‘HELL ON WHEELS’ DEBUTS STRONG. Sunday night’s series premiere drew 4.4 million viewers for AMC, the network’s second-best debut after “The Walking Dead.” I thought the pilot was okay, but I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that series star Anson Mount played Britney Spears’s love interest in Crossroads.

‘SONS OF ANARCHY’ GETS A BONUS EPISODE. Showrunner Kurt Sutter has worried publicly that Season 4 had too much story to fit into 13 episodes, so FX has given the green light for a 14th episode. The season finale will now air December 6th.

‘EBERT PRESENTS’ HAS RUN OUT OF MONEY. The intellectual successor to “Siskel & Ebert” will go off the air unless it gets more funding. Sucks to be on public television.

AUDIENCES AGREE: ‘CHUCK’ SUCKS. The hokey NBC crapfest is the lowest-rated show on primetime for any of the big four networks, drawing a .9 rating on Friday nights. The most recent episode was beaten by a repeat of “NCIS” on USA.

I grew up watching Siskel & Ebert review movies. It was a delight; the two of them bickered about film like people who genuinely disliked each other, and Ebert was really fat. Then Siskel died, Ebert lost his face, and “At the Movies” became an ugly, stupid mutant baby that featured retards like failed abortion Ben Lyons before it was put out of its misery. Somewhere along the way, Roger Ebert’s writing was reinvigorated and his written voice became stronger than his spoken one had ever been.

Are we all caught up? Good. Now Ebert and his wife Chaz are creating “Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies,” which will debut in January 2011 and be hosted by Christy Lemire of the AP (above, center left) and Elvis Mitchell of NPR (center right). Omar Moore and fine-ass vixen Kim Morgan will be regular contributors.

“This is the rebirth of a dream,” said Ebert, who partnered in recent years with Richard Roeper before cancer robbed him of the ability to speak. He said he will act as co-producer and employ a computer voice to appear on every episode with segments titled Roger’s Office devoted to classic, overlooked and new films. He will not debate with the two co-hosts, he said: “They’ll be awarding the Thumbs, and you can’t have three Thumbs.”

Ebert said, “I believe that by returning to its public roots, our new show will win better and more consistent time slots in more markets. 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.” [Sun-Times]

Whoa whoa whoa, a show that shuns gossip in favor of intelligent discussion? That’s gonna fall flat on its — oh, it’s on public television? Okay, that makes sense.

I’ve got my DVR set to record Oprah today, when Roger Ebert will debut his “new voice” in a segment that was recorded on Friday. I’m not yet sure whether I want to watch it, and even now I don’t feel confident in writing about it.

Much has been written by and about Ebert lately, all of it excellent: the ubiquitous Esquire profile with the haunting portrait of a man without a jaw, Ebert’s eloquent response to that, and yesterday’s Deadspin feature in which Will Leitch admitted to attacking his hero. But I don’t know about seeing Ebert in the medium where I first saw him. He now belongs in the world of letters — belongs to the world of letters — and I’m uncomfortable with seeing this lion of language in the physical state that betrays his greatness — not when I can read about it in his own words (or read about how Ebert gave Oprah her start, for that matter). What he’s doing right now is establishing himself as America’s best belletrist since E.B. White, and I’d like to think that’s something that transcends television.

Anyway, there’s an AP story about the episode here, if that interests you. It feels pretty disposable after two minutes on Ebert’s blog.