Quotes About Television

CBS garners a predominately older white audience, and by having a show like 'Superior Donuts' on their weekly programming, it distorts what people are used to seeing in a positive way. It's a show I think was necessary.

After my grandmother finished watching 'Lawrence Welk,' my dad would race to the TV and put on the weekly hockey game. He loved watching Henri Richard, Gordie Howe and Terry Sawchuk. My dad's seven brothers and sisters weren't particularly thrilled with his viewing choices.

TV, that's the ultimate goal. I hope to bring what I am doing now to a weekly television format.

As far as television is concerned, I'm just not interested in working on a series. Why should I settle for being someone's second banana? And that weekly grind is unrewarding and too demanding.

Somebody said something funny to me the other day. They said, 'Wolper, until two weeks ago, your tombstone was going to say, 'David Wolper, the man who produced 'Roots.' I think the tombstone now has a new inscription. It's going to be 'David Wolper, the man who produced the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympics.'

When you do a play, or even a movie, you have weeks to finesse your character. You really understand why they do what they do. In TV, you get new material weekly about your character.

When the show's in production, we work for three weeks at a time and then take a week off.

Television is such an evolving medium. When you're doing a TV show, it's not like you just shoot for six weeks and you're in an editing room with all of your footage. It's like a guitar or a car, you have to fine tune things. You stop doing what's not working, you work on what is working and you add things that do work.

When you do a film, you know you're shooting for 6 or 9 weeks, you've got your cast and crew. Overall, no one can just pull the plug and say, 'This isn't working.' There's just no security on television, especially for African Americans. It's a tough market.

I've worked for 55 years. I'm going to take a little time off, to tell you the truth. It's just that now in the last couple of weeks, Gelman is pouring it on. 'Farewell to Regis!' It's getting embarrassing.

'Law & Order' is a six-month shoot. Everything has to be crammed in. I had so much fun, but it wasn't a holiday. We had seriously long days, and we'd finish at 8 P.M. and start again at 7 A.M. We were doing six-day weeks, which sometimes tripped onto the seventh. But I loved it all.

I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in 2000. I had boxes of product in my apartment and I had two weeks notice that she was going to say she loved it on TV and I had no shipping department.

I like to do a movie, to be on it 8, 10 weeks. It evolves as you're working on it. Little things come to you every day. It's a slow process, and when you have to pack it into a short period of time, which you do for television, the experience is not one that I cherish. So if it's going to be television, it's really got to be the right thing.

It is hard to get good actors who also do television, ads and films. Theatre requires six weeks of rehearsal for a play.

We shot on location in our very first weeks, in our very first shows. I would like to go on location again, Hawaii would be good!! But normally, we tape five days a week in the studio starting at about 8:00 a.m. and continuing until about 8:00 p.m.

The entire season, the show had never been aired for more than three weeks. You can't get an audience that way. They would never promo the show for the next week.

I have a trainer that I box with. Luckily, on ER, they'll tell me if I have a shirtless scene coming up and I'll have a few weeks to power it out.

I felt for a while with the GH appearances, they were kind of using me as a media trick, bringing me on for three or four weeks, saying I was back on the show, but not really writing for me. And then I would be gone. I just didn't like that anymore. I guess it was me putting my foot down.

Celebrity has lost its value - all you have to do is go on a reality TV show for six weeks and everybody knows your name.

I honestly think I could sit down and write a show tonight that the critics would love, and I know it would be canceled within four weeks. I know what the critics love. We write and produce for people, not for critics.

I probably make more money in a year on 'Newhart' than 70 percent of your working top-name stars. Some weeks I just have six lines, but it doesn't bother me.

On TV, you never know where it's going. They may even lie to you about where it's going. You never really know because the scripts come in every couple of weeks or so.

On stage, you rehearse for five weeks, and it goes out to 300 people. In 'EastEnders,' you get ten minutes to rehearse, and seven million people watch it!

I've been asked to do 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!' and I do get asked to do all sorts of things like that - but I don't want to put my career on hold. I'd have to take three weeks off to do something like that. Maybe it's something I'd think about after it's all ended.