Quotes About Television

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.

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.

Television is competitive now, and the great stories live on television right now. I'm finding that I'm enjoying television more than film, these days. That was my motivation to take a TV show.

I think I entered the market around the time when there was getting to be less snobbery about the difference between feature films and television. I think there's been a lot more receptivity on television to interesting adult stories that in the '60s and '70s would have been made into feature films. I have no problem jumping back and forth. If anything, I find it less restrictive working in television.

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.

Somewhere around the turn of the century, it stopped being hip to say you never watched TV. Adults are much more likely to find something to engage them on television than they are at the local multiplex. Edges are being cut on television all the time, but at the movies only now and then.

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

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

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.

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.

That makes entertaining television. That is the circus of American Idol . We go for the very, very best and the very, very worst. It's the boring people that we don't want to see on television.

Most of the time people are aiming so low on television. They're trying to reach that common denominator, especially on network television.

What's better these days, television or film? It's a dead heat. In fact, one could argue for television with more regularity.

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 wrote my own first book about the defense of television as an art form in 1992. It was harder to make the argument then. Now it seems absolutely a given. You can argue about when the Platinum Age Of Television begins, but I don't think that anybody can argue that it's not here.

I absolutely love television, and I don't mean to be vulgar, but as I keep having to explain to people from the movie industry, I get more power and more money doing television, so why on earth would I do a film?

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.

I think poets are supposed to be writing for television and film. I grew up in the day of early TV that was so raw and funny, and I think we're in the next important moment of television, where it's really telling the epic of the culture like Charles Dickens was doing in the 19th century with his serialized novels.

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.

The heightened public clamor resulting from radio and television coverage will inevitably result in prejudice. Trial by television is, therefore, foreign to our system.

It is naive to believe that a steady diet of blatant immorality, played out nightly in our living rooms, has no effect on people. I am always curious when individuals insist that what they watch on television or in movie theaters doesn't affect them. ... Are we really to believe that hours, leading to years, of television viewing will not affect attitudes about everything from family life to appropriate sexual relations?

Watching television requires no skills and develops no skills. That is why there is no such thing as remedial television-watching.

Television watching should more properly be called television staring; it engages eye and ear simultaneously in a relentless and persistent way and leaves no room for daydreaming. This is what makes watching such an inferior form of leisure

So there was a constant flow and a thin line there between reality and television and yes, much of what I was experiencing in my real life was also what was going on in the television show to the extent that I had to take writers advice and from the counselors around.

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 love theater and I think doing a sitcom in front of a live audience is the closest you can get to theater, and it's really the best mix of like standup and theater, is really a sitcom. I started as a standup and I still continue to do that as well, so I think I'm just a TV guy and happy for it. I think my movie career is kind of like my social life, I'm picky and not in demand. So it perhaps is working out.

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 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."

Now, you always know there's going to be some compromise when you're doing something for television, and especially network television.

It concerns me when I see a small child watching the hero shoot the villain on television. It is teaching the small child to believe that shooting people is heroic. The hero just did it and it was effective. It was acceptable and the hero was well thought of afterward. If enough of us find inner peace to affect the institution of television, the little child will see the hero transform the villain and bring him to a good life. He'll see the hero do something significant to serve fellow human beings. So little children will get the idea that if you want to be a hero you must help people.

Television is certainly a writers-led medium. They're the ones who are there, they're the ones that are conferencing or whatever, with directors coming and going.

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

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren't consumed by technology and 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.

I've never left music behind, but I've had success in television.

Television turned out to be exactly as bad as the most irritating and pedantic intellectuals of the '50s said it was going to be.

A lot of TV is put together by teams, by writing staffs and several different directors. It's a great, very smart way to make television. It's worked for however long TV's been around.

I definitely acknowledge that The Matrix and Trinity had an influence on female action-oriented characters in television and in film. I think it's awesome.

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

I was fortunate to be part of a very successful show on CBS in 1986. I switched to NBC for eight years and through these experiences have gotten terrific insight into television; it's a fascinating medium.

The reason I live in America is because I mean literally every six or seven years I've done something in England. The last lead I had in an English film I did was 1998. So that's why I live here. It's because I get more work. I'll travel back for radio, you know what I mean. I've just got to consider myself to be living in the middle of the ocean, and that way I have a really nice career, if I'm prepared to do television, radio, theater, and film.

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.

So far I've done two films that have basically been about television because I know that world.

Material success is rewarding and a lot of fun, but it's not the most important thing in my life because I know when this is all over, the Master isn't going to ask me how many things I owned or how many television shows I did. I think the questions will be, What did I do to make a difference? Did I learn to live with love in my heart?

I remember in high school trying to get home from water-polo practice in time so I could see Happy Days on television when it first came on, because I was so blown away by it. It was just such a cool thing.

I don't have a television. No. So, I don't watch anything.

One of my very greatest fears as a child was being ridiculed in public. And there it was coming true. As a television presenter, I'd been respected. People come up to you in the street and shake your hand and talk to you in a respectful way.

I watch so much television. My DVR is full. I love putting my kids to bed, so I can sit on the couch with my wife and we can dissect The Affair, The Americans, House of Cards, or whatever it is. I'm so lucky.