161 Television Quotes

Nobody and nothing beats The Simpsons. Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python.

When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.

The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.

Television is becoming a collage - there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.

Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What is wrong with you?

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy.

Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders.

If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.

The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.

This is The Tonight Show. I can't tell you too much about it, other than the fact that this program is going to go on forever.

It gets kinda monotonous, but that's television. There are plus sides and down sides. The positive side is that you have steady work for nine months of the year for however many years your show is on TV.

I haven't had a TV in 10 years, and I really don't miss it. 'Cause it's always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television.

Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that offers whiter teeth and fresher breath.

'Television is not vulgar because people are vulgar; it is vulgar because people are similar in their prurient interests and sharply differentiated in their civilized concerns.'

For tens of millions of people television has become habit-forming, brain-softening, taste-degrading.

It was hard for me to do the show (All American Girl) because a lot of people didn't even understand the concept of Asian-American. I was on a morning show, and the host said, 'Awright, Margaret, we're changing over to an ABC affiliate! So why don't you tell our viewers in your native language that we're making that transition?' So I looked at the camera and said, 'Um, they're changing over to an ABC affiliate.'

'Television, the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation...'

Radio is the theater of the mind; television is the theater of the mindless.

I still believe that television is the most powerful form of communication on Earth -- I just hate what is being done with it.

I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television - of that I am quite sure.

Do not be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their networks. They all have better taste. All are responsible to stockholders, and in my experience all are honorable men. But they must schedule what they can sell in the public market.

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. 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.

If the use of leisure time is confined to looking at TV for a few extra hours every day, we will deteriorate as a people. (5 November 1958)

It would be ridiculous for me to say anything negative regarding blacks having an equal opportunity on TV. After all, I was number one in the ratings four times last year and twice this season. What could be more damn equal than that? If they get any more equal, I don't want it.

Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable expectations and eventual disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around the room with royal-blue chickens.

I hate television. I hate it as much as I hate peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.

I think television's become a downright dangerous thing. It has no moral barometer whatsoever. If you want to talk about something that is all about money, just watch the television. It's damn dangerous. TV does not care about you or what happens to you. It's downright bad for your health now, and that's not a far-out concept. I think watching the TV news is bad for you. It is bad for your physical health and your mental health. The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit.

Have you been watching American Idol? They have Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul judging the singing. Paula Abdul?! Getting Paula Abdul to judge a singing contest is like getting Christopher Reeve to judge a dance contest!

If you read a lot of books, you're considered well-read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well-viewed.

TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I've ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.

The network called up and said 'We piggybacked you on the deal for another show,' I'm like 'Okay, so what you're saying to my writers is that they weren't picked up when they thought they were and now that they are it was because of something that has nothing to do with them. Okay. Great. Stop calling'.

[Jo from The Facts of Life] was such a lesbian. Wasn't she the biggest lesbian? I used to watch that show, like, 'Oh, she gonna fuck Blair!'

[quoting her producer] 'The network is concerned. They're concerned about the fullness of your face. They think you're really overweight, and you're going to have to do something about it.' ...I didn't know what to say to that. I always thought I was decent looking; I had no idea that I was a giant face taking over America! HERE COMES THE FACE!!

So they cancelled our show, and gave the time slot to Drew Carey, because he's so skinny.

TV bosses rely on revelations about the private lives of their stars to hook an audience.

Television has thrown in the towel. It rarely even pays lip service to its once brave mission to educate and illuminate. Instead it gives us what we want, in much the same vein as the doctors who handed out Valium like Smarties to desperate Sixties housewives.

See, I thought that Jay has had too many high class, very hoity-toity guests on this week. And I wanted to bring everything down a notch or two.

All the network cares about is how many times you say 'Fuck' on the air.

I grew up as a TV baby, with my TV babysitter, up until I was about 10. Then my mother just ripped the thing out of the wall and put it in a closet, and we didn't watch it. I have that sort of ability to become addicted to it. And I'm just so fascinated by it once I turn it on, I'm not even that aware what's there. I'm just watching it. So I don't ever turn it on. I get my news from the newspaper. I don't want to watch the Hollywood news product on TV... There's no other piece of furniture in my home I'd stare at for three hours at a time, so I try not to do it to the TV.

Gaiman has also been tributed by having a race of alien beings named after him on the television and book series 'Babylon 5.' 'The Gaim' are a race of beings with long, fly-like faces remniscent of the mask worn by Gaiman's 'Sandman' character.

It's like I can never watch myself on TV unless I have to do some editing before a show comes out. It's like hearing your voice back on a tape recorder and I'm sure you know how horrible that is. I always look for the worst things in myself - criticising my hair and stuff. I'm very self-conscious about it all.

It wasn't really a chat show, it was a magazine show. I looked at it as a summer job. As long as no one makes me interview a celeb again, I'll be happy. It wasn't what I signed up for but, of course, nowadays everyone likes celebs. I'm pretty bored of them, though. I wasn't interested and couldn't be bothered to pretend I was.

TV executives think that the programs with the highest ratings are what TV viewers want, rather than what they settle for.

Now that is ridiculous. I mean, who would watch a show about a teen psychic?

[Television is] a really dreadful influence on all of us. Don't ever look at local television news again. It's all crap. There's no news, there's no information. It's negative, negative, negative. You look at that, and you think the world is coming to an end.

If the making of the series had one repeated phrase that still echoes in my head, it was not heard on the soundtrack; the inexorable voice of Lorna Pegram, the producer, muttering: 'It's a clever argument, Bob dear, but what are we supposed to be looking at?'

Penny Smith: Spitting... it would never happen on GMTV. Simon Amstell: Nothing happens on GMTV.

Jon Stewart: Thank you very much, it's a pleasure to be here tonight.

Presenting the Outstanding Reality-Competition Program Award with Jon Stewart.

Stewart: We are here to honor achievement in [reality television]...

He's able to create a universe where something surreal happens on [The Colbert Report] that seems ordinary, and all of a sudden the absurd appears not mundane but expected, organic... So he can have a conversation with Richard Holbrooke and Willie Nelson and it all makes perfect sense and yet it couldn't appear anywhere else without appearing burlesque. Somehow he has managed to create a fake world that has impacted and found standing in the real world.

The show is much more emotional now. It's a journey, but it is still about clothes, too. It's been fascinating to see how looking good and having faith in your appearance makes you into a sexier person, which makes you attractive to your partner again. We come in as complete strangers and get to know them all extremely well. It was a privilege for Trinny and I to have these people feel they could open up to us. It was very humbling, too.

This series is more campaigning. It is more journalistic, but still hugely entertaining. It's a show we feel more proud of than anything we've done to date.

I believe in the future of television! I wish to be ready to go up right along with it. Therefore I'm planning to get in on the ground floor. In fact I've already made the right connections and all that remains is for the industry itself to get under way! Full steam - Knowledge - Zzzzzp! Money - Zzzzzp! - Power!

At one point Portillo was polishing his jackboots and planning the next advance. And the next thing is he shows up as a TV presenter. It is rather like Pol Pot presenting the Teletubbies.

Trinny Woodall, one of the upper-crusty and scathingly blunt hosts of What Not to Wear, a hugely popular fashion makeover show on the BBC, does not mince words.

Trinny and Susannah are what they are - there's no fakery.

I have more latitude in television than I ever had before. If I had an idea for something, I had to then go and try to sell it to the distributors, to the theater men, and everyone else. With television, I just get my gang together and we say we think that will be something interesting - let's do it. And I go direct to that public.

Our contribution to television is entertainment, created without deviation from our conception of what entertainment should be.

There is a big, exciting period ahead of us, and I say it's television. Television is an open sesame to many things. I don't have to worry about going out and selling the theater man. I mean, I go right to the audience. I have a chance by getting there twenty-six times every year. I have a chance to have a pretty good batting average and not have to get in a rut.

We'll be back with even more HoT ToPiCs (while waving her hands)

My sister Jacqueline is 12, and Idol is her favorite show. Every week she'd be so nervous for me, even though she loved watching me. She was actually having panic attacks and my family didn't know why, then they realized it was all about the show. She would get so worked up! Now she's breathing better (laughs).

from a Feasting on Asphalt vignette on YouTube:

'Clay, I think this is the third pop idol, or American idol have done, if you include the english one. Probably one of the best performance I've ever heard through the entire competition. - Simon Cowell on 'To Love Somebody' -

My own home, we do it in our on home. I know about that. Anybody that has a VCR, talk to them, and I ask you to use your own commonsense... If you had the power to sit on a playback of a recording and you could wipe out the commercials or not wipe out the commercials, what would you do? ... We all do it. But when you do it, you strip away the reason for free television. ... As far as I am concerned, I am going to continue taping because the plaintiffs have said they aren't going to do anything to me. I am not committing any crime. They know that.

Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica

I stood in front of a hundred and one critics at a critic's convention, ... and a critic asked me, 'Miss Cho, isn't it true that your management asked you to lose weight to play the part of yourself in your own TV show?' Gail [the producer] grabbed the mike from me and said, 'There is no truth in that whatsoever.' I... was so... hungry.

Diana Gould, who had a televised confrontation with Mrs Thatcher in 1983

The movie stars six teenage characters who have been marketed on TV and in toy stores. They have names, but no discernible personalities. None of them ever says anything more interesting than 'You guys!' As teenagers, they are skilled in-line skaters and karate fighters, but they don't get their real powers until they turn into faceless clones in Power Rangers uniforms with plastic masks and helmets. Is that the message? Faceless conformity is the way to success? Certainly the Rangers are not individuals in or out of uniform, but I wonder if they don't represent a triumph of merchandising over creativity. Children's heroes have traditionally been individualistic and eccentric. The Rangers are not, properly speaking, even characters. They are color-coded products...Paging through the movie's press kit, I came across this quote attributed to Amy Jo Johnson, who plays Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger: ' `Mighty Morphin Power RangersT: The Movie' is a mix between Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz. ' I wonder if Amy Jo actually said 'TM' when she was delivering that wonderfully fresh and spontaneous quote, which is so much more involved than anything she says in the movie. More to the point, I wonder if she has ever seen 'Star Wars' or 'The Wizard of Oz.'

Pointless but intense excitement holds us in TV dramas. We hear threatening music. A killer with a gun steals into the bedroom of a sleeping woman. More subliminal sounds of danger, pointlessly ominous. The woman wakes and runs into the kitchen for a knife. The cops are on the case. We watch as the criminal is pursued through night streets; shots, a death; a body falls from a roof. Then time is up, another drama begins. Now we are in a church. No, we are in a lecture hall; no again - a drawer opens in a morgue. A woman is looking for her kidnapped child. Then that ends, and we are on the veld with zebras and giraffes. Then with Lenin at a mass meeting. And suddenly we flash away to a cooking school; we are shown how to stuff a turkey. Next the Berlin Wall comes down. Or flags are burning. Or a panel is worrying about the rug crisis. More and more public themes, with less and less personal consciousness. Clearly, personal consciousness is shrinking.

Welcome to the View child

They wanna enable Marc Cherry and the coven of gays that infest the offices of ABC.

If I get my name on a Desperate Housewives show, it says, 'Doug Dannger, comma, gay.'

We ain't like no show on the KY-Jelly!

From Jeopardy...

My guess is that mainstream channels will play a leading role for another decade, and probably far longer. Some content may be fragmented into itsy-bitsy bites delivered via mobiles, but programmes as we know them will remain central.

For some of us it now embodies a mildly prurient voyeurism, but those who stay tuned claim it offers real insights into people's lives.

C4's prime marketing concept is the appeal to a 16-34 audience. This has some strange consequences-a series explaining Islam, for example, is entrusted to Peaches Geldof. There's an obsession with adolescent transgression and sex. Gordon Ramsay is hired to make a series called The F Word; Designer Vaginas is followed by The World's Biggest Penis. Earlier this autumn, unless I dreamed it, we were subject to a 'wank week.'

The Colbert Report

Strangers With Candy

Here's the problem with TV. All people on TV are TV people, and TV people are dumber than the dumbest guys you went to high school with, they just dress better.

One of television's great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs.

Seeing a murder on television can : help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.

I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.

It's a half-hour weekly show that I will host, entitled Let's Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus. It's a fairly self-explanatory concept: Each week we let the hounds of hell loose and chase that no-talent cracker asshole across the globe until I catch him by that fruity ponytail, pull him to his knees, and put a shotgun in his mouth like a big black cock of death [boom] and we'll be back in '95 with Let's Hunt and Kill Michael Bolton.

Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.

I can't watch TV longer than 5 minutes without praying for nuclear holocaust.

'You goin' to hell, boy!' Yeah well, at least that's where all the good music's gonna be. Hey, just 'cause I'm up on the stage with the lights on me doesn't mean you all have to stare [audience laughs, then one person applauds]. Thank you, my seal. Later on : me and Barney the seal will be doing a little balancing act. He'll be balancing me over a bed of razorblades! Yeeaaah! It's not quite American Gladiators, but we're here to try! Man, American Gladiators. I tell you, the world's gonna end with someone watching that on the TV, man. That's mankind's ultimate fucking evolutionary achievement, isn't it? These pituary retards rassling each other : in Vegas!