Quotes About Television

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.

I grew up with television. I love television and to be working in it is awesome. I think where I do well at television is because I grew up watching the great sitcom actors Jackie Gleason, I love Rob Reiner, also John Ritter.

When television came roaring in after the war (World War II) they did a little school survey asking children which they preferred and why - television or radio. And there was this 7-year-old boy who said he preferred radio "because the pictures were better.

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.

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.

The threat to free television. The reason television is free is because it is a life support system for commercials. That fundamental aspect is about to change.

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.

My son has been known to throw a book at the television set when he called for me to come play and I was obviously busy in the box. But I'm told that children of television performers grow up thinking that all mommies or daddies work on TV and that it's no big deal.

Everything you look at now, the scripts that come in that you look at, the television scripts are way better than the movie script. The talent is going to television.

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.

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.

I've noticed a lot of people talking about the wealth of roles for powerful women in television lately. And when I look around the room at the women here and I think about the performances that I've watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy and sometimes not. Sometimes honourable and sometimes not. And what I think is new is the wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film. That's what I think is revolutionary and evolutionary and it's what turning me on.

To me, television is one of the most exciting things going on right now, as far as content goes. Some of these shows that are on television are better than any of the movies out there.

I got into television criticism because I thought it would be easier than film criticism. Film, you had to know 100 years of history, and TV you only had to know 40 when I started. And I thought, "Well, that's going to be so much easier." But film stayed pretty much the same. And television has changed so many times that my head hurts. So I made the wrong call there.

I came to Los Angeles and did auditions for television. I made a terrible mess of most of them and I was quite intimidated. I felt very embarrassed and went back to London. I got British television jobs intermittently between the ages of 23 and 27, but it was very patchy.

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.

There are many things clogging the television waves. You've got to fight for every bit of television households you can get.

I think it does give me different stuff and I feel like television moves a lot faster than movie sets do. It's kinda like they have to get things done within a certain timeframe. So do movies but it seems like, as far as television is concerned, it just moves a helluva lot faster.

I hate going to L.A. and dealing with the contempt people have for television and television actors. Its unbelievable the kind of attitude people take toward what is the most exciting medium weve got right now.

Sometimes I think on television, you use maybe a tenth of what you are able to do. So it’s nice to go, Well, I’m gonna take two months and reinvest in acting and storytelling. You don’t get to do that on television.

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.

When people in my generation started to write, we did not actually have much of a movie industry, much of a theater scene, much of a television industry or other creative outlets. But we had a lot of aspiring writers. All that has changed. We now have a movie industry, television industry and lots of theater. But we have retained a large contingent of writers and a dedicated readership. The larger number of people in society who value writing, the larger number of good writers will be produced. That's my belief. It raises the bar.

Disparagement of television is second only to watching television as an American pastime.

In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we'd go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father's televised service for 17 years.

I'd love to do another television series. I really love the writing process, and as an actor I really like how much you get to examine in 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].

A lot of things that people think are risky, I don't think are risky. I don't get all that. I think what was really risky for network television was to let cable television to take the summers.

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.

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 thing is, that great actors are everywhere. They're everywhere. They're doing good parts on television. They're doing television commercials. They're doing local theater. There are so few opportunities.

The crazy thing about television is that you are rarely allowed to grow. You are molded into a character based on some of your strongest traits, and you are forced to stay that way for your entire television life.

I wouldn't have the life I have without television. I wouldn't be looking out my apartment window onto the East River; I wouldn't be able to afford to have my mother with me this summer. So television has been very good to me.

In television, the creator is really the voice...

Television is where you earn regular money so you can plan a little bit but even then only when you have a regular gig. If you're just doing the odd appearance, you don't know if it will carry on.

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.

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.

Billy was fascinated by the television. At its most basic level, it occupied his time and shut out the demons of isolation. This was another irony because, for so long, he had shunned the tube for a similar purpose-to prevent it from bombarding his brain with demons of banality. However, each time he turned the machine on, he began to discover a world of assorted delights, as well as gain insight into the insidious manner in which this medium was shaping the mass psyche. If nothing else, he learned there was nothing innocuous about it.

We read the world - television, movies, songs, books - and the people in it through the lens of our own lives.

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.

In the '60s and '70s it was a great period for American films because studios were still run by individuals who worked off the seat of their pants and went along with things. At that time, they were very uncertain about what to make because of the influence of television. A lot of really terrific movies were made. But then the studios gradually became more corporate and were owned by corporations and run in that way and now they're very nervous. You see what they make - sequels, franchises and try not to take risks.

I just like short hair on women, I think it's cool. And I have wanted to cut my hair for very many years, but being on contract with a television show for six years prevents you from doing that, and then being on contract with a cosmetic endorsement campaign prevents you from doing that again. So for eight years, I've had to have long, flowing locks. And I was just so sick and tired of long, flowing locks, so I chopped them.

Oddly enough, I have really bad stage fright - getting up in front of people. And I made a living going on live television.

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.

I don't even have cable anymore, or a television. I just watch on computers. It's clearly the future of where we're heading.

Theatre, film and television are all modes of storytelling, and many of us are fortunate enough to move freely among them without feeling that we've 'left' or need to 'go back' to one or the other. In fact, if the theatre is to avoid a brain drain, this kind of fluidity is increasingly necessary.

There are very few ethnic LGBT characters on television, so I am honored to represent them. I love supporting this cause, but it’s a big responsibility, and sometimes it’s a lot of pressure on me.

By bringing the voices of the ordinary people faced with extraordinary challenges to television screens around the world, I hope to affect change in one community at a time.

There have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. It was a really good tour. It seemed maybe about a week too long.