Quotes About Television

Modern politics today requires a mastery of television. I've never really warmed up to television and, in fairness to television, it's never warmed up to me.

My fantasy for children's television is that it's not really children's television, it's everybody's television.

When I first started making films 30 years ago, people would comment that I was a woman. But strangely, when I was in television, no one ever mentioned that I was a woman. Maybe it was because television and film were different. There were more women working in television than men. There was no split in terms of work - everyone was considered equal

I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated. And there's so much more responsibility because the medium is very much a director's medium. Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium so a lot of the time when you're directing a television show they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined and you just kind of have to follow the rules.

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

I was coming from a theater background. I had an obsession with classic film and cool, interesting, intelligent television. I didn't really understand the way the mainstream television industry worked. I just thought "The wire is so good that it's going to be a huge hit, and we'll get awards up the yin-yang forever." That's what I thought!

Such techniques, including meta-discursive stuff, self-reference, irony, black humor, cynicism, grotesquerie and shock, it would be safe to say that television or televisual values rule the culture. Television is successfully using a lot of those same techniques but using them for a very different agenda, which is to sort of create an ethos and please people and to sell products to consumers.

I became an actor, and because I had success as an actor, I became famous. I was acting for quite a while before I got famous; television made me famous. I guess that it's television that is responsible for everybody's desire to be famous.

Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park.

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.

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.

People think I appear on television to promote my image. That's not fair. I hate filming. I turned down 'Strictly Come Dancing.' But television is a wonderful opportunity to promote scientific ideas. 'Super Doctors' is a very thoughtful piece.

There's a level of action unlike anything else on television. AMC always makes distinctive television and I think that certainly fits that requirement.

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.

I'm a huge fan of good, procedural-type shows on television... there are a lot of roles for women. But there aren't a lot of great network television roles for girls that will let you start a character in one place and finish up with her in a totally different one.

Ultimately, the dollars will have to come from television. Will it come from television tomorrow, I don't know.

I like television. I still believe that television is the most powerful form of communication on Earth - I just hate what is being done with it.

Yeah, I like working in television, a lot. I really enjoyed my time on 'Lost.' I like developing that hint of family with people. I mean, if you're on a happy set. If you're on a set where there's some sour apples, then I don't like working in television.

I'm a perfectionist, so doing a high quality, high caliber television show with great actors makes me feel like there's this whole world of television that I've never experienced.

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

I'd say working on television is much, much tougher than films. But television has a great connect with a live audience, which is a refreshing change for us actors.

I was a fan of the television show as a kid but I wouldn't say that I've followed all the movies or anything like that. But I was a television junkie as a kid.

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.

I find with television, you have to play personality, whereas onstage, everyone talks about "the character," and what you do. It's a very different thing, because stage is much bigger, but on television, for things to come across to the public, I think you have to play a bit of your personality.

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 hope you are reading to your children, out loud. That's much better than watching television, much better. They won't get very much out of television except some bad thoughts.

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.

If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.

I have no television to go on so I get a lot of writing done. That's my substitute for television.

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

If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.

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.

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.

Most Chinese filmmakers grew up watching television; they watched films on television, not in cinemas. The scope of their vision is not big enough, they're not yet detail-oriented enough. You have to watch films in cinemas for years to understand the depth and scope of vision needed in filmmaking. Directors in China usually come from an academic background; they graduate as film directors. Whereas the directors from Hong Kong learn their trade on sets, beginning at the lowest rung.

I don't think people come to television for spectacle. And I don't really have a lot of fun writing spectacle for television, I'll do that in features.

What little reality television I've seen seems to be about economic desperation. Like the marathon dancing of the Great Depression, which should give us pause. People willing to eat flies and worms for a sum that is less than the weekly paycheck of the show's producer. I haven't seen "reality television" that is other than this kind of painful, sadistic exploitation of fit young people looking for agents.

My job as a television anchor or television reporter is not to proselytize.

It's funny, 90 percent of what I've done has been television, and I never really wanted to do it that much. I was really interested in film and theater. What's ironic is that when I started doing television, I did a bunch of amazing shows all in a row, starting with The Corner.

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.

In every area, we seem to have thrown everything away and embraced reality television. Its nauseating, programme after programme.

I really enjoy doing sitcom television. It allows me to stay in Los Angeles and spend more time with my husband and kids.

I think the cartoons that they're children are watching, particularly 'The Simpsons,' they're OK. I think that the adult audience is making much too much of the danger that they imply. That's not the case. The danger for children today, honey, is the news. Keep them away from news on television.

I've always been a fan of advertising, I've always been a fan of television, I've loved commercials, I've loved all the jingles, I loved all the stuff

I think one of the problems in determining the ending for a television series is that you don't know how long the show is gonna last. Particularly because we were in the unique position of adapting Tom's Perrotta novel The Leftovers, it always felt like the first season was gonna end with the end of Tom's novel, and then we would figure things out from there and look back.

I learned how to speak English watching television.

Because when you watch US television, all the presenters and reporters, they're all out of central casting.

Somehow, by just continually pestering the general public by appearing on television, they accepted me and wanted more.