Dick Cavett Quotes

Reality TV has totally destroyed soap operas. They're gone. They used to be the biggest thing in the world - they're gone.

You know what shows today are missing? Stars.

It's funny: We have so many shows and so many channels and so many things to occupy people as entertainment, especially with a show like 'Scandal,' which is clearly a hit, with a lot of heat around it - but every once in a while, people will say, 'What are you doing?' and I'll say 'Scandal,' and they'll have no idea what I'm talking about.

I believe people will be watching their TV screens for a long time and that TV channels have a long-term life.

I am old enough to have grown up glued to a screen offering only three alternatives, each of which was an all-powerful national network that seemed permanently ensconced in the entertainment stratosphere.

But reality television is here to stay.

Five years on TV is a really, really long time.

When I was a kid growing up, there might be 10 shows on the air that had been on for ten seasons or eleven seasons. 'Gunsmoke' ran for over twenty years.

In our first season we had a 22 rating. Today Seinfeld, a hit show, gets a 15. Lost in Space actually had a bigger audience than Star Trek got at that time.

When 'Sex and the City' aired its first season, people didn't know about HBO as a place for original series. People weren't saying, 'Oh I've got to watch 'Sex and the City'!' They found it later. In some ways, it helped change what people thought of HBO.

There's not a lot of light on television.

Television has changed. Some feels like good old-fashioned TV, and some of it feels more filmic and more natural and more nuanced. I don't think there's any clear line any longer between film and TV.

People forget that in the early '70s, Saturday was the most-watched night of television of the week. It was where you found 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' and 'All in the Family.'

I like to watch all those shows that shouldn't be on the air - reality shows.

My goal was always to take a talk show to the network. I never wanted to be on MSNBC.

I don't know if TV is where I see my format working.

We have got offered some shows in America, but really dopey shows - like reality shows.

TV isn't like films; you can't rest on your laurels.

I'd love to do a talk show. But I'm too busy for it. It's just too much work.

At a very basic level, I think television exists for game shows, and I think it always will.

TV, in particular cable channels, has assumed the role of independent film.

I don't really know much about TV and what people want to see. I'm not that well-informed about it.

And the consumer doesn't care. They don't watch networks, they watch TV shows.

Writers since at least the heyday of Gore Vidal have bemoaned their audience's defection to other forms of entertainment.

Film, schmilm. I'm telling you, television is so much harder.