Television Programming Quotes & Sayings

No matter how much programming improves, however, media savants tend to see the medium living out numbered days. It's feared that the Internet will do to TV what TV did to the movies in the 1950s. But instead of panicking, the networks are finding ways to co-opt the Web. — Tom Shales

Amazon has included me in an opportunity to provide top-shelf television-style programming live on the world's computer screens. To hold forth with the industry's very best actors, directors, musicians, authors - I'm thrilled to be on the cutting edge of this. — Bill Maher

Kids don't watch when they are stimulated and look away when they are bored. They watch when they understand and look away when they are confused. If you are in the business of educational television, this is a critical difference. It means if you want to know whether-and what-kids are learning from a TV show, all you have to do is to notice what they are watching. And if you want to know what kids aren't learning, all you have to do is notice what they aren't watching. Preschoolers are so sophisticated in their viewing behavior that you can determine the stickiness of children's programming by simple observation. — Malcolm Gladwell

I think there's a lot of really good programming on television. What I've noticed, through the years of being a professional writer, is the watering down process of story. You have to market to the masses and not offend anybody. — Lauren Iungerich

Tween programming is so retro that the shows even have theme songs, something the quest for more commercial time drove out of prime-time television years ago. — Jonathan Dee

We still have a tradition certainly in English television; it's faded a bit in the last five years, but we still have a tradition where the important thing is the quality and the challenging nature of the programming. — Rowan Atkinson

In the end, the fate of children depends on our ability to use technology constructively and carefully. The connection of childrenand technology is not simply a matter of seat belts, safe toys, safe air, water and food, additive-free baby foods, or improved television programming. These are all important issues, but to stop here is to forget that today's children will soon be adults. Technological decisions made today will determine, perhaps irrevocably, the kind of physical and social world we bequeath them and the kind of people they become. — Kenneth Keniston

The amount of educational programming on television today is simply desensitizing. The only reason left to go to school is to see gun violence. — Bauvard

I guess probably in my time in politics, it continued to be affirmed to me that the African-American community, despite being subscription television's most valuable customers, they are very underserved by cable and satellite television programming options. — J. C. Watts

Television programming is the number one topic on Twitter, and dozens of start-ups in the social space are linking second-screen experiences. People no longer need to sit on the same couch to enjoy a show together. — Jay Samit

We live in a world where finding fault in others seems to be the favorite blood sport. It has long been the basis of political campaign strategy. It is the theme of much television programming across the world. It sells newspapers. Whenever we meet anyone, our first, almost unconscious reaction may be to look for imperfections. — Henry B. Eyring

To understand this whole area, you have to stop thinking like a viewer and start thinking like a network programming exec. — J. Michael Straczynski

[T]he Federal Communications Commission should reestablish two principles that formerly served this country well: the public service requirement and the fairness doctrine. Every television and radio station should once again be required to devote a meaningful percentage of its programming to public service broadcasting. The public, after all, owns the airwaves through which signals are broadcast, and the rights-of-way in which cables are strung. And every television and radio station should once again have to follow the fairness doctrine: those with opposing views should have the right to respond to viewpoints expressed on the station. — Bernie Sanders

Network television has been attempting to lure viewers for years with its low-interest programming only to have those viewers discover later that their brains are bankrupt. — P. J. O'Rourke

The television industry claims they are only reflecting society with their programming and have no influence on behavior. If that is the case then why do businesses spend millions on TV ads that have no influence? — Randall Wright

We often seem to be swimming through such a miasma of sexual violence - in advertising, television programming, heavy metal, rap, films, and worst of all, in the home - that even First Amendment absolutists sometimes daydream about how nice it would be to have government-as-nanny just outlaw all this effluent. — Molly Ivins

During the coming days, the wealth of America kept astonishing me. The television had programming from morning till night. I had never been in an elevator before and when I pressed a button in the elevator and the elevator "started moving, I felt powerful that it had to obey me. In our shiny brass mailbox in the lobby, we received ads on colored paper. In India colored paper could be sold to the recycler for more money than newsprint. The sliding glass doors of our apartment building would open when we approached. Each time this happened, I felt that we had been mistaken for somebody important. — Akhil Sharma

Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things ... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound. — Dorothy H Cohen

Every parent in America has the total power to control all television programming that is dispatched to their home today. — Jack Valenti

When The Muppet Show ended, we all sat around and said, what kind of television show would we like to do. We felt the need these days are for some quality children's programming. — Jim Henson

I remember growing up with television, from the time it was just a test pattern, with maybe a little bit of programming once in a while. — Francis Ford Coppola

Every time someone does a Western movie, people flock to it. It's like, we're continually programming to people who are least likely to watch us. People in Nebraska aren't watching things on the computer, they're watching television. Why aren't we programming things for them? We only program things that appeal to New York and Los Angeles and in many ways spit on the rest of the country. — Edward Allen Bernero

I believe that movies are fast becoming antique and dinosauric as a medium. Film is a medium for the over-40s and television has gone the same way. If you're going to look towards the new generation, then of course you're going to have to be a lot more random, spontaneous, irreverent and provocative with your programming. — Malcolm McLaren

Government departments are arranged hierarchically; those at the top are used to issuing orders and expect them to be carried out by their subordinates right down the line. Minow assumed that a cultural institution like television has a similar hierarchical structure, as if television executives could requisition more creative programming the way a bureaucrat orders new pencils or department stationery. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Why was Simpson called "OJ" except in some kind of branding or headlinese that said, "Look, this guy is sweet, wholseome, and nourishing (and 'Orenthal' is just too fancy)? You can have him for breakfast." (And "Sweetness" and "Sweet" are nicknames often given to black men.) Is "OJ" that far away from Jell-O? Wasn't that extended advertising campaign a way of saying you can trust our pudding because Bill Cosby likes it - sweet, wholesome, and pretty? — David Thomson

The problem with our society is that our values aren't in the right place. There's an awful lot of bleeding and naked bodies on prime-time networks, but not nearly enough cable television on public programming. — Bauvard

In recent years we've seen an explosion of creative programming, and I think it represents a third golden age of television because the creators have more control over the story. The audience doesn't care about the platform. They care about the content. — Kevin Spacey

The battle against good and evil is raging now! Look at your television programming and movie advertisements presenting the occult ... the demonic ... the satanic ... the practice of witchcraft and sorcery in popular books ... the open hostility toward Christianity and the revival of anti-Semitism. The fight is on for the hearts and minds of our children in ours homes, our schools, our universities, and our society. — John Hagee

I do think that the days of gathering around a television set that functions merely as a television set, to receive a live broadcast of some networked programming, those days are probably numbered. — Jason Alexander

We met financial expectations for the quarter in a difficult economic environment. We also signed a two-year programming agreement with Home & Garden Television to launch two new cable television series, and launched the Martha Stewart Kids magazine These initiatives provide future revenue and earnings growth for the brand and build long-term value for shareholders. — Martha Stewart

I don't think there is enough educational programming, but unfortunately, television is built around advertising and those shows don't get the big ratings. — Will McDonough

The whole cable-TV original programming just changed the nature of television. — Anson Mount

Don't tell television, but there is some superior programming being made on the Interwebz. — Chris Hardwick

The spectacle of the shooting suggest an event out of time, as if the killing of black people with white-supremacist justification interrupts anything other than regular television programming. But Dylan Storm Roof did not create himself from nothing. He as grown up with the rhetoric and orientation of racism. — Jesmyn Ward

The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit 'comedians' and create very cheap television programming. — Marc Maron

Television viewers, they've been around a long time. They've been watching this thing now for 50 years. I mean, they know exactly what's happening when it comes to television programming. You can't put anything over on them anymore. — Maury Povich

Violence is interesting. This is a great obstacle to world peace and also to more thoughtful television programming. — P. J. O'Rourke

We need imagination in programming, not sterility; creativity, not imitation; experimentation, not conformity; excellence, not mediocrity. Television is filled with creative, imaginative people. You must strive to set them free. — Newton N. Minow

Television's escapist programming naturally continues to endorse living beyond one's means as the time-tested American Way and rarely depicts families or individuals wracked by the pressures and miseries that come with excess. — Tom Shales

Television has certain imperatives that CNN had the luxury of ignoring for a long period of time. CNN could take the position that the news would be the star, because in most of the programming day, they were the only all-news operation on the air. — Brit Hume

We make programming decisions on a day-to-day basis. We sell advertising on a day-to-day basis. This is the way networks operate. This is the way all television stations operate. This is the way most businesses operate when you have a number of affiliates or a number of franchises. It's the way the business operates. — Mark E. Hyman