Quotes About Television

So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.

It’s not whether children learn from television, it’s what children learn from television... because everything that children see on television is teaching them something.

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.

Television thrives on unreason, and unreason thrives on television. It strikes at the emotions rather than the intellect.

Everybody should have a television show. Let's all get television shows!

Movies have gotten dull, the way network television got dull. And television, if we can still even call it that, is still really exciting and riveting and people are totally into it. I am always meeting people who have these favorite shows that they are completely wired too and not only have I never seen it but I don't even know how to find it.

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.

There is no doubt that directing television has helped hone my directing skills. What television teaches you is to be efficient and to think on your feet. You have to adhere to strict deadlines and budget constraints.

Get up now and go and find Robert Kilroy-Silk. Smile in a warm, friendly sort of way, then punch him on the nose. Now go and find Robert on television, despite my best endeavours, this is still relatively easy to do. Wait for a close-up, same smile, and punch him on the nose. If you followed the instructions carefully, you will have noticed a distinct difference. On the one hand, you were suffused with a sense of public-spirited righteousness; on the other, you're probably dribbling blood. That's the difference between reality in life and reality on television.

I think television scripts have become really intriguing and well-done. And writers have stopped drawing any actual line between film and television they used to never cross.

Once you have some sort of reputation in the outside world, they will try to woo you. They will say, "Won't you come and be on a talk program about books? That's not political." Then they can say to the outside world, "See how free it is, she appears on television. See how free it is." So I refused to have anything of mine read or dramatized on South African television.

Television is all about sound. You'll never get a moment of silence unless there's something really extraordinary going on, on screen, visually. They never let a moment of silence pass without being filled in television because it's a very sound-driven medium.

I grew up with a dad who hated television, so we had to sneak television. It got ingrained in my head to never follow a show that religiously.

I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed.

It's the digital era. What makes it exciting is that it's both the Golden Age of television and the Wild West of television. Something is happening now that's unprecedented, and we know that we're a part of it. What could be more exciting or better than that? You can't lose because you're on the pony and you're staking the claim.

She's television generation. She learned life from Bugs Bunny. The only reality she knows comes to her through the television set.

I think somewhere in the '90s, it started to shift, and you started to see a lot of film and television actors doing theater, and producers using the notoriety of the film and television actors to sell tickets.

I think I'm better wired for television. I love variety as far as a project. I'm easily bored and the schedule of a television show, it just keeps you going.

I'm in the art world so I use the art world a lot - or art world people as actors. I've also used television to criticize what I see on television. And now a lot of my work is made from the internet and a lot of it is made on my phone.

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 think it always makes for great television when two characters actually take time to realize that they want to be with each other. You have to leave it to the writers to know what makes great television.

Every day I turn on my television set and I see Newt Gingrich on television, I rejoice.

I don't really watch a lot of television, and I would watch mindless, mindless television.

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

I think it's a great time to be a person of color and with talent. And actually, to be a woman as well. Our show is one of the most diverse television shows on television right now.

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.

Every film is a remake of a previous film, or a remake of a television series that everyone loved in the 1960s, or a remake of a television series that everyone hated in the 1960s. Or it's a theme park ride; it will soon come to breakfast cereal mascots.

I think I've actually benefited from Australia being a kind of combination of both British and American culture. We kind of got the best of both British and American television and books, science fiction and fantasy, and so on. So I'm familiar with a lot of, for example, American books and television that a British author of my generation might not be.

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

You can always spot a 'television personality', even when they aren't actually on television, because they carry their 'made-up' persona in front of them, like some sort of baffler, or Ready Brek force field. Their reach for notoriety predicated on that fulsome mediocrity of talent detailed above has become frozen in their faces.

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 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.

I had never thought of doing television. But my agent wanted me to meet John Wells, who had had a lot of success producing ER and China Beach. The night before the meeting, some friends were over for dinner and Akiva Goldsman and I slipped downstairs to the basement so we could sneak a cigarette. He said, "You know what would make a good television series? That." And he was pointing at The American President poster. He said, "There doesn't have to be a romance, just focus on a senior staffer."

The closest I came to doing anything that I wanted to do was to try and check and see what industries were just starting out. There was plastics and television, and I figured television had to be more fun than plastics.

The U.S. is telling the Northern Alliance to kill Taliban prisoners. It's totally a breach of all the known conventions of war. Western television networks aren't showing this, but Arab networks are showing how prisoners are being killed and what's being done to them. Instead, we're shown scenes that are deliberately created for the Western media: a few women without the veil, a woman reading the news on Kabul television, and 150 people cheering.

I think good-looking people seldom make good television. And American television studios almost concede before they start: 'Well, it won't be good, but at least it'll be good-looking. We'll have nice-looking girls in tight shirts with F.B.I. badges and fit-looking guys with lots of hair gel vaulting over things.'

I got tired of doing battle with people thinking I was a little weird because I wasn't in a band making happy, stilted music. The only people who really seem weird to me are people who think they're normal. People who think it's possible to be normal just by doing the same things that most people do. Is there a most people? I don't know. Television makes it seem like there is, but I think that might just be television.

When I sign on to a television show, I have to love that show and character so much, but this [Mistresses] was in and out, for seven episodes. And it was nice to be able to make some money again because I hadn't work in a year and a half. There were a lot of pluses.

When the doors to television were opened to me, that was quite a surprise. It's been such a gift that there was so much TV and independent film happening in New York that I could be a part of. There was something to satiate my desire to be artistic and creative, especially when it wasn't in the way I originally thought it was going to be.

Only at the Golden Globes do the beautiful people of film rub shoulders with the rat-faced people 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.

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.

My life came down to being a granny and watching a lot of television.

I think the reason the Golden Age of television is so golden is because a lot of folks are willing to let creators do their thing and live or die by their own muse. They certainly allow us to do that.

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.

There are some incredible television shows. It seems a sort of succumbed place to be. At the moment, I'm quite happy sort of flitting from place-to-place. I wouldn't want to relocate from where I am right now in terms of where I live.

That is the godawful thing about television today. Performers don't have any place to hit and miss. You're either in or you're out; you don't have a chance to become good at your craft. If you make three pictures in a row and they don't go over, you're out of the business.