I directed before I was even in television; I directed in the theatre for seven years, so that was my trade anyway. But in the UK, I’ve given up any hope of being considered a director.
I’m very wary of news on television.
I saw this new thing called television, and I saw people throwing pies in each other’s faces, and I thought, ‘This could be a wonderful tool for education! Why is it being used this way?’ So I said to my parents, ‘You know, I don’t think I’ll go into seminary right away. I think I’ll go into television.’
You get to that age where you’re watching a lot of television, and who doesn’t want to be on television?
A child’s hope is that your father comes riding in on that white stallion and saves them. You can’t make somebody love you the way you want them to love you, it’s not a Leave it to Beaver type world. This isn’t television. Life’s a lot more cruel than that.
The problem with my peers is they don’t understand television. You have to work within the confines of what executives will allow you to put on TV. Otherwise, we’ve not done anything, we’ve not really struggled to change the culture at all.
I was proud of ‘House, MD,’ and I think it was good for what it was and remarkably smart for a television show. I loved Hugh Laurie and was proud to be by his side that long and to be trusted by him.
Look at the declining television coverage. Look at the declining voting rate. Economics and economic news is what moves the country now, not politics.
In the 1950s we use to feel that television was taking away our comic readership; with today’s exciting, powerfully visual movies I have to wonder about their effect on the kids’ loyalty to the comic book medium all over again.
I think an excess of anything is bad, be it mobile phones, social media, private tuitions or watching television.
I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the ‘Johnny Cash Show’ on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n’ roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing – a beautiful, evil thing.
I don’t really have any plans in terms of what I want to do – movies, television, theater – but I’d love to do a play in New York.
Television contracts the imagination and radio expands it.
It’s always baffled me why BET looks the way it does. This is Black Entertainment Television. Why are we up there, then, looking like idiots? It’s because black people are marketing black people like that.
I did a terrible television pilot that was so badly written and dumb that it became a turning point for me and I decided that I would never accept a job just because I needed the money.
It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new ‘solution’ to society’s ‘problems.’
I can’t believe anything I hear on television anymore.
I’m basically a movie actor now, and my big roles are mostly horror movies – unless I’m doing a guest star or something – and occasionally I try to get back into television.
If you’re a singer, you do concerts, and you get that interaction with fans and see what cities in what part of the world come out to see you. When you’re on television, you’re removed from that.
Television is the first truly democratic culture – the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything.
Some television programs are so much chewing gum for the eyes.
As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
I never do any television without chocolate. That’s my motto and I live by it. Quite often I write the scripts and I make sure there are chocolate scenes. Actually I’m a bit of a chocolate tart and will eat anything. It’s amazing I’m so slim.
I’ll never forget the first time I heard Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Partita in E Major’ for violin. It was in a late-1980s television commercial, of all things. As a young violinist at the time, it enchanted me – it was so pure, precise, and unadorned.
Networks decide who will have a chance to do shows, but it is the viewers who make the final decision of who stays and who goes. I am very fortunate, in that the television viewers of our country have decided that Bob Barker can stay.
‘Monty Python’ became my religion when I was 10. It led me out of the depths of darkness. I loved ‘The Goodies,’ too, and ‘The Two Ronnies.’ I watched those shows on the public television station in Chicago.
Television wasn’t prestigious.
The only way to do news on television is not to be terrified of it.
Television was supposed to be a national park. Instead it has become a money machine. It’s a commodity now, just like pork bellies.
The Times has much less power than you think. I believe we attribute power to the media generally that it simply doesn’t have. It’s very convenient to blame the media, the same way we blame television for everything that’s going wrong in society.
I think I was a shy kid. I grew up without television. I had a dog, and we lived up in the White Mountains in the summer, and I had no friends up there. And I would just go play hide-and-seek with my dog and probably had some imaginary friends.
Most people think the character I do onstage is the way I am offstage, but I’m just a regular guy who spends time with his family and who turns on the television and watches a lot of sports.
Of course I am aware that there is a level of sexism in any large institution, but I find, in television and film, most of the producers are women.
Live television drama was like live theater, because you moved without thinking about the camera. It followed you around. In film you have to be more aware of what the camera is doing.
The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian.
Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was.
My interests are not really with television, per se.
I was sued by a woman who claimed that she became pregnant because she watched me on television and I bent her contraceptive coil.
All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?
Television is a young person’s medium.
In 1949 there was a new thing called Television, to which my agency and advisers opposed as a performance medium.
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.
I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir ’em up, but you can’t do that on television. It’s just not on.
I don’t watch television, I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.
By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you’d be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.
I was always singing and dancing for my mother when I wasn’t glued to the television watching I Love Lucy or the Carol Burnett Show.
Liberals in Hollywood can’t stand when Americans resonate to conservatives on television.
A young basketball player has people to look up to an emulate. We are a pro league, and we’re on television. It makes a difference. It’s shows what’s possible.
Somehow, by just continually pestering the general public by appearing on television, they accepted me and wanted more.
Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.
When television came out, there was concern it would kill radio.
Television is democracy at its ugliest.
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.
It is to TV that I owe my freedom from bondage of the Latin lover roles. Television came along and gave me parts to chew on. It gave me wings as an actor.
I have no regrets about not having children. I still wait for the pang of guilt, but I have none. I tune into the television show ‘Nanny 911’ occasionally which reminds me how much patience and love it take to be a good parent.
I believe there is lot of untapped potential in the television market. With shows such as ‘Bigg Boss’ and ’24’ turning out to big hits on TV, I’m interested to be in it.
I went from an innocent child to a national television star. My career took on a life of its own.
There is nothing like a live performance. You can look at things on television, and you can look at things on YouTube, but when you get in a room full of people and you say one joke, and everyone’s laughing at the same thing, it’s a really great experience.
Indian television is unpredictable.
Almost every single commercial on television for shampoo, sports shoes, drinks, food, clothes, perfume, cars, etc., is a short fairy tale, for they are given magical qualities.
