Bill Buford Quotes

In the U.S., HBO is a very aggressive service.

HBO has 28 million subscribers, small stuff compared to TBS, which can be seen in 88 million homes.

Television in the '80s was very limited. There was no Food Network.

I did the first HBO special ever in 1975 at Haverford College. Cable was new then: HBO was a Time-Life entity, with maybe 400,000 or 500,000 subscribers and maybe 50 employees.

When I was growing up we didn't have cable. All that came on Saturday morning was Notre Dame football, and I was there every time to watch it.

Now we have food networks and everything. CNN was the beginning of all of that.

[The Weather Channel] is the most watched cable channel in America. I'll repeat that. It is the most watched cable channel in America. They were worried about the terrorists immobilizing us, and a portion of our countrymen watch weather. 'Kay, you don't get any more immobile than that... unless you're in a goddamn coma. That means you're saying, "I'd go to the window, but it's too far." If you want to know what the weather is you go to a window and stick your hand out and if you want to know what the temperature is you drive by a bank.

What's great about cable is that the ceiling of expectation is lowered because fewer people have to tune in for it to be a success. You don't need 23 million people a week like you do in broadcast.

HBO is the original subscription video-on-demand company. We were repurposing first-run movies, and then we added original programming.

I'm interested in all forms of content, including Internet and gaming. On the TV side, cable has sparked a renaissance of the medium and that will continue for storytellers.

The great thing about working in cable is that, since the season is truncated - we only do 12 shows - the writers are more at ease in terms of mapping out the trajectory of the story and the characters.

I like cable: you only work four months out of the year and have the other eight months to do movies if you want.

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

I was definitely a child of the '80s. Cable TV was new. I watched a ton of movies and a ton of TV. HBO would show the same movies over and over again, so I'd watch the same movies over and over again.

I love 'Real Housewives.' I love 'Love & Hip Hop.' I love HGTV. I love a good Guy Fieri marathon on Food Network. I like comfort TV.

I love Channel 4 and Clerkenwell Films, they aren't afraid to take risks.

The name of my first comedy album was 'Raised by Cable.' Coming up and watching all of these weird movies on different channels was such an influence on me and an influence on how I do standup. It informs everything I do.

I know enough to know every time a cable show beats a broadcast show... you've attracted people outside the scope of what you normally reach.

When you look at what you get in a cable subscription, it is a spectacular value. For $70 or $80 a month is what it would cost a family of four to go to the movies one time.

I had CNN on in my hotel room every day while we were filming the pilot for 'The Originals.'

There seems to be a vulnerability at the networks in late night. They are losing more and more audience, particularly young viewers who are now looking at cable television. 'Tonight' is an old show. CBS has reruns, and having a public affairs series like 'Nightline' on ABC is a big mistake.

I have been the hugest HBO fan since I was 3, watching programming that I had no business watching as a child.

It's ridiculous that we let broadcast and cable shows compete against each other at the Emmys. They are not the same animal.

Our news is Fox News. It's a cable channel and has nothing to do, frankly, with the entertainment area of the company. It's the model of how this company was launched, and there are a lot of independent stations and Fox O&Os who have hugely successful news that our programming is the lead-in for.

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