With syndication a tough market, the next frontier for intelligent on-air movie criticism was supposed to be cable, not public television. But Roger Ebert decided to go back to his roots, announcing that he will bring back the half-hour show he made famous, this time as "Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies."

As my colleague Yvonne Villarreal also reports here, Ebert is producing this time, along with wife Chaz, and the couple will be, at least at first, largely financing it themselves and looking for sponsors as they go. Public television station WTTW in Chicago, the birthplace of the series, will produce, and PBS stations will broadcast the show beginning in January.

The new "At the Movies" will use the appealingly simple formula of knowledgeable people riffing about current and classic film, with the AP's Christy Lemire and NPR's Elvis Mitchell serving as hosts and Roger Ebert himself making the occasional appearance.  "American television is swamped by mindless gossip about celebrities, and I'm happy this show will continue to tell viewers honestly if the critics think a new movie is worth seeing," Ebert said in a statement.

When "At the Movies" was pulled by Disney this year because of the changing syndication landscape -- the last show from critics Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott aired several weeks ago -- the thought was that a new review program might migrate to cable. That could still happen, but Ebert said he thought the more uncluttered landscape of public television was the better place for his new show.

“I believe that by returning to its public roots, our new show will win better and more consistent time slots in more markets,” he said.

The announcement sent a nice little ripple through the Toronto Film Festival, where movies are discussed in the corridors of hotels and on street corners with gusto.

Of course, these days there's plenty of intelligent conversation on the Web about movies and the conversation is  more interactive. Ebert himself, for that matter, has helped make Twitter a more cinephile-friendly place. Still, when it comes to the lean-back medium of television, it's encouraging to see that there will be some movie talk, in whatever form it takes.

--Steven Zeitchik

http://twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: Siskel & Ebert At the Movies. Credit: Tribune Broadcasting

Here we were all ready to gin up a post about how "At the Movies" seems to be hitting its stride this year with Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott after the shaky experiment that was the two Bens (Lyons and Mankiewicz) last year. And now we find out there's nothing to gin -- the show is being canceled.

"At the Movies" fought the good fight of balancing the commercial with the art house -- every second of coverage for a small or foreign film was precious, and Phillips and Scott found a way to secure enough of them, even amid the obligatory "Twilight" and "Alice In Wonderland" assessments (just as Gene Siskel and Rogert Ebert did in the 1970s and 1980s).

But today, Disney-ABC, which syndicated the program, gave up on the fight. Some will say they gave up too soon; it takes years, after all, for any talk-format show to find its audience. There's something to that. But the show was in many ways an anachronism, with even the more hospitable precincts of print and radio struggling to attract audiences for film reviews.

And after trying a younger, more populist approach with Ben Lyons last year that didn't work, and then going back to serious criticism this year, at least they gave it a shot.

Many point to the growth of review-aggregation tools and social media as a reason for the demise of the show (and the declining prominence of critics in general). There's something to that too, though it's worth remembering that Twitter isn't all tweens breathlessly effusing about the Jonas Bros.; some old-school critics, like Ebert himself, have brilliantly used social media too.

We didn't always agree with the new "At the Movies" pair -- Phillips in particular -- though Scott was often brilliantly on point in taking on scared cows like "Shutter Island' and supporting less fashionable causes like "Green Zone." But even when their take differed from our own, it was great fun to watch two intelligent people gab about the movies, whether to get worked up, nod along in agreement or just take the temperature of two of the country's leading critics.

We can only hope a version of the program -- or least some sort of film-review show -- will survive on cable. Everything else good on television seems to.

--Steven Zeitchik

Photo: A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. Credit: Disney-ABC

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