Quotes About Television

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.

Television is perhaps the greatest medium ever discovered to teach and educate and even to entertain. But the filth, the rot, the violence, and the profanity that spew from television screens into our homes is deplorable. It is a sad commentary on our society. The fact that a television set is on six or seven hours every day in most of the homes of America says something of tremendous importance.

For one year, I want to do this thing where I guest-star on as many television shows as I possibly can. I love television. The fact that television ultimately made me famous was very gratifying for me.

The defining problem of contemporary television is trust: Can you believe what you see on television, does television treat people fairly, is it healthy for society?

The good television of today is probably better than the best television of the old days. The bad television of today is worse. It is not only bad - it is damaging, meretricious, seedy and cynical.

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.

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 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.

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 don't watch daytime television, I have a job, I work and, you know, I think daytime television is really for women.

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

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 think it's impossible for any of us not to find television, and the political process at its best on television, compelling.

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.

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.

Television is in a different time because of reality television, so it's not as exciting.

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

I love doing movies, but right now, television is the way Hollywood was in the late '60s and early '70s. The dream era I would have loved to have been part of in Hollywood then is happening right now, but it's happening on television, with these big complicated story arcs and real character-driven shows and sheer ambiguity left and right.

Television has changed. The very nature of it is not even television anymore.

As far as the difference for me between television and movies, I really thrill to the pace of television. As exhausting as it can be - there was actually one day when we never went to bed.

I think that people might watch reality television or what they see played out on media outlets and get ideas. We might be more anesthetized to divorce or bad behavior now because of what we see on television or on postings on TMZ. So it definitely could be filtering in to how we conduct ourselves.

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

Film and television as a medium has only very recently begun to be taught at the great drama schools in the UK. When I was at drama school in the UK, I was there for two and a half years, and we did one week of television and film. It's right before you leave. It's like, "We've taught you Anton Chekhov and William Shakespeare, you are likely to be in a washing-up soap-liquid commercial."

When I was a kid, I had ambitions for being a television announcer, which was before television took off, you know, in the late 40s. And just through necessity, going out looking for work, I was starting to sing, and dance, and act, and I never expected to do that, nor to have any success at it at least.

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.

We now live in an amazing digital world, and television is firmly part of that brave new world. Television is still the way to reach the most citizens and talk to them – and with them - about how the EU affects their lives. It's still the way to bring people together – to laugh, to debate, to learn. In a world that takes a faster and faster pace, it is nice to know you can slow down once in a while with a good TV programme.

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.

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 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."

And then I went into television; and then television moved from the East Coast to Hollywood.

I'm a huge fan of television, and it's a really good time to be a fan of television, because there's so much good stuff out there. In every genre, really.

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.

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.

As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.

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

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 think that every show on television has its place. I think Married With Children or, I don't know, The Nanny... some people want to go home, turn on the TV and be able to iron their clothes or grab a sandwich. Come out and catch a joke and not have to follow the story.

I have no regrets about not having children. I still wait for the pang of guilt, but I have none. I tune into the television show Nanny 911 occasionally which reminds me how much patience and love it take to be a good parent.

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.

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.

Crime dramas will never go away as long as people turn to television for, among other things, reassurance and comfort.

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.

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.

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.

If in 1989 I said, 'I have an idea: Bottle water and sell it. And charge more than a beer,' they would have chased me around with a giant butterfly net. The same with paying to watch a television station.

Be very careful of what you allow to infiltrate your consciousness and subconsciousness. When you watch too much television, you'll start to feel inferior from all the commercials hard selling the idea that you're not complete unless you buy their product. The ad agencies appeal to your fear of not being wanted or loved. It's the same with the local news. They get you to stay tuned with a constant stream of fear tactics. It's as if our culture is addicted to fear and the flat screen is our drug dealer. Don't allow that crap into your head!

People don't talk to each other. You're alone with your television set or internet. But you can't have a functioning democracy without what sociologists call "secondary organizations," places where people can get together, plan, talk and develop ideas. You don't do it alone.

I was in Britain that year [1963] and some music publishing people in Denmark Street in London suggested me to the BBC. So I found myself in front of a British television show, which was a nice surprise.