 As soon as you become complacent your show gets canceled. |
| If the scripts are not good, I'll tell somebody, 'This isn't good.' |
| When it went on the air, the sales department hated it. It was the highest advertising pullout show in the history of NBC. At the early focus groups, people were saying, 'Who are these people? Why should we watch them? |
| I try to just communicate what I want done as clearly and simply as possible. |
| I would say that if you really wished to be a working member of the community, don't go out on strike because then there's no work and no potential of work. |
| It's show business. No show, no business. |
| Advertising is the art of the tiny. You have to tell a complete a story and deliver a complete message in a very encapsulated form. It disciplines you to cut away extraneous information. |
| Their argument is that most shows are losers, which is true, but it's also disingenuous to say, 'We are not going to take the risk unless it is totally covered by the few successful shows that are out there.' |
| The ad revenues still go up because nothing dependably delivers the eyeballs that successful series do. |
| People recognize certain things, like 'D' means 'this dialogue stinks.' We're dealing with shows that are written here, shot in New York and posted back here. Accurate communication is a necessity. |
| There are other options out there, after all, like read a book, go on the Internet, rent a movie. |
| I don't think you can really make television based on what you think audiences want. You can only make stories that you like, because you have to watch it so many times. |
| The heart and soul of network programming is series programming, the weekly repetition of characters you like having in your house. |
| It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim. |
| Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off. |
| TIVO executives stand up and say, 'Well, we're not getting rid of commercials, but we are letting them fast forward, because people like commercials, and if they see one that they like they stop and watch it.' I mean, please. |
| You have this disturbing reality that there are a lot of people who would rather say, 'I'm on strike' than 'I'm unemployed.' And those are the people who vote for strikes. |
| The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks. |
| I hardly see myself as a futurist. |
| And the consumer doesn't care. They don't watch networks, they watch TV shows. |
