Richard Dean Anderson Quotes

The budget on cable television is dramatically less than network television.

'Mad Men' was one of the first shows where Netflix was the first syndication window.

In the old days you could do re-runs, and people would have to watch that because there's nothing else. But with Netflix and Amazon, Hulu, Xbox, as well as premium and regular cable, it's very hard to do that.

I'd always thought that 'NYPD Blue' really would open those doors. While I think it created a much broader template for cable, I don't think it really did that much for network television.

It's absolutely surprising to me how well 'The State' has held up as far as people liking it and having fond memories of it, considering it's a sketch show. I think one of the things that helped its mystique is, it never came out on DVD or video or whatever.

One of the things that's driving films in a particular direction is that the after market value of them is dropping really fast and in many segments of it, not just DVDs. Pay television is dropping.

The CW likes to hold on to its shows.

At Current, television is all we do - that's our business. We don't have amusement parks I have to worry about, we don't have environmental cases against us, we don't have a series of outdoor-advertising companies.

The Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act expires at the end of this year. Thus, we must act quickly to ensure our constituents continue to receive the services they enjoy.

What's amazing is that the Web enables you to build a kind of channel that wouldn't have made sense for cable, in the same way cable enabled you to build content that wouldn't have made sense for broadcast. You couldn't have done CNN with the broadcast networks; you couldn't have done MTV with the broadcast networks.

In Spain there were no TV rights for Formula One.

I did a pilot for Fox years ago called 'Faceless,' with Sean Bean. I always thought it was such a cool show because it was really raw. I thought we were pushing it. This was back at a time before there was the 'cable standard.'

Obviously sex and nudity sells, but that's what people go to cable for but that's not going to happen on network daytime television... so I think it really is always going to come down to story. How do you make a story interesting enough so people will tune in? That's always going to be it.

All three networks have always had a morning show but now cable of course is taking some of that audience away and a variety of other things, probably the Internet as well.

As far as post-'SNL' career, whatever kind of comes my way that looks interesting, I'll do it, you know?

The network shows have this very commercial voice that you have to adhere to, and the cable shows, it's kind of like winning the lottery. The independent film world is a world you can actually get to. You can get the under-a-million-dollar film by finding a good cast and financing.

Pay-TV companies that built their businesses on the backs of local and network broadcast signals should pay a fair price for access to that high-value programming.

With the rise of cable, network is clearly floundering because the characters on cable are far more fascinating than they are on network. Network television is trying to figure it out. Network television really relies on story rather than character, and cable relies on character.

I have no problem at all going back and forth between cable and network.

Broadcasting for advertisers is still the best game in town, and they know it. Look, I admire a lot of the shows on cable. I think 'Mad Men' is wonderful. I think 'Breaking Bad' is wonderful. But let's remember they're about one-tenth the audience of NCIS.

I'd like to do a little bit more adventurous TV. Maybe Showtime or HBO or just a little bit edgier. But I would go back to NBC, CBS, whatever.

I have a project at HBO and one at the Family Channel coming that are being looked at. Aside from that I am not doing much more than playing golf and some skiing.

With drama, especially, it seems like the bigger the budgets and the edgier the characters, the more interesting they are. We're very lucky because 'Modern Family' wouldn't fit on cable: they'd want us to push it more and be edgier and turn it into something that it's not.

For me, I think there's a lot more room in cable television to tell broader stories. NBC and the networks, they're all very mainstream, and they're a little more conservative in how they approach storytelling.

Because I'm seen on 'Oz', a lot of the urban cats in the city are like, 'Yo, I thought you'd be rolling in a Mercedes?' And I'm just like, 'Not at all!' This is cable money. There is a big difference between that and a network. But still I can't complain. It's better than doing a 9 to 5 any day.