Quotes About Television

I think television has become such an interesting place for characters and for incredible storytelling. Half of what I watch are television shows that I've become obsessed with. I just think that it's opened up so much, to be such an interesting and creative medium, and so many wonderful directors and actors are moving to television because it is a great medium for telling stories and for creating a character over a long period of time.

When I first started making films 30 years ago, people would comment that I was a woman. But strangely, when I was in television, no one ever mentioned that I was a woman. Maybe it was because television and film were different. There were more women working in television than men. There was no split in terms of work - everyone was considered equal

There is danger in the concentration of control in the television and radio networks, especially in the large television and radio stations; danger in the concentration of ownership in the press...and danger in the increasing concentration of selection by book publishers and reviewers and by the producers of radio and television programs.

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

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.

Movies have gotten dull, the way network television got dull. And television, if we can still even call it that, is still really exciting and riveting and people are totally into it. I am always meeting people who have these favorite shows that they are completely wired too and not only have I never seen it but I don't even know how to find it.

They dislike me, the liberal media dislikes me. I was always the best at what I did, I went to the Wharton School of Finance, did well. I went out, I started in Brooklyn office with my father, I became one of the most successful real estate developers, one of the most successful business people. I created maybe the greatest brand. I then go into, in addition to that, part time, like five percent a week, I open up a television show. The Apprentice on many evenings was the number one show on all of television, a tremendous success.

Everything you look at now, the scripts that come in that you look at, the television scripts are way better than the movie script. The talent is going to television.

[It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. […] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87)

I've always liked adventure television. Pre-'Survivor,' I did a series on cable called 'Eco-Challenge,' an adventure race with experts mainly, and here we have 'Expedition Impossible.' I like the outdoors and I like doing something fresh for television you haven't seen before.

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.

I'm a huge fan of good, procedural-type shows on television... there are a lot of roles for women. But there aren't a lot of great network television roles for girls that will let you start a character in one place and finish up with her in a totally different one.

It's not brain surgery. It's not nuclear physics. It's television. It's only television.

I worked in television; I'm the Failed Pilot Queen, I've done so many television shows, pilots, theater ... when you do it for so long, I'm telling you, you get to the point where it becomes varied because you take what's available for a number of reasons. It's just an occupational hazard.

It's not even that finding laundry pleasurable or delightful should be our goal rather than finding television delightful. It's that both laundry and television can be delightful.

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

I came to Los Angeles and did auditions for television. I made a terrible mess of most of them and I was quite intimidated. I felt very embarrassed and went back to London. I got British television jobs intermittently between the ages of 23 and 27, but it was very patchy.

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 hope you are reading to your children, out loud. That's much better than watching television, much better. They won't get very much out of television except some bad thoughts.

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.

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.

I love films, I love movies, I love television, I love television series, I love the internet, I love anything that enhances images. But most of all, I love, love movies.

People have said that I said I hate television. I never did say that. What I said was that I hated a lot of stuff that was on television. It's nothing about the medium itself.

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.

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.

We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

Television is a very highly constructed, and edited, and censored, and tailored, and marketed reality. But I'm not judgemental about it. I don't have anything against television. I just personally don't feel curious.

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.

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.

It's funny, 90 percent of what I've done has been television, and I never really wanted to do it that much. I was really interested in film and theater. What's ironic is that when I started doing television, I did a bunch of amazing shows all in a row, starting with The Corner.

Nowadays, to be frank, every week is a good week for freakshow television. we might start asking, Why are there so many freaks? And why do they all want to be on television?

I don't. We've had three technological revolutions that have changed the course of human history, all driven by physics. In the first, the industrial revolution, physicists developed Newtonian mechanics and thermodynamics, which gave us the steam engine and machine power. The second technological revolution was the electricity revolution. That gave us radio, television, and telecommunications. Then, physicists developed the laser and the transistor.

In television, the creator is really the voice...

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.

Soul Train' was developed as a radio show on television. It was the radio show that I always wanted and never had.

Television showrunners are a foolishly optimistic bunch.

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.

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

Without television and mass communication, that knowledge wouldn't exist. So I think it actually has the possibility of turning people into more understanding and more empathetic people.

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.

Well, I don't know anything about television. I'd never done it before. Initially, it was quite daunting to take on so much challenge and so much time with it. I think it is a great outlet for an actress because you really have 13 hours to bring a character to life, which is so much more than with film, and you have the luxury of time to tell a story and to really color a character.

Instead, I watch myself get shot on television.

I don't think any industry was ever as closely scrutinized and written about and constantly in the public eye as television.

For my job, I act tough. I'm not tough. On the street, I don't go out beating people up and this and that. I used to joke one time on the television station that I never... Everybody that I beat up deserved it. I never beat up an innocent person.

Television can be a very fickle place

In this day and age, especially with all the media and television, social media, and the Internet, we are constantly being compared and comparing ourselves to others' lives and journeys. Keep your eyes on your own road.

What's really important in life? Sitting on a beach? Looking at television eight hours a day? I think we have to appreciate that we're alive for only a limited period of time, and we'll spend most of our lives working.