David Walton Quotes

The dominant theory coming out of Hollywood is that peoples' attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and they need more stimulation.

We live in a time of short attention spans and long stories. The short attention spans are seen as inevitable, the consequence of living our lives in thrall to flickering streams of information. The long stories are the surprise, as is the persistence of the audience for them.

I think the way I sort of approach it is, you just sort of keep your head down and focus on what you are doing and making shows that people will want to see on Thursday night.

We are increasingly offered a diet in which sensation, not story, is king.

People have really long attention spans, and they love complicated plots. TV series are giving the audience what they want.

Sci-fi fans really have a commitment to the characters even as much as the actors do. There's a synergy between making television and who gets to watch it.

Pilots are so hard because you have to introduce all these characters, you have to hook an audience, and an audience has such a smaller attention span than maybe they used to have.

Most TV shows don't reward you for paying attention.

There is a lot of talk in publishing these days that we need to become more like the Internet: We need to make books for short attention spans with bells and whistles - books, in short, that are as much like 'Angry Birds' as possible. But I think that's a terrible idea.

TV creates good viewership because it generates interest by being entertaining.

I'm a product of the 1970s, so I have a short attention span. You know, I grew up on cartoons and half-hour shows. So the stories that I'm interested in grab my attention very quickly, and they have to keep my attention.

I don't really think about film or television or going directly to the internet. I just think about doing something that people are going to get excited about.

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

I try to enjoy a movie or a television programme just like anybody else. I'd love to be emerged into the story and watch it, but if you work a lot as an actor, in any aspect of the industry, things might arise in a programme that somebody might miss, whereas it might catch your attention.

The newspapers and magazines, the theaters and the social reform movements, are more and more made for a public which looks only to be entertained and which has lost the power of sustained attention.

We live in a time where there's a required instant gratification from audiences. That's a fun challenge in terms of putting together this teaser, picking and choosing how much you're actually giving away.

Market size, particularly when you're dealing with major media markets, has an impact in terms of gathering attention.

The reality is, 'Game of Thrones' has been a successful show for HBO, which has put us in a position to come and pitch another show and get them excited about it. And that's what helped get us here.

All we think about is how to keep the audience engaged, and normally we're big on plot because that's the easy way to do it.

It's amazing what social media has done for entertainment.

Television shows are not like cars or operating systems, and they are not best made by engineers or coders in the same assembly line manner as consumer products which need to be of uniform size, shape, and quality.

I've learned that you never have to think about how to make money. You need only to focus on what you think is going to be a good movie or what's a movie I'd like to watch as the audience.

TV is a level playing field, and you're competing for eyeballs.

There will always be storytelling, whether it's on the big silver screen, or it's your television or your iPhone or whatever, people will keep on telling stories.

Television is growing. It is a huge market for great content.