Graham Yost Quotes

A lot of people always look back at 'Twin Peaks' and say that was the start of this explosion we've had in good television drama, but we did it in a time when there were still only three networks.

If there's something decent going in television, the mediums now are kind of equal. Television has become much higher quality.

I am here to tell you, TV is not dead. Rather, it is constantly evolving as we are. My view is that we are in the next Golden Age of content. If AOL, Google, Netflix, Amazon, and Yahoo felt TV was dying, they would not be so eager to play in our sandbox. It is, after all, TV content that's driving their business.

It's how the '70s were for movies, the 2000s are for TV. I think it's a phenomenal time for TV and to be involved in it.

I think cable TV in the United States is amazing right now. It's reinvented television, really. What's going on in the States with some of these cable shows like 'Breaking Bad' and 'Mad Men' is amazing stuff.

If you had told me in the Seventies and Eighties that TV would be as edgy or edgier than most films, and more intelligently written than most films, I wouldn't have believed it. There's great stuff out there.

I'm very, very proud to have been at what I feel are two of the pivotal moments in this whole new Golden Era of television - one being 'The Sopranos' with HBO and now with Netflix expanding that whole HBO concept to the world and making it more of a global thing. It's been wonderful to witness that from those two vantage points.

With the advent of cable and such, you guys are calling it the golden age of TV in terms of the writing and stuff. But it's like different branches of a big tree that TV has become.

Television is better than it's ever been in history. A lot of stories are being pushed - because of how complicated they are to make - toward Netflix and other channels on cable.

People have always said since TV was invented what a cultural wasteland it is but I think it is the worst and the best. It is the golden age of television.

The good thing is that I really think that American television is in kind of a second golden age. Even though there's a lot of reality and all those contest shows, which aren't my kind of shows, the scripted stuff that's going on is so good right now because of basic cable. Everyone has stepped it up and realised that people like quality.

The whole cable-TV original programming just changed the nature of television.

When reality television really hit, I just had a backlash towards reality. It seemed like a cheap way to make a product. And then when music reality and 'Idol hit,' I just didn't watch it, it seemed novelty. And of course the story of 'Idol,' this is one of the greatest stories in television history.

In the early '90s, there was such a limited idea of what you could see on TV.

Television in the last few years has been where all the great writers are going. TV now is what indie film used to be.

The problem, when comparing contemporary television to television in 1974, is that TV has become not just bad but sad.

It's a very powerful medium now, and should be celebrated as such, because we have the greatest television in the world.

There's a lot of progress happening in TV. You have amazing shows like 'How to Get Away With Murder.' You have people like Shonda Rhimes, Lee Daniels with 'Empire,' and Jason Katims with 'Friday Night Lights' and 'Parenthood.' You have people behind the scenes writing complex women.

It feels as though, with all of these cable series or Internet shows or limited series events that are only 10 or 13 episodes... the quality is really rising.

I think HBO and a couple of the other cable channels in America are making some of the best television that's ever been made.

I call the '70s the "golden age of television"; in the early '70s there were sensationally good shows.

It was a period when live TV was just starting and getting popular and they took it seriously too. Not so much like TV now. They did Hemingway and Faulkner - and they’re all wonderful artists and it just was very creative at that time.

For the last five, 10 years, you're seeing the best things happen on television.

There used to be a huge snobbism between the film industry and the television industry. I produced and acted in my first - well way back - but the first thing that I produced and acted in was Sarah, Plan and Tall. And the only place to go at the time for really quality television was Hallmark Hall of Fame. And think how much television has changed since then.

If you had ever told me that the finest film work was going to be done on television, I wouldn't have believed it.