Tony Verna Quotes

ESPN is a very anchor-driven network, which I love.

The better the coverage, the more discriminating the viewer.

Having been in football all my life as a player and a coach and having been on the sideline, I think the closer we can get to bringing people what it's like standing and watching the game on the sideline, with a better view, would be the perfect situation for television football.

I do think that people get really emotionally involved in the TV shows that they love and I think that is fantastic. Of course they are going to have opinions. The other thing is that people project onto their television shows. They see a character and layer on many traits that are actually their own or their idea of what that character is.

I knew I wanted to work in television because some friends of mine, when I went to high school - their fathers worked for, as a matter of fact, for NBC Sports at the time.

ESPN is a very, very good operation, and it's a gold mine. It's an even bigger gold mine than Fox News.

It's important to me what the viewers think.

When I tell people that I get interviewed five or six times more than I will interview players or coaches leading up to the game that comes as a surprise. That's part of it and it just goes with being part of a Super Bowl broadcast team. I enjoy it.

I love travelling to the games and doing them pitchside with Gabby Logan.

Being from Canada, we never had, like, the basketball games live on TV.

[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.

I was never a 'homer', a broadcaster who cheers the home team. Some fans don't like that. But my job wasn't to cheer. My job was to broadcast the game.

In August of 1921, one of the great American combinations was unveiled—even better than the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This fortuitous new blend was radio and baseball.

Television is a runaway train that you have to get on for nine months of the year. But at the same time, it has a wonderful immediacy.

My dad talked a good game. [I'm as a] child got only the World Series on the radio.

Television, for me, is a medium that I'm probably always going to be attached to, one way or another.

But the audience is right. They're always, always right. You hear directors complain that the advertising was lousy, the distribution is no good, the date was wrong to open the film. I don't believe that. The audience is never wrong. Never.

I visit Fox News every now and again, and it's nice, because the Eye of Mordor is above the building.

You don't get lower ratings playing the villain on reality TV.

Wars might come and go, but the seven o'clock news lives forever.

When you put yourself out there as an expert and the people you are trying to attract are people who want to do the very show you are doing, guys standing around, sitting around arguing with each other over sports, if you make a mistake that lights up like a flare in the middle of the night. You've just got to correct that or else they're going to say, 'Well, why do these dopes have that show? I can go out there and be just as good as them.'

The worst thing you can do is end up with a network show on cable or end up with a cable show on network.

At CBS, I’m in your house. I’m mindful of that. When I do standup, you’re in my home and I can say what I want to.

CNN? Oh, that's that network with Larry King, who, like the Son of Sam, is a native of Brooklyn. Used to be owned by Ted Turner, who, like the Cincinnati Strangler, is a native of Cincinnati. Now part of Time Warner, founded by the Warner Brothers, the oldest of whom, Harry Warner, like many Auschwitz guards, was a native of Poland.

What would happen to the Weather Channel's ratings if all the sudden people weren't scared anymore?"