Robert Greenblatt Quotes

When I was a kid there were a very select few channels - programmes had to have more of a large appeal and they just didn't offer very much. Now you have a situation where the television world has expanded and there's hundreds of channels.

I'd like to do a little bit more adventurous TV. Maybe Showtime or HBO or just a little bit edgier. But I would go back to NBC, CBS, whatever.

You have Showtime, you have AMC, you have all of these, you know, incredible networks that are now bringing forth their product without the handcuffs, if you will, of trying to sell soap to the entire country.

When I did 'Ugly Betty' it was very similar to working on 'Mad Men' - great group of people in their own little world. But I don't really see a lot of difference. Of course, on the cable shows, you can tackle subjects and be more specific, because networks have to appeal to the masses, but that's constantly changing and evolving.

Within the U.S., you could have argued that most people who watch 'Mad Men' would watch 'House of Cards.' But the viewing is much more on par with the large-scale mainstream things like 'The Walking Dead.' It was much younger than we thought.

I think its going to be continually tougher on the big networks as more cable channels do really interesting television. The big networks have a choice to make: Do we try to be all things to all people and get the shows that will deliver 20 million viewers a week? Are we the McDonald's of television? Or are we going to try to be more specific?

I like dark subject matter. I'm not sure what that means about me!

Television, cable, features are always out there.

I'm a big fan of unflinching drama and bold drama. If you shy away from dark subject matters, there's only certain places for TV drama to go. If there are shows that can break through that and be brave, those are the shows that I personally enjoy watching. I try and do work that I would watch.

There's a difference between a pop star and an artist. Pop stars have to be perfect all the time; an artist is allowed, on occasion, to suck. And I put myself in that category because I sometimes suck. I'm not trying to please the masses. It's not going to happen, so I don't try.

The experience of being on a show that is very much in the center of popular culture is exciting. You really feel like you're reaching people.

Most of the time people are aiming so low on television. They're trying to reach that common denominator, especially on network television.

Well, the stuff that has become more commercial doesn't have any edge.

With drama, especially, it seems like the bigger the budgets and the edgier the characters, the more interesting they are. We're very lucky because 'Modern Family' wouldn't fit on cable: they'd want us to push it more and be edgier and turn it into something that it's not.

I think feature film can be quite conservative, because you have to now get audiences to come out, and it's quite a hard thing to do. Of course, television can be conservative too.

I do think that the days of gathering around a television set that functions merely as a television set, to receive a live broadcast of some networked programming, those days are probably numbered.

I think 'Shameless' is more of an everyman's show, whereas as great as I think 'Girls' is, it's got a smaller audience.

Obviously, the Sixties was a time when everyone wanted to experiment, and then everything became very formulated and corporate, so artists tended to get pushed into a kind of pattern. Now, I think that has continued with the emergence of televised talent shows like 'X Factor.'

The pop culture tends to go to the lowest denominator, so cinema is in a weird place, due to its mass nature. It's diluted down to very little: simple stories and simple politics.

For network TV, you obviously have to appeal to a wide viewership.

'Parks and Rec' is definitely a mainstream show - the group that watches it on TV on Thursday night is small, but the audience that watches it on things like Hulu, Netflix, and Tivo is enormous.

A lot of films seem to go to the lowest common denominator.

If pop culture is a pool, it never hurts to dive into the deep end once in a while.

Anybody that doesn't like Netflix, that's like saying you hate Santa Claus.

I am a commercial hero, and I will never leave that genre. And having an image of a mass hero, I will spoil the whole script in the wake of being too experimental.