Quotes About Television

The tough decisions that a president has to make in the Oval Office are in no way related to the capability of a person to do well on television. On the other hand, the capability of a person to project favorably on television enhances that person's odds of being elected so he can serve in the Oval Office. So you can't ignore the talents, one, to be very effective on television, and on the other hand, to be very effective as an operating president.

Local television is a slightly different story. It is under much more pressure in the same way that all local businesses are, whether that's a local newspaper, local radio or local television. But I think television in the aggregate is actually in very good shape.

Television isn't inherently good or bad. You go to a bookstore, there are how many thousands of books, but how many of those do you want? Five? Television's the same way. If you're going to show people stuff, television is the way to go. Words and pictures show things.

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.

No one wanted to hire me. No newspaper, television station, television network that I worked for ever wanted to hire me.

Television has accustomed us to brief, intimate, telegraphic, visual, narrative messages. Candidates are learning to act, speak, and think in television's terms. In the process they are transforming speeches, debates, and their appearances in news into ads.

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.

I have now become so infatuated with television. I think television has become elegant.

Sometimes the public says, 'What's in it for Numero Uno? Am I going to get better television reception? Am I going to get better Internet reception?' Well, in some sense, yeah. ... All the wonders of quantum physics were learned basically from looking at atom-smasher technology. ... But let me let you in on a secret: We physicists are not driven to do this because of better color television. ... That's a spin-off. We do this because we want to understand our role and our place in the universe.

The thrill of doing television versus features is in television you get to focus more on the characters.

The challenge with all television - all series television as you get into later seasons to give people what they have come to, what they've become familiar with and what the qualities of the shows that they recognize without letting it get staled.

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury raised cautions against mass media, especially the television, which dumb down human sensibilities and coerce everybody's thoughts into a single uniform value, allowing human to forget the fundamental action of "having one's opinion". As a result, the society deteriorates. I decided to exhibit [Edward] Kienholz's work which features television as its subject, as well as the Big Double Cross as works that represent this warning.

They dislike me, the liberal media dislikes me. I was always the best at what I did, I went to the Wharton School of Finance, did well. I went out, I started in Brooklyn office with my father, I became one of the most successful real estate developers, one of the most successful business people. I created maybe the greatest brand. I then go into, in addition to that, part time, like five percent a week, I open up a television show. The Apprentice on many evenings was the number one show on all of television, a tremendous success.

I am guided by the vision of what I believe this show can be. Originally our goal was to uplift, enlighten, encourage and entertain through the medium of television. Now, our mission statement for The Oprah Winfrey Show is to use television to transform people's lives, to make viewers see themselves differently and to bring happiness and a sense of fulfillment into every home.

Are we on the tail-end of a generation that is enamored with the novelty of these devices and will younger people coming of age be more blasé about them in a healthy way? You look back at the history of any medium and the people who were there when it was developing, whether it was the telegraph or cable television or radio, thought, This is amazing, it's going change everything, or, The human community will finally be able to recognize each other and speak and be one - I mean, some people thought the telegraph or television would usher in world peace.

With a play, you do it and it's gone. Films always date. Television drama always dates. Television comedy, for some reason, seems to go on.

I grew up doing plays - I went to a stage school after school - and it's always something that I've wanted to do, but, in a weird way, if you do television and film and you didn't go to drama school and don't have a theatrical background, it's hard to get your foot in the door. In the same way that it is for theater actors to get into television and film. There's a weird prejudice that goes both ways.

Jeff always says, "In the cinema, everybody goes to sci-fi. Those are the biggest movies. But, in television, nobody wants to touch it with a barge pole." It's strange. I think it's because maybe there's a legacy of television shows that depicted sci-fi in a certain way that turns off a lot of viewers, so maybe there's a negative connotation.

I've always really made my living in television. Television has always been so good to me.

You always have to give back to the fans. I remember being a fan of television and film when I was growing up and if I would've had the opportunity to meet somebody that I watched on television, it would've made my day, it would've made my life.

In my early thirties I was working in television as a researcher. I was really stuck for a period of five years. I got to TV when I was thirty. I hated being a music writer, and kept wondering why I couldn't be doing the exciting things that my friends were doing in television.

Opera on television in Europe is very important. If you think about it in the broadest sense: a lot of the dramas made in India with music are practically operas. They're not sung but they have a very big appeal. I don't know why American television people are so stupid but at the moment, they just seem to have some sort of a block. They just do what they do and they do it for a certain number of years. Then it wears out and they try something else. It's just a matter of time I think.

It takes a pretty strong person, a rather unusual young person, to stand up to ridicule and refuse to give in to temptation. There are so many things today in modern music, on television, and in the movies that portray a life that is nowhere near the life the Lord would have us live. Consequently, we cannot afford to turn to the radio, television, or Hollywood to take our cues about what is right and what is wrong. It is scary to realize that the more we are exposed to Hollywood's version of life, the more we gradually begin to accept it.

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

Coming back into television, I was very, very wary about committing to anything that could potentially take a long time. I don't mind movies, but I was nervous of television.

I'm such a huge fan of television and what's happening in television, right now. You are able to visit characters and visit a story, week to week, push things in a different way than you can in a film, and you are able to go deeper, simply because you have more time. I'm just excited to do that. It's always good to do new things.

I think what people watch television for is the emotional continuity, from episode to episode, and feeling that the experience that they had, four episodes ago, has actually been building to an episode that comes later, and knowing that the characters are growing, as a result of that, and making mistakes, is really, really important to the way people connect to television.

I think it's become fashionable for the snobbish egghead today to make fun of television. I've heard many people, boast, "I would never have a television set in my house," well, these people are fools.

Now, all America sits in front of television sets and those television sets exude, I am sorry to say, a considerable amount of radioactive material. It's not huge, you know, but it's enough so that people who have made a habit of watching TV ... get the TV radiation.

J.J. Abrams wanted me to do a part in Lost and we probably had three meetings, and I finally turned it down, but it wasn't because I didn't like television or Lost, although I think I said to J.J., "I don't want to be in Hawaii and have an insurance person tell me I'm not allowed to go free dive and spear fishing." That would be the worst kind of torture in the world. But I don't hate television.

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 more opportunities people have to experience television on different platforms, the more television they consume overall. So there actually has been a benefit, but the ratings have gone down. But we've seen kind of the horizontal benefit of this. And it remains a great, great promotion engine.

The American house has been TV-centered for three generations. It is the focus of family life, and the life of the house correspondingly turns inward, away from whatever corresponds beyond its four walls.At the same time, the television is the families chief connection to the world. The physical envelope of the house itself no longer connects their lives to the outside in any active way; rather it seals them from it.The outside world has become an abstraction filtered through television, just as the weather is an abstraction filtered through air conditioning.

Oh, you're in television! That's interesting. No, I mean, the word television is interesting. It's a hybrid, you see: tele- comes from the greek, and -vision comes from the latin. It should have been either "telerama", or "procolvision".

I don't believe terror and horror are just vicarious pleasures. I think it routes itself in your mind. It can affect your mind. Look at what's going on in the America today. The violence is just awful and I think a lot of has to do with what they are showing on the movies and television.

I mean, there's definitely a difference between film and live performances or live television. But at the same time, it's just performing. No matter what, it's performing.

I've never left music behind, but I've had success in television.

Formula One gives a platform to companies like Rolex - and that's just in media space, watching television or reading newspapers, digital or physical. You see the brand in the context of the competition and bring it to the attention of everybody on a regular basis.

The faultless formulas of television-the ones that last-are simple.

I got into television because I hated it so. And I thought there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen.

It has been proven that more Americans watch television than any other appliance.

I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?

There was a time when television was sort of frowned upon among people who wanted to be serious artists. John Travolta kind of exploded that. He was one of the actors who made that go away.

You can't just live in a comfortable little suburban neighborhood and get your education from movies and television and have any perspective on life.

Instead, I watch myself get shot on television.

When I first started out on the soap, I was more theatrical, like a stage actor, a little bigger than life. As I did more and more Love Of Life, I became more natural. I learned the value of underplaying. It was a great training ground for me. There was a big difference in my style of acting from where I started with that show and where I ended, and where I ended was a good jumping-off point for doing nighttime television and movies.

Because my faith is important to me and then they wrote it in that my character I would be playing would also be a Christian, many people would often assume now that I'm playing myself on television. And I'm not.

We can put television in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg's great invention had been directed at printing only comic books.