The Eberts: The New Awards for Fawning : Television: The film critic thumbs his nose at objectivity by hosting KABC’s pre-Oscar schmoozefest--a job he seems born for.

Roger and me. . . .

“Enjoy yourself.”

You rubbed your eyes, blinked repeatedly and tried to focus. It was a Regis Philbin. It was a Tawny Little. It was a Chuck Henry. No, none of those. Incredibly, amazingly, supersonically, it was a Roger Ebert, planted like a palm beside a microphone by the red carpet at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with his partner for the evening, Pam Thomson, fawning over preening celebrities as if joined at the brain with “Eyewitness News.”

As if his entire career as a movie critic had been building toward this wondrous moment when he could shed all pretenses of professionalism and be affable and avuncular with everybody who was anybody.

As if he’d been born for it.

And just beyond, in the throng of onlookers, you could see the Hollywood wanna-bes side-by-side with the has-beens, those ghostly apparitions who might have earned a live shot in front of the camera in past years, but now were reduced to watching from the wings and hoping somehow to be noticed and summoned to appear before Ebert and the others.

Whoopi, shmoopi. Monday night’s Academy Awards telecast on ABC was three sleepy hours of anti-climactic yawn compared with the dueling team coverages that preceded it.

Local news--that’s where the action was. That’s where the short, roundish, gray-topped, bespectacled half of Siskel & Ebert was. In his emerging role as emcee for the stars, Ebert was more entertaining even than Monday night’s Revlon commercials in which Nancy Kerrigan performed like a cursor controlled by a joystick.

Once the exclusive stage of KABC-TV Channel 7, the grandly vacant, annual Oscar pre-show has evolved into an electrifying free-for-all among network stations in Los Angeles, with KNBC-TV Channel 4 and KCBS-TV Channel 2 pushing their way into the circle to make this an electrifying threesome.

And what team coverage it was. Channel 2 had David Sheehan (who used to do this for Channel 4) and hyper-kinetic Pat Lalama, who must have set a record for close-ups while trying to meld her face to the camera lens.

Channel 4 put its own unique stamp on the event, including having a chopper hover over milling celebrities at the Pavilion. It was a smart move, because you never know when a police chase can break out.

Behind the anchor desk were Colleen Williams and Chuck Henry (an alumnus of Channel 7’s pre-Oscar show). While his colleagues were fawning in general, specialist Henry at one point expertly fawned (from afar) over female breasts.

On the scene for Channel 4 was Garrett Glaser, who broke the rumor that Macaulay Culkin was absent from the Oscars. As Channel 4 viewers gasped, Glaser reported that the excuse offered by little Macaulay’s camp was that “another commitment” had prevailed, but Glaser skeptically noted the scuttlebutt that Macaulay was held out by his father, who was “displeased because of some copy written for him.”

But it would take more than this shocking disclosure by Glaser to upstage his more seasoned colleague in the field, Kelly Lange. As adept at self-promotion as at fawning, it was Lange who commanded Janet Jackson: “You are live on the 5 o’clock news. Say hello to our viewers out there. There are millions of them.”

And it was Channel 4 newcomer Kathy Vara who managed to corner “Entertainment Tonight” co-host Mary Hart and press her to reveal exclusively to Channel 4 (the station on which Hart’s program airs) just how “Entertainment Tonight” would be covering the Oscars. After pausing a millisecond, Hart quickly capitulated.

But quickly, back to the studio for this self-fawning update from Henry: “We have cameras all over the place,” he told viewers, “so you will not miss a thing by keeping it here.”

Wrong. They would have missed Ebert.

He and Gene Siskel are such an institution, are in such demand, that they’ve become their own hot-ticket cottage industry, doing everything short of opening shopping centers. The gigs just pour in. But it’s Ebert who has demonstrated that he’s the new, unsurpassed meister of criticshtick . His work for Channel 7 Monday night, as a self-proclaimed arbiter for all seasons and reasons, affirmed that he has acquired a kind of celestial omniscience in the universe of moviedom, someone to be followed like a Bethlehem star.

Or to put it more crassly, the words self-parody come to mind.

Proving he knew how to play the game, Ebert was a natural, taking to vapid pre-Oscar schmooze like a critic to the plaudits “magical” or “fully realized” or “triumph of the human spirit” or “one of the year’s 10 best.”

When he interviewed Christian Slater while treating the woman at the actor’s side as if she were invisible or a leper, you knew his future was in the stars.

Ebert to a star: “Enjoy yourself tonight, yeah, goodby.” To another star: “You’re more relaxed this year than last year.” To another star: “A billion people will be listening to you tonight. Is that OK?”

And all of this without cue cards.

Of course, some of the interviews had greater depth. Ebert to supporting actor nominee Pete Postlethwaite: “It must seem strange that the whole world knows your name.”

Postlethwaite: “Well, it’s a good name.”

Ebert: “Have fun tonight.”

Speaking of fun, when the conveyor belt of celebrities delivered Kerrigan--who managed to mention her cosmetics employer in each of her TV interviews--Ebert grilled her but good. Ebert (with a stone face): “Do you think you might want to move into the direction of acting instead of skating?” Apparently, he hadn’t seen her on “Saturday Night Live.”

Once upon a time you yearned for those pre-Oscar shows with Tawny Little, now a sedate KCAL-TV Channel 9 anchor, who would get so worked up in the presence of stars that she would almost leap out of her dress. In his own way, though, Ebert has eclipsed even Little. Here he was shouting at supporting actress nominee Rosie Perez: “ROSIE! ROSIE! Hi, how are ya? . . . I’m predicting you’re going to win.” As if Ebert’s command would be the movie academy’s wish, Perez replied, “Thank you, thank you.”

It was when Ebert began quoting his own reviews to stars that you wanted to stand up and applaud. After quoting himself to soon-to-be best actress winner Holly Hunter: “Were you mad at me?” Hunter: “I didn’t hear you say that.” Ebert: “Oh. . . .”

Later in the evening, Ebert co-hosted Channel 7’s post-Academy Awards show with Thomson, spinning on his tall swivel stool as reporters checked in from various Oscar parties. If Channel 7 doesn’t bring him back in 1995, it will be a crime equal to the Academy Awards ignoring an Oscar-deserving performance.

As an evening, it was one of the year’s 10 best. All thumbs.