Other shoe drops: Ebert AND Roeper no longer "At the Movies"

Last year, I interviewed Richard Roeper about the contract dispute with Disney over the future of "Ebert & Roeper At the Movies." By then the show had stopped using the thumbs up/down recommendations.

Since that interview, the website URL for "At the Movies" was renamed without the words "ebert" or "roeper" in it. The thumbs up/down remained noticeably absent. We all knew something was up, and some of us suspected this day would come.

And now it has. Roger and Richard are parting ways with Disney 22 years after its syndication arm signed Ebert and Gene Siskel away from Tribune.

Ebert is still awaiting the medical advance that will restore his voice fully to him and get him back in front of a camera where he belongs. Roeper, the face of the show for more than two years, announced his departure earlier in the day, followed a couple of hours later by Ebert.

I don't know the particulars of the Disney divorce, but this would seem to confirm Carol Felsenthal's report in her Chicago magazine profile of Ebert in 2005 that suggested his TV franchise was in trouble and that Disney was keeping it going mainly for the prestige that came from having a Pulitzer winning public movie icon on its roster along with those "My Wife And Kids" repeats.

"At the Movies" is obviously not the program that it was in 1986, when Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert boldly split with Tribune and signed a syndication deal with Disney — a deal that cost Siskel a demotion at his newspaper. Clearly, Richard Roeper and Tony Scott (and Michael Phillips, the other regular fill-in for Roger) do not come close to emitting the wattage that Ebert and Siskel did. On the other hand, the show is still pretty brilliant in its simplicity — put two smart, articulate and funny movie critics in front of a camera and let them argue about movies.

It would seem that Ebert's absence had made the show no longer worth saving to Disney, and that the sooner they could flip it into a movie-news-entertainment show, the better. Disney was still interested in Roeper — an accomplished TV personality as well as a very readable daily columnist — and in his statement today, he confirms he was in talks to continue with Disney. (Ebert alluded to no such negotiations in his statement.) Roeper writes today in his statement, "Much transpired after that behind the scenes, but an agreement was never reached, and we are all moving on."

Here are the happiest words from Roger's statement: "The trademark still belongs to me and Marlene Iglitzen, Gene's widow, and the thumbs will return. We are discussing possibilities, and plan to continue the show's tradition."

** Previously on TV Barn: ** Gene Siskel, RIP (1999)