The Balcony is Closed

Though I had not watched regularly for years, I was sad to see "At the Movies" end. The fact that I still thought of the program as "Siskel & Ebert" no matter who filled the chairs in the later years indicates what an impression it made on me in its early years as a public television program.

It's certainly the most successful public to commercial television crossover (where is Bob Vila today?). It may have succumbed to schtick in its marketing-- the two critics played up their rivalry but were in fact friends--but, like a lot of public television, the idea was an original.

There was Gene Shalit on "Today", and Leonard Maltin for a time on "Entertainment Tonight" and many local newscasts had an entertainment critic (I remember WRC's Arch Campbell from my days in DC), but it was pairing two combative critics that was the show's genius.

You can watch a nice remembrance of the show's history on the At the Movies Web site presented by the most recent hosts A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips (a University of Minnesota classmate of my office mate Laurie Gorman, I've just learned) here.