Paul F. Tompkins Quotes

Audiences are so much more sophisticated than they've ever been. They expect a lot more. I don't think because it's an hour of your Thursday night rather than an hour and a half of your weekend that you should be gypped at all in quality.

Television is a golden goose that lays scrambled eggs; and it is futile and probably fatal to beat it for not laying caviar. Anyway, more people like scrambled eggs than caviar.

I like TV. It all depends what it is.

I barely watch TV apart from the news. Most of it is rubbish. There's all this reality nonsense and dross. I think there's a market for a well-produced, well-written melodrama like 'Dallas.' It's pure entertainment.

I think it's really important to have good quality drama on TV.

I think NBC got a little reluctant to get behind single-camera shows after 'Scrubs' didn't do what they thought it was going to do following 'Friends.'

No actor can refuse a combination of a good story, a Balaji production, and the show being aired on Star Plus.

Generally, I am losing faith in telly, as we do have good dramas but not as many as there should be.

I think cable television is wobbling and I think people aren't going to forget what happened - because you had a situation where one of the candidates was hated, not just disagreed with, hated. You can't have that. If you hate somebody, I've got to step aside or I need tell the audience look, I hate this person. You know I'm not going to give you an objective view of them. But they didn't do that about Donald Trump.

The roles for women on television have historically always been stronger and that, I would say, is still true. The question is commerce. That's probably where there's a block for a lot of people, the commerce behind it. Where is the audience? And it's so clear to me that there is a huge audience for female-driven projects. People still seem to think it's a fluke when it happens. That's one of the hurdles that's still left to be jumped over.

There are so many shoot-'em-up, action, jingoistic TV shows and movies that are made every year. I think the final line is that Hollywood is populist.

I'm not really much of a genre guy. I think that audiences don't need that anymore where you just need a very specific genre. Audiences are very sophisticated, and as long as it's fun, it's okay and entertaining.

To understand this whole area, you have to stop thinking like a viewer and start thinking like a network programming exec.

We're spending, on average, 27 minutes a day cooking and about four minutes cleaning up, so basically about a half hour. Any one of TV shows takes twice as long to watch as that, which I think is very interesting because the main excuse people give for not cooking is they don't have time to cook, but somehow they're finding time to watch other people cook or eat on TV.

A lot of things that people think are risky, I don't think are risky. I don't get all that. I think what was really risky for network television was to let cable television to take the summers.

In recent years we've seen an explosion of creative programming, and I think it represents a third golden age of television because the creators have more control over the story. The audience doesn't care about the platform. They care about the content.

The TV season is a year-long thing now, and the networks are starting to look at it that way, thanks to cable, satellites, and competition.

I think the Harry Potter movies are proof that audiences love that stuff. They love the idea of magical objects and they like learning the rules of those objects and what they do.

I think you know, to not open your mind to television is silly because there's so much good work happening on television.

Now things on TV are every bit as good or better than what you find in movie theatres.

To me, television is one of the most exciting things going on right now, as far as content goes. Some of these shows that are on television are better than any of the movies out there.

What I want to do is make things that I think people want to watch. I'm a film fan, so I think I'm in touch with other film fans and that they might want to watch stuff. The other reason I really don't care is because no matter what you do in life, no matter what you wear, or what you say, people are going to like it or they're not. And that is all. Everything, down to the socks I chose today - people are going to like them or they're not and there's nothing you can do about that.

I used to think I preferred getting old to the alternative, but now I'm not sure. Sometimes the momotony of bingo and sing-alongs and ancient dusty people parked in the hallway in wheelchairs makes me long for death. Particularly when I rememver that I'm one of the ancient dusty people, filed away like some worthless tchotchke.

When we started publishing, you had to be better than good. You had to be excellent. But as long as people are reading, I don't care what they're reading.

God is giving a plan I think to me that is not really a plan. The problem is that I think the plan that the Lord would have us follow is hard for people to understand. Because of my track record with you who have been here for a long time. Because of my track record with you, I beg of you to help me get this message out, and I beg of you to pray for clarity on my part.