Jimmy Kimmel Quotes

You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings.

The financing of all TV shows is dictated by finding an audience between 18 and 49. I have now passed beyond 49, so probably, I am no longer a desirable commodity for TV. And I am at peace with that; that's fine.

I think 'Y&R's future is contingent upon the ratings. Obviously, none of the soaps are kept alive for the sake of loyalty. It's all about ratings. It's show business. Period.

I can't create magic, where all my serials will have the highest ratings.

As the ratings go up, so does advertising revenue.

We always had one eye on doing Saturday night TV even when we were back doing mornings. That's where we wanted to go to get a bigger audience.

Every single television product has the ambition to chase ratings, every one of them. Many have other ambitions, for many, ratings are not #1. But my experience on TV, and on the entertainment side, has been entirely ratings-based. When I look at TV I look at ratings. And I never second guess ratings. Never.

TV always wants more people to be watching.

I really like the way Fox handles their shows.

Life goes on, and I'm moving on to the next thing, but I hope the soaps that are still running will thrive. They have millions of loyal viewers.

TV has grown so much. It is like a powerhouse medium.

Obviously sex and nudity sells, but that's what people go to cable for but that's not going to happen on network daytime television... so I think it really is always going to come down to story. How do you make a story interesting enough so people will tune in? That's always going to be it.

In television you go in with this operating system that it is a crapshoot.

The entire season, the show had never been aired for more than three weeks. You can't get an audience that way. They would never promo the show for the next week.

Broadcasting for advertisers is still the best game in town, and they know it. Look, I admire a lot of the shows on cable. I think 'Mad Men' is wonderful. I think 'Breaking Bad' is wonderful. But let's remember they're about one-tenth the audience of NCIS.

When you go to commercial, you want something to call the viewers back, and if you don't have a decent act out, the audience probably won't be there in the numbers you want when the show returns.

I pay a lot of attention to box office because I understand it. TV ratings? I don't know how to interpret them, since I'm new to TV, so I'm just going to wait for somebody to tell me.

A hit show takes Hollywood magic indeed, but it also takes a lot of math and science, plus the study of polls and trends to make and sell a TV show.

Reality is a genre that seems to be here to stay. I don't know how many of the new shows will last, but the more competition you have, the harder that pie is to slice up.

Rarely in broadcasting history has so much been riding on the whimsical flick of a few thousand wrists.

Everybody knows things are not the same. The people running the TV end of a major vertically integrated company know how much money a successful show can make.

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

They don't have a lot of appointment viewing. What television depends on, one thing 'Larry King Live' was - whether you liked it, didn't like it - it was appointment viewing.

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

We're not doing brain surgery. We're not saving lives... Even if you're doing Shakespeare, it's still entertainment. We're just entertaining people. We're just doing the stuff that comes on in between the ads.