Gabriel Mann Quotes

You really can't turn on TLC without seeing us.

I don't want to sound pretentious, but you could hire a bunch of monkeys to be on a TV show, and if it's successful, then everything's perfect and everybody's happy.

The average person in Hollywood just assumes that if you're on a hit TV show, then that's the first thing you've ever done.

A show that no one thought had a chance has just finished its fifth year: Charmed. I think it's tougher for the younger networks, so I think they have a little more patience for the sake of the show. But who knows?

Trying to get the talk show, looking back on it, we had to beg a lot of station managers to pick up the show because people thought no one would watch it because I'm openly gay.

There's one thing about TV that I really think is true. If you find the right cast and the right writers, and you got some chemistry going, even if a show is taking a little while to find an audience, if you keep it there, that audience will find it. Because that's what happened with 'Cheers.'

'Homeland' was a sensation out of the gate in 2011, gathering acclaim and sweeping up Emmys, and the reason such shows are so overrated is because, unlike with other forms of popular art, success in TV is measured almost purely by how obsessive we become.

Life goes on, and I'm moving on to the next thing, but I hope the soaps that are still running will thrive. They have millions of loyal viewers.

Television can be a very fickle place.

In television you go in with this operating system that it is a crapshoot.

I think there's really no rhyme or reason as to what keeps a show on air. Surely it's a numbers game, but some of the best shows get canceled, and some shows where you don't totally understand why they're on the air stay on for 15 or 20 years.

I think being a movie star is about whether an audience can watch you and care about you.

I can tell if someone is talking to me because I'm on 'Friends' or cause they just think I'm neat. You know I don't think I've ever spent more than five or ten minutes with somebody who was ogling me because they recognized me from the show.

I feel like the high-concept shows that have some kind of gimmick tend not to be the hit classic shows of all time.

I know there are people, if I go into a market or a city for the first time, there are people that are there that just want to see the famous person, or the guy from 'Dumb and Dumber' or whatever movie they liked. And that's fine, it gets them in the door, but then it's my job to give them something different.

Television itself is an intimate medium. It's in your house. You're visiting with these people... Not everybody's going to like it, just like not everybody likes everybody on the playground. I mean, that's life - especially if your job is to just go out there and be yourself.

Nobody really knows what makes a hit TV show.

The secret of doing well on TV is to understand that it's not too important. A lot of people watching doesn't change anything.

I think 'Y&R's future is contingent upon the ratings. Obviously, none of the soaps are kept alive for the sake of loyalty. It's all about ratings. It's show business. Period.

With TV, you're in people's houses every night. And you have so much time to tell stories. I don't know why I didn't do it before.

Good television people have a sense of what television people relate to.

Rarely in broadcasting history has so much been riding on the whimsical flick of a few thousand wrists.

A lot of factors go into the longevity of a show.

'The Apprentice' was a huge success, and Trump was a huge television star who managed to trick people into thinking he was the guy from the show.

Working in TV, we're in people's living rooms, and everyone has a different relationship to it than with movies. You're there every week; they feel like they know you. They call you by name, and it trips you up.