Quotes About Television

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.

I wouldn't be interested in [nowadays] television simply because I think it goes too fast. Except if something was maybe a play on television or some great television script.

No one wanted to hire me. No newspaper, television station, television network that I worked for ever wanted to hire me.

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.

Television thrives on unreason, and unreason thrives on television. It strikes at the emotions rather than the intellect.

Children from the age of five to ten should watch more television. Television depicts adults as rotten SOB's given to fistfights, gunplay, and other mayhem. Kids who believe this about grownups aren't likely to argue about bedtime.

I grew up in a house full of music, and a house that didn't have a television. We had a piano, but no television. And really, I very quickly realized that this was, you know, there was magic there, there was magic to be had, you could lose yourself in it, it was a refuge, it was joy, it was all of those things.

Once you have some sort of reputation in the outside world, they will try to woo you. They will say, "Won't you come and be on a talk program about books? That's not political." Then they can say to the outside world, "See how free it is, she appears on television. See how free it is." So I refused to have anything of mine read or dramatized on South African television.

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 do think this is where television is going, and I think that it's awesome to be a part of a show like this because we are these pioneers into this new medium. And it's working. When you look at the success of House of Cards and Arrested Development, which I love, this is how people are watching television now. It's pretty cool to be a part of this whole thing.

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.

I am guided by the vision of what I believe this show can be. Originally our goal was to uplift, enlighten, encourage and entertain through the medium of television. Now, our mission statement for The Oprah Winfrey Show is to use television to transform people's lives, to make viewers see themselves differently and to bring happiness and a sense of fulfillment into every home.

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 where Playground is heading is deeper into that marriage between stage, film and television, with the increasing number of people in the film business working in television, obviously something that we were very influential in starting and doing at HBO. And I think that that's the focus of where I see the company moving forward, continuing to explore that intersection of all that talent.

Black people watch more television than anybody else, which makes it legitimate to talk about television. Its anesthetizing effect has been quite real. But that concern isn't new.

Actors always direct themselves. A good actor shows up onset ready, especially in television, and you've done your homework and you know your character. The director may have some variation on what you're thinking or they may have a different interpretation of the scene. So you come prepared to shoot and you've given yourself notes. In television, it may be the first time you're meeting this director and you've been living in this character's skin for a couple of years. It's always great to have fresh perspective and fresh insight, but no one knows your character better than you do.

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.

Jeff always says, "In the cinema, everybody goes to sci-fi. Those are the biggest movies. But, in television, nobody wants to touch it with a barge pole." It's strange. I think it's because maybe there's a legacy of television shows that depicted sci-fi in a certain way that turns off a lot of viewers, so maybe there's a negative connotation.

But I never, never thought of the ministry nor did - of course, television when I was growing up, there was no television. So I didn't know anything about it.

People get on a show and they fought tooth and nail. Almost 95% of the actors out there want to be on a television series. Then as soon as they get onto one, no, no, I want to be a movie star. This television series stuff, no, no no.

I had a bumper sticker on my car for a long time that said, "Kill your television." People helpfully pointed out that I was a total fraud because I was a television writer.

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.

Radio was, in a way, a very philosophical medium. You could make an argument on the radio, and people listened to it. Television is already harder because people's attention span becomes shorter with television. Cut to a commercial and all that.

Sometimes when you have an abundance of time and money, it's less conducive to the creative process. I like the urgency of the television schedule and the television price point. It's fluid. You figure it out on the day, and I love the challenge of problem-solving.

I was interested in opera and it seemed to me that the only possible theatre for contemporary opera would be television. So I started working towards a kind of television kind of opera.

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.

I just really like writing and making television shows. There are ego rewards in doing battle with other television programs in prime time in the main season. I suppose there are times when I might look at that and think that's the major league. But when you look at it, ultimately would I really want to gamble my livelihood and my ability to connect with my fan base or write a show that I really like writing, or in some cases direct a show that I really like directing, for the sake of winning an ego battle? It's totally not worth it. That stuff is so ephemeral.

Television exposes the world to the accident. The world is exposed to accidents through 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.

Now, all America sits in front of television sets and those television sets exude, I am sorry to say, a considerable amount of radioactive material. It's not huge, you know, but it's enough so that people who have made a habit of watching TV ... get the TV radiation.

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.

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.

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.

Choosing how you vote should not be a snap verdict based on a few minutes of 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

What the British seem to like are television historians and naturalists, not public intellectuals. You can't help feeling that's because one supplies narrative and the other supplies facts, and the British are traditionally empiricists so they/we have a resistance to theory and to theoreticians playing too prominent a role in public life.

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

I think that comes with a collaboration with the writers. I think that we get cast in edgier roles because we are a little more offbeat, so people - as we get to know the writers, and as the writers get to know us, they start to write around us more, and that's why I think the pilot is not always the best way to get to experience a new television show, because we're fitting ourselves into these characters. Whereas as the show evolves, they're writing the characters for us and for our strengths and weaknesses.

I had no expectation of the level of adulation that would come my way. I just wanted to make a living with a regular role in a television series.

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.

It has been proven that more Americans watch television than any other appliance.

I love to perform and I love to perform characters, and sometimes when I'm doing television and film, I just feel like I'm making a living. I'm good at it, but I'm not really being artistically challenged.

I think we have got to start again and go right back to first principles. The argument I shall advance, surprising as it may seem coming from the author of the earlier chapters, is that, for an understanding of the evolution of modern man, we must begin by throwing out the gene as the sole basis of our ideas on evolution. If there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is He playing at? Is he a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sports? ... Is he manuvering to maximize David Attenborough's television ratings?

The fact that we don't' talk about it, that we don't have a politics in which this question of war and peace can even get onto the table, so that we can open up our Orwell, our 1984, or Animal Farm, or whatever, and read the political text that's being spotted to us on the television right off of the page; the fact that we don't have a politics robust enough to actually debate whether or not we want to be a country permanently at war. That's what keeps me from sleeping at night.

I played an artist in a comedy called 'Rooster.' It was a zany film by Glen Larson, a friend who produced several successful television series including 'Magnum PI.

The only shared reality we have is things we have seen on television.

I do not watch television. But I'm in touch with the world. If anything really important happens, someone will tell me.