Quotes About Television

I hate the idea that I have to represent any particular section of society; I just write good telly, that's all.

It's not listed in the Bible, but my spiritual gift, my specific calling from God, is to be a television talk-show host.

A rabid sports fan is one that boos a TV set

A sports bar is a way to take a bar and fill it with even more annoying people than usual.

I love football and it's the sport I would really like to play. I've said on national television here that I would really love to play for one of our football clubs when I finished my tennis career.

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

I don't watch a lot of television. Sports and news, that's it.

But when Stigler was put in front of the TV cameras, lights blazing, and asked about supply-side economics, the iconoclastic economist opined that "it's a gimmick, or, if you wish, a slogan." Ouch. That didn't help Ronald Reagan. I presume it didn't help George Stigler either, who was quickly hustled off stage.

Our epoch has been give many nicknames--the Age of Anxiety, the Atomic Age, the Space Age. It might, with equally good reason, be called the Age of Television Addiction, the Age of Soap Opera, the Age of the Disk Jockey.

Whatever one says on the air is bound to be misunderstood; for people take from the heard or printed discourse that which they are predisposed to hear or read, not what is there- all that TV can do is to increase the number of misunderstanders by many thousandfold – and at the same time to increase the range of misunderstanding by providing no objective text to which the voluntarily ignorant can be made to refer.

A TV show is its characters. When you describe a TV show, you're describing the characters and the situation they're in.

We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television - gray, lined, thoughtful.

She'll be very appreciative," said the superior officer. "She watches him whenever he's on television. She really is a huge fan." Ulf closed his eyes. He saw the professor being pursued by a group of his fans, the huge ones struggling to keep up with the thinner, more lithe fans, dropping exhausted and disappointed

Nobody felt very much ashamed of anything anymore, Isabel thought. You could do what you liked and then speak about it at great length on a confessional television show and nobody would bat an eyelid. And while that revealed a healthier attitude when it came to dealing with things that were better unconcealed, or with things that should not involve shame at all, it also meant that one of the main reasons for social restraint had been removed.

You know, Granna, going around saying how you don't watch TV... It's not even pretentious anymore... it's just plain out of it.

Along with too many people and too much money have come the ills that now afflict America, Europe, Japan alike. And while I can accept the crowds, the autos, the television, I cannot accept the diminution of humanity that follows—the sensationalism, the cynicism, the brutality. Though I am not interested in the humane disciplines, not interested in humanity itself, I am interested in people, some of them, and I believe in them, a few of them.

Every time you walk down the street people are screaming, 'You're fired!'

Today, watching television often means fighting, violence and foul language - and that's just deciding who gets to hold the remote control.

If television's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up.

MTV is the lava lamp of the 1980's.

Rock music carried the Woodstock Nation's banner while television represented much of what the bands and their audience stood against. More than a wasteland, TV was the idiot engine of the Establishment, electronic opiate of the consumerist masses, and thus a favorite object of ridicule and contempt.

One of Lorne's pet theories had always been that Saturday Night was not so much in the business of television as it was in the business of rock and roll. The audience, the sensibility, was the same, he said, the show had simply picked up where rock in the sixties left off.

Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi report that 2 out of 5 adults and 7 out of 10 children say that they watch too much TV. Also, viewers often feel that they can't stop watching TV. Furthermore, while people report increased good moods after activities such as sports and hobbies, they report being in the same mood or in a worse mood after watching TV

Given the findings that television viewers enjoy violent and nonviolent programs equally (or enjoy nonviolent more than violent), how is it that media executives still follow the mantra "violence sells"? The answer: because violence brings a larger viewership