Quotes About Television

Television in the 1960s & 70s had just as much dross and the programmes were a lot more tediously patronising than they are now. Memory truncates occasional gems into a glittering skein of brilliance. More television, more channels means more good television and, of course, more bad. The same equation applies to publishing, film and, I expect, sumo wrestling.

You can't really gauge the difficulties of television. There's difficulties and joys that happen with an amazing, great team, when one is working. Television can be a very frustrating job for almost anybody working in television, because you're shooting episodically, and you don't know one scene from the next, and maybe they change around.

There used to be a huge snobbism between the film industry and the television industry. I produced and acted in my first - well way back - but the first thing that I produced and acted in was Sarah, Plan and Tall. And the only place to go at the time for really quality television was Hallmark Hall of Fame. And think how much television has changed since then.

I think television is moving more into movies, particularly with serialization and almost cinematic proportions and expectations. A show like 'Game of Thrones' is a perfect example of that, or even a show like 'The Wire,' which isn't all about instant gratification it's about inviting someone into the long experience of television the way you'd be invited into a theater for two hours. So I think in that way, and the quality of writing in television is probably much better than most film writing.

This whole thing about reality television to me is really indicative of America saying we're not satisfied just watching television, we want to star in our own TV shows. We want you to discover us and put us in your own TV show, and we want television to be about us, finally.

Television is not the truth! Television is a goddamned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats and story-tellers, singers and dancers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion-tamers and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business!

First there was a young guy sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother, then there was an older fatter person sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother.

The 1990 'Goodwill Games' can be another indication that the television world is not divided between commercial and cable. If the viewer thinks highly of our efforts... they will have a higher opinion of cable television and TBS.

Somewhere around the turn of the century, it stopped being hip to say you never watched TV. Adults are much more likely to find something to engage them on television than they are at the local multiplex. Edges are being cut on television all the time, but at the movies only now and then.

Do I enjoy features? Yeah, I really do. Would I like to do some more features before I head to the barn? Yeah, probably. But I also love television. I love doing television because it's fast, and that I like a lot.

I think it's impossible for any of us not to find television, and the political process at its best on television, compelling.

You could do much more in movies than you could on TV, and even movies were heavily censored. But in television, the areas of timorousness were fairly laid out. Race relations. Sex. Politics. There was a whole conglomeration of taboo themes. And even to date, though television has become a much freer medium, it's still far less free, far less creatively untrammeled than are the movies. They're infinitely more adult in that respect.

I think for television generally, the question that often arises is, "Does television lead, or does it follow?" You know, does it lead the conversation, or culture, or does it follow what's going on? And I think it does both.

What's better these days, television or film? It's a dead heat. In fact, one could argue for television with more regularity.

I've always liked adventure television. Pre-'Survivor,' I did a series on cable called 'Eco-Challenge,' an adventure race with experts mainly, and here we have 'Expedition Impossible.' I like the outdoors and I like doing something fresh for television you haven't seen before.

Television in America is so elaborate. There are so many remote cranes, and they have all the toys to play with. The directors are really good. They really work with you. So, I'm not really on set thinking, "Oh, my God, this is television. It's very different."

As an actor what you're always looking for is a character that is going to grow and change especially on television. I feel incredibly lucky to be working on a television show where the writing is always geared towards us growing and changing.

And as a character, what I found very inspiring about playing Dharma, especially at that time, is that the women on television were more neurotic than they were free. And I thought, this is a rare bird and this is unique on television and I think it's really refreshing.

I absolutely love television, and I don't mean to be vulgar, but as I keep having to explain to people from the movie industry, I get more power and more money doing television, so why on earth would I do a film?

I don't have a television, and I'm just not too up on television.

You don't really have time to do other than what's written. It's very rigid. Shows have a certain rhythm that nobody wants disturbed. So a lot of that doesn't take place on television, at least the television I was doing at the time when I first started.

I love television. I think we're in a renaissance of epic proportion in television now.

When Nick At Nite is showing George Lopez, it's not doing what I'm thinking. But yes, I even write in the book about how MeTV went to Vince Gilligan and had him present an evening of his favorite television. So it can be done, but I think it can be done on a really large scale. The television of Dennis Potter, most of it hasn't been seen in this country. And that's just one example - it's a very obscure example. There's plenty of great TV out there. There's more crap - but there's great TV, too.

I think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.

I was interested in opera and it seemed to me that the only possible theatre for contemporary opera would be television. So I started working towards a kind of television kind of opera.

There's so little difference between television and features as far as you make the film. I mean, you have less money and it's a little quicker, but the concept is all on television.

In France, it is television that pays for films to be made and I received all of my funding from TV: two television channels, government funding and distributor contribution (Wild Bunch). My films are low-budget, and not expensive [to make].

I did enjoy theater. I actually do prefer making films and television, but it was a learning experience for me, because I got into television at 5 and film at 11, and theater was something I completely bypassed.

The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.

I don't watch much television. My old TV agent used to always get mad at me because he'd send me out on auditions and I'd be like, 'What's this show?' and he'd be like, 'It's literally the top show on television.' I wasn't allowed to watch TV as a kid.

The arrival of television established a mass-media order that dominated the last 50 years. This is a personal media revolution. The distinction between the old order and the new order is very important. Television delivered the world to our living room. In the old media, all we could do was press our noses against the glass and watch.

We were on the island of Hawaii. I think I was there three months. It was fantastic. It is not much different than films. It depends on the television show but much of television today is as good or better than most films.

Choosing how you vote should not be a snap verdict based on a few minutes of television.

The hope for me going back into television - after doing what will have been two years of radio - is to bring that authenticity with me. And, to not have the visual be overpowering the content.

I'm inordinately proud of Smash, on so many levels. The complexity of producing that show, every week, is just incredible. As a television producer and as a Broadway producer, which I once was, I am in awe of what we can do on that show, every week.

You can't have Rosie on The View and Elton John packing Mom and Pop in at Caesars Palace and gay people all over television, and then have these politicians run out there with a straight face and say that gay and lesbian relationships are a threat to the family. We are winning in the culture - which is why we'll ultimately win the political war.

In primetime cable television today, the anchor or anchors, with an "s", have to drive the hour. The anchor has to be skilled enough to take it over. So if I find that it's getting boring or I'm not getting information I want, I'll take it over. I'll do a soliloquy, I'll ask an outrageous question, I'll wave my arms in the air, I'll lift it myself. It's like a quarterback that's back to pass and nobody's open.

Lives with no more sense of spiritual meaning than that provided by shopping malls, ordinary television, and stagnant workplaces are barren lives indeed. Spirituality enriches culture.

Remember what Hannah Arendt said when she was talking about fascism and totalitarianism. She said thoughtlessness is the essence of totalitarianism. So all of a sudden emotion becomes more important than reason. Ignorance becomes more important than justice. Injustice is looked over as simply something that happens on television. The spectacle of violence takes over everything.

I would have been a lot more nervous if I would had known that Matthew McConaughey was [on 30th Annual Television Critics Association Awards] and Julia Louis-Dreyfus was there and all that, and I was like, "Wait a minute and Bryan Cranston's here..." I think I would have got more nervous. But I think thinking it was just like, "Oh yeah critics, we're good." It was great.

Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing.

My favorite part about costume designing is the artistry of the job. You meet with a director and a visionary to discuss ideas. You research the characters and figure out the components of their look through your own vision. You create a color palette for a film, television or stage medium and discuss it with the director of photography who then lights your colored subjects.

If in 1989 I said, 'I have an idea: Bottle water and sell it. And charge more than a beer,' they would have chased me around with a giant butterfly net. The same with paying to watch a television station.

I am an unconventional beauty. I grew up in a high school where if you didn't have a nose job and money and if you weren't thin, you weren't cool, popular, beautiful. I was always told that I wasn't pretty enough to be on television.

Book - what they make a movie out of for television.

So far I've done two films that have basically been about television because I know that world.

Television is a big roulette table on so many levels. That's all it is for actors.

I'm one of those actors who says, "Point me toward the work that matters to me and I don't care where you're putting it. Television show. Movie. Projected on the back of someone's garage." If that's where the work is that's exciting to me and moving, I want to be there.