebert died then and there.

Ebert later wrote that the executive who brought in Lyons and Mankiewicz decided that the show's balcony set from both the Siskel-Ebert era and Ebert-Roeper days was passe. So "one of the most iconic set ideas in ... television history, which had survived for more than half of the life of the medium" and once seemingly destined for the Smithsonian Institution instead was leveled by workers with sledge-hammers and tossed "in a dumpster in the alley" outside ABC-owned WLS-Ch. 7, where the show was produced.

"We gratefully acknowledge the outstanding work of the program's current co-hosts, A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, and top-notch production staff," 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.

One possibility would seem to be "On the Red Carpet," a show and Web product launched in February by Disney-ABC Los Angeles flagship KABC-TV with hosts Chris Balish and Rachel Smith, a former Miss USA, focusing on celebrity glitz and glamor.

Ebert, who continues to review films for the Sun-Times, indicated on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" recently he his wife, Chaz, may help produce a new show of some sort and reiterated that plan in his Thursday blog post.

"We believe a market still exists for a weekly show where a couple of critics review new movie," Ebert wrote.

Ebert declined to "reveal details about the talks we're deeply involved in" but said they looked to wrest back control of the name, "At the Movies," as in "Roger Ebert presents At the Movies," noting he and Siskel first used that title in the 1980s when they left PBS for Tribune.

Tribune Entertainment held onto the title when the two went to Disney as "Siskel & Ebert," replacing the original critics with Rex Reed and Bill Harris in 1986. WTTW similarly tried to sustain a post-Siskel and Ebert PBS version of "Sneak Previews" with what Shales called "two New York yokels ... Jeffrey Lyons (father of Ben), to whom the notion of insight or analysis is more foreign than Jupiter, and Neal Gabler, who talks down to viewers as if they were all 3 years old and looks into the camera the way Dracula regards a vacant neck."

Roeper, a general columnist at the Sun-Times newly signed to co-host a program on WLS-AM 890, has been reviewing movies for his cable's Starz channel, with the video segments also available on his richardroeper.com Web site, as well as on You Tube and Hulu.

Below: Video of Roger Ebert's terrific TV remembrance of Gene Siskel (in parts one, two and three) from shortly after Siskel's death.