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.

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?

I would really like to focus on directing features, and then eventually take that skill set back to television. On features, you have more control. On television, the producers are the creative forces behind it. Directors come and go on television.

I may have disparaged the idea that people are looking at films on smaller and smaller screens... it's a shame that people have to watch DVDs with the lights on in a television-type situation where people are wandering in and out of the room. Movies are different from television, and you cannot watch movies like television. It distorts it.

This whole thing about reality television to me is really indicative of America saying we're not satisfied just watching television, we want to star in our own TV shows. We want you to discover us and put us in your own TV show, and we want television to be about us, finally.

It’s not whether children learn from television, it’s what children learn from television... because everything that children see on television is teaching them something.

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.

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.

When I look at my career, the bulk of it has been television, and I love working in television. But there's a speed at which you do it. You're doing seven to ten pages a day on a series, and it's hard to feel like you're doing the detail-oriented work that I like to do.

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.

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.

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.

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

Do some research on the effects of television and your brain, and I promise you you'll have a decision to make when it comes to television, especially with what you watch.

If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?

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.

The worst thing about television is that everybody you see on television is doing something better than what you're doing. You never see anybody on TV just sliding off the front of the sofa, with potato chip crumbs all over their shirt.

I think American television changed world television in its reinvention of the series.

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?

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.

Michael Bay and his team are experts in exciting tentpole-type film and television, and the combination of their film experience plus the great television writers that have come on will be really successful in bringing us something really unique. We are looking to put on these big canvas shows, and Black Sails is going to fit into that. The scripts have been terrific. Everything that we are trying to do is incredibly ambitious, and this is certainly in that category.

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.

There are many things clogging the television waves. You've got to fight for every bit of television households you can get.

Some television programs are made very attractive to young children by presenting short, rapidly moving sequences and ever-changing episodes.... Some experts now argue that slower- paced television fare that allows children time to think about the material is more valuable than the faster-paced programs that merely capture their attention.

Sometimes I think on television, you use maybe a tenth of what you are able to do. So it’s nice to go, Well, I’m gonna take two months and reinvest in acting and storytelling. You don’t get to do that on television.

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.

Everybody's slow right now, there's nothing happening musically, everybody's all on cable television and being manipulated by all the television right now, what's on cable telling people what to listen to and stuff.

My favorite television show of all time is 'Hill Street Blues.' I think it's the show that is to television what Pele was to football or Muhammad Ali was to boxing.

Like the sorcerer of old, the television set casts its magic spell, freezing speech and action and turning the living into silent statues so long as the enchantment lasts. The primary danger of the television screen lies not so much in the behavior it produces as the behavior it prevents — the talks, the games, the family festivities and arguments.

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.

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.

I think anybody who has been in the theater, prefers it. Television is a... factory. You turn out things on a revolving assembly line. You don't have time to perfect anything in television.

Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn't influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television.

My father was invited to play on a television show when I was 17 or 18, that was an early equivalent of educational television. Sunday afternoon kind of variety art show.

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

The hope for me going back into television - after doing what will have been two years of radio - is to bring that authenticity with me. And, to not have the visual be overpowering the content.

I think women are amazing and womens friendships are like a sisterhood and we should see more of it in television and film.

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.

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

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

If we wait for the entertainment industry to change its fundamental values, we may be waiting a long time. But we don't have to wait another day to scale back our own private consumption of television.

Aaron Sorkin wrote me one of the best female roles on television, I think. He's a wonderful writer for all people. If he chooses to write, hopefully he'll write something that involves more women next time, because I would love to do it.

Dreams are more original than images we see in the media, and are surprisingly unaffected by media. For example, the average person watches several hours of television per day, yet dreams are rarely about shows we have watched or news of the day.

I'd never done any film or television. Well, I'd done one little stupid commercial in Boston when I was doing theater, but that was it.

A television advertisement must illustrate the scientific method to substantiate any claim.... That is why stains are lifted, ring-around-the-collar is removed, paper towels become soaked, excess stomach acid is absorbed, and headaches go away-all during the commercial.

By exercise. I'll tell you one thing, you don't always have to be on the go. I sit around a lot, I read a lot, and I do watch television. But I also work out for two hours every day of my life, even when I'm on the road.