David Frum Quotes

Radio, newspapers, they were normal parts of my life. In those days, you had to go somewhere to watch television and leave something to see it.

When I was little, there were three channels.

When I was growing up, there were just the three channels, so as a nation we all sat down to the same meal at the end of the day. Now there's been this explosion.

Traditional broadcast media seems old-fashioned and vague to me. When I watch television news, I'm aware of what skilled journalists they are, but I find it hard because of the corny way they present it.

We're in this transition period of figuring out how to deal with all the new technology that is out there, but television still proves to be the granddaddy of them all.

The environment doesn't change that radically. You are still going to go home at night and NBC is going to be there, ABC and CBS will still be there.

There was a time when idealistic folksingers such as myself believed that Reality TV was a programming vogue that would peak and recede, leaving only its hardiest show-offs. Instead, it has metastasized like toxic mold, filling every nook and opening new crannies.

Printing made us all readers. Xeroxing made us all publishers. Television made us all viewers. Digitization makes us all broadcasters.

I remember in the '70s or the early '80s, there were a lot of viewpoints represented on TV. And I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened in the '90s.

Network TV is such a difficult, competitive landscape.

It's been more than a decade since 'The Real World: Philadelphia' aired. I've grown up. My views have evolved, as has the media landscape.

TV has changed everything.

My definition of media? 'Anything which owns attention.' This could be a game or, perhaps, a platform. Ironically, the media tends to associate media with publishing - digital or otherwise - which, in turn, is too narrow a way to consider not only the media but also the reality of the competitive landscape and media-focused innovation.

When I look back at the Nineties, I realise there wasn't very much TV I wanted to do.

Going from three TV channels to broadcast TV to cable to talk radio; obviously the online explosion has changed things.

It's not the day in which I grew up, long time ago, where we had three news networks. No cable, no social media, no internet. Where what you see is what you got. We had basically straight journalism. We don't have that anymore.

The more I watched cable, the more I realized the value of newspapers.

I think TV is evolving, but on the other hand, there is a presence of regressive shows happening, but I choose to ignore that because I am part of a very different and challenging soap.

This whole idea of too much TV, I think is really gross. Because I feel like it's mostly white men who are saying it. And it's like, 'Yeah, man, there's too much TV for you, but by nature of there being so much TV, there are other voices being represented.' Isn't that a wonderful thing?

Most newspaper companies still have their heads in the sand, but other media companies are aggressive.

Starting with radio, starting with television, we got used to this idea of stuff being free as long as you just watch a few ads.

The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen and it can't compete with the computer screen I don't think. And now we have all those screens so against all those screens I think the book can't measure up.

There is a middlebrow snobbery in America that praises everything on public television and disdains everything on the commercial networks as a blight.

They have an amazing proliferation of TV channels now: The all-cartoon channel, the 24-hour-science fiction channel. Of course, to make room for these they got rid of the Literacy Channel and the What's Left of Civilization Channel.

With TV, the most important thing is just to get people to turn it on.