Quotes About Television

I've really dreamed of doing television. All of us do television, coming up. But when I was coming up, television was a black hole for actors. Now, television has a certain cache. Now everybody wants to be on TV because they're doing adult dramas. If you're an actor, it's like, "Well, get me on television," because it's the only place you can do it and also make a living at it. If my kids need shoes, I better do a TV show because I damn sure don't make any money with independent films.

There is a difference. You watch television, you don't witness it. But, while watching television, if you start witnessing yourself watching television, then there are two processes going on: you are watching television, and something within you is witnessing the process of watching television. Witnessing is deeper, far deeper. It is not equivalent to watching. Watching is superficial. So remember that meditation is witnessing.

When you watch television, you never see people watching television. We love television because it brings us a world in which television does not exist.

The days of television as we knew it growing up are over. You have a bigger, wider world audience on the Internet, larger than any American television series. People don't watch television in the same context as before. Nowadays they watch their television on the Internet at their convenience. That's the whole wave, and it's now - not the future.

I don't want to sound creepy, but I remember when I couldn't really talk. I was looking at the television and my mother just moved one of the curtains, so the sun started to hit the television, and I couldn't see the television anymore. I started crying. I wasn't able to find the words to say, "I can't see this anymore, please do something about it." I remember crying and not knowing exactly how to express myself; not because it was painful, or that I was too upset, but because there were no words. As human beings, sometimes we just cry when we don't know how to say something.

I abhor television. Notice how i said ‘television’ and not ‘TV’ because TV is a nickname and nicknames are for friends and television is no friend of mine.

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.

It's just amazing how television permeates the entire world from people who are just listeners and viewers to people of considerable importance who find relaxation watching television. Somebody called it a talking lamp. Television, that is.

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've done great theatre, great films and had a lot of opportunities in television. I also love to sing, and I've been able to do that once or twice in the television shows.

You realize, this is not just a little studio we go to make these television episodes. This thing is reaching everybody in the world! Suddenly you realize the power of television.

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

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.

I'm married now, so I have a life. I had to get a life. That's one thing I really had to do, you know. You do that kind of work on television series after television series and you don't have a life. So, that's part of what I did while I was gone, I got a life.

Television viewers, they've been around a long time. They've been watching this thing now for 50 years. I mean, they know exactly what's happening when it comes to television programming. You can't put anything over on them anymore.

The great thing about adventure, when told correctly, is it is one of the few genres that everybody in the family can watch together. Our television has become so targeted, it's so specific that there's literally nothing else on television that grandparents are watching with their grandkids, and they're both entertained.

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.

I certainly don't feel there's a distinction to be made between a television and a film actor. I think there's a distinction between great actors and not so great actors. But I really think if you watch a person working in television give a wonderful performance, that person is f - ing great, because there is no time.

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.

Television's getting better because people are investing more money and time and respect into it. But the secret weapon of television is that, because it's a slow burn, you get to meditate on things and develop them. As opposed to film, where you have an allotted amount of time and hopefully you can wrap it up in there.

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.

What I want to do is create great content on television and movies. It is not my role to program only for Latinos, and you can't really assume that Hispanics only want Hispanic content. But I do think that we are severely underrepresented in television and film. And instead of complaining about not seeing ourselves, we should become film producers, directors, and writers, and tell our story.

I have to admit, I never watch television; once in a while I'll see things, but I grew up without it. I had a father who said, 'I hate television'; it came into being when he was a kid, and he didn't have it, so he didn't think I needed it.

It makes sense that it's so different from film and television, because it's so in-depth. As actors, when we're in film or television, we can have transcendent moments and we get to work with really creative and incredible people, but it's such a small percentage of your time that's about your process.

[It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. […] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87)

Film and television are just different. Film is cool because its a complete package. You know the beginning, middle, and end. You can plan it out more, which I like. But with television you get a new script every week, so its constantly a mystery as to what youre going to be doing.

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

When you're on the bus or subway or in your car, why busy your mind with all the garbage of advertisements? Why fill your mind with television and radio? Somehow you have to decide what your mind will receive. I don't mean you shouldn't ever go to movies or watch television, but control what enters your mind and heart. It's not just a question of pushing bad things out but also a question of holding on to something really good.

Good television people have a sense of what television people relate to.

This is the kind of upbringing we had instead of sitting in front of a damn television set all day long and never answering to anybody else unless somebody spoke up from a television set. It's an altogether different way of living today that you wonder how it really affects the family? I know how it affects the family because I have my own son who has his children and also my daughter. It's one of those things. Everybody eats in their own way and off they go. You know? It's not family oriented anymore."

Hopefully I'll fit the television in there. Maybe it'll be like music and television and movies. I mean, who knows? But hopefully I can be successful at everything I do.

People have said that I said I hate television. I never did say that. What I said was that I hated a lot of stuff that was on television. It's nothing about the medium itself.

When I sit down, I find that it's much easier for me to want to consume a movie than to dip back into 20 or 40 or 60 hours of a television series. I think a great movie is really amazing. But, television does give you a larger canvas.

We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

There is a trend in the whole [U.S.] culture toward making things shorter. People have been watching too much television, and they have a television mentality. I think people really are wary of sitting in a theatre too long. They're not used to it.

Somebody said on television, somebody said last night on television: Nobody has gotten rich betting against Donald Trump. That's in my lifetime. That's not just for this election cycle. I went in, and people said: "He's not gonna run." I've gone through this with you.

American movie audiences now just don’t seem to be very interested in any kind of ambiguity or any kind of real complexity of character or narrative - I’m talking in large numbers, there are always some, but enough to make hits out of movies that have those qualities. I think those qualities are now being seen on television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of qualities are watching television.

The program is only the excuse to get you to watch the advertising. Without the ads there would be no programs. Advertising is the true content of television and if it does not remain so, then advertisers will cease to support the medium, and television will cease to exist as the popular entertainment it presently is.

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.

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.'

The Bush campaign for re-election has officially begun. They're actually running television commercials. Have you seen any of the television commercials? In one of the commercials, you see George Bush for thirty seconds. In another commercial, you get to see George Bush for sixty seconds - kind of like his stint in the National Guard.

Ed Simmons and I became stars in the emerging medium of television. We were new and fresh, just like TV at the time, so we automatically became 'THE' comedy writers for television.

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.

I don't like to watch golf on television because I can't stand people who whisper.

There really is no foolproof or even optimal way of dealing with White House emissaries who tell whoppers on live television. On the one hand, there's value in hearing what our government has to say about its actions and vision for the future. On the other, news organizations are responsible for the factual hygiene of their product. In some cases, those two imperatives just aren't compatible.

My dad is a successful television producer, director and writer and my mom's a director and writer.

We've been able to watch on our television screens sophisticated weaponry find a building; and we've seen dramatic reports from the front where Pulitzer Prize-to-be winning reporters stood up and declared, the United States is attacked, and all that.

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.