Quotes About Television

When you watch television, you never see people watching television. We love television because it brings us a world in which television does not exist.

Television in the 1960s & 70s had just as much dross and the programmes were a lot more tediously patronising than they are now. Memory truncates occasional gems into a glittering skein of brilliance. More television, more channels means more good television and, of course, more bad. The same equation applies to publishing, film and, I expect, sumo wrestling.

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 know when I was growing up in New York, whenever I turned on the television, I never saw a face that looked like me. Whenever there was an Asian person on television, it would be a huge event, me calling to my older sister 'There's an Asian person on television!' It was unheard of back then.

Television is not the truth! Television is a goddamned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats and story-tellers, singers and dancers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion-tamers and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business!

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.

Television has accustomed us to brief, intimate, telegraphic, visual, narrative messages. Candidates are learning to act, speak, and think in television's terms. In the process they are transforming speeches, debates, and their appearances in news into ads.

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.

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.

Get up now and go and find Robert Kilroy-Silk. Smile in a warm, friendly sort of way, then punch him on the nose. Now go and find Robert on television, despite my best endeavours, this is still relatively easy to do. Wait for a close-up, same smile, and punch him on the nose. If you followed the instructions carefully, you will have noticed a distinct difference. On the one hand, you were suffused with a sense of public-spirited righteousness; on the other, you're probably dribbling blood. That's the difference between reality in life and reality on television.

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.

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.

Television is not hurting. Television is in fantastic shape. It's just a golden age for other people.

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.

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 saw him playing on television and was struck by his technique, so I asked my wife to come look at him. Now I never saw myself play, but I felt that this player is playing with a style similar to mine, and she looked at him on Television and said yes, there is a similarity between the two...his compactness, technique, stroke production - it all seemed to gel!

The leisure time of children must be constructively directed to wholesome, positive pursuits. Too much time viewing television can be destructive...It is estimated that growing children today watch television over twenty-five hours per week.

TV was my life, growing up. I ran home from school to watch television, and even did my homework with the TV on - my mom had a rule that as long as my grades didn't fall, I was allowed to. So it was my dream to work in television.

I'm an actor and I am looking for roles where I can continue to evolve, and things that are challenging. I gravitate to the roles, not necessarily television or film. It's just the fact that, for me, the most interesting roles have been in television.

Democracy means free television, not good television, but free.

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 really like working in television and I like exploring a character over a longer period of time, and I like the consistency of television.

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?

In modern society most of us don't want to be in touch with ourselves; we want to be in touch with other things like religion, sports, politics, a book - we want to forget ourselves. Anytime we have leisure, we want to invite something else to enter us, opening ourselves to the television and telling the television to come and colonize us.

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

Theater is completely different from film or television. It has a beginning and a middle and an end and it's different every night. And it's far preferable to any other except in the sense of not getting paid, people who want to eat should do film and television.

Our biggest art forms are film and television, and there hasn't been a great film about 9/11 yet, nor has there been a great television series. Something like The Wire gives us a rich and fully achieved picture of the wasteful, cruel War on Drugs; something like The White Ribbon gives a perspective on World War I that could only have been presented long after the event itself.

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 can always spot a 'television personality', even when they aren't actually on television, because they carry their 'made-up' persona in front of them, like some sort of baffler, or Ready Brek force field. Their reach for notoriety predicated on that fulsome mediocrity of talent detailed above has become frozen in their faces.

I think you know, to not open your mind to television is silly because there's so much good work happening on television.

When I sit down, I find that it's much easier for me to want to consume a movie than to dip back into 20 or 40 or 60 hours of a television series. I think a great movie is really amazing. But, television does give you a larger canvas.

The reality of television production now is that all the development money and pilot money now goes to the Internet so they can try to get pilots cheaper, than if they were producing them for television. I understand, it's a business, but what's great about doing it on the web, and one thing that attracted me is the amount of creative freedom that you do get with the web. That's the only advantage of there not being a lot of money involved, is that you're really able to write and do what you want... because there's not a lot of money involved and not money at risk.

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.

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."

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.

When you're a doctor and you spend most of your life in a hospital, you honestly don't get to watch as much television as you think you might, and the power of television is enormous.

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.

When you listen to Christian radio stations - and there are thousands of them now in the United States - and when you listen to Christian television networks - and there are thousands of Christian television shows across the country - they are all politically right.

The Bush campaign for re-election has officially begun. They're actually running television commercials. Have you seen any of the television commercials? In one of the commercials, you see George Bush for thirty seconds. In another commercial, you get to see George Bush for sixty seconds - kind of like his stint in the National Guard.

There were no competitions on television. The first skating competition I ever remember seeing on television was the 1968 Olympics when Peggy Fleming won.

It's magical thinking to imagine that the reason unspeakable things are being perpetrated by younger and younger people is that they've fallen under the influence of seductive, lascivious, prurient, and violent material in books, films, television. A great deal of this type of censorship has to do with absolving parents of responsibility - parents who just plop their kids in front of the television and leave them there hour upon hour.

Every song that has been a hit for me has been honest and truthful. I have to believe that same formula will work on this (television) show. It has to be believable and honest.

Television showrunners are a foolishly optimistic bunch.

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 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 think the reason the Golden Age of television is so golden is because a lot of folks are willing to let creators do their thing and live or die by their own muse. They certainly allow us to do that.

Television, although It's in steep decline, still occasionally gives voices to people who don't have voices.

I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?