Siskel & Ebert: Pioneers in the Movie Critic Industry

When I was a kid all newspapers had a movie critic. He or she would give away spoilers in an upcoming movie and say whether or not it was good. Their columns were usually by the comic strips, crossword puzzles, and advice columnists.
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times were fierce rivals and ultimately teamed up to form a movie critic television empire, making "thumbs up and thumbs down" part of every day American culture.

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Siskel and Ebert were pioneers in television not the film critic industry for there is no such Industry.
In fact, as a former Film Critic myself , it's more of a profession.
Anyway, both Siskel and Ebert were anomalies at one point because they did film reviews- really film opinions - on TV starting in the mid 70s at a time when film reviewers and critics were solely or largely writing for print publications like magazines and newspapers.
Film critics were at best seen on local TV news if they appeared at all prior to Sneak Previews.
Siskel and Ebert were simply TV stars.
Unfortunately there are very few film critics these days from what I see.
Now what there are basically uneducated nobodies and amateurs like Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic are part of an infestation of non- movie lovers and people with political axes to grind that strangely talk about film, a medium they really seem to loathe and despise for some reason.
It's a strange film world on you tube and tik tok and online but thank goodness I don't have to deal with that lot.