David Gerrold Quotes

When we started in television, there was that magic box in the corner of the room, and 'Oh my gosh - look what it's doing!'

'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' occurred in real time and was a benign and bewitching example of pure television.

And we do talk a lot about my past and my impression of things and how it relates to what we're doing now. The Brady Bunch, in its heyday, was really the genesis of when TV started to become the force that it is today.

For better or worse, in the 21st century, reality shows are the variety show.

You know as well as I do that the family sitcom was the stalwart of TV for God knows how many decades.

There was a time... when people didn't go out of their house on Tuesday night at eight o'clock because Milton Berle was on.

I started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the evening they showed important plays, opera or Shakespeare's tragedies.

I loved Lucille Ball growing up.

Watching television in those days was not the same experience as it is today. After years of listening to radio, we found the black-and-white images mesmerizing.

I was always a fan of the old-style comics. I loved vaudeville. I loved Milton Berle, Dick Shawn, Phyllis Diller, Don Rickles, Charlie Callas, all those guys. Hilarious. I love the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies, and Abbott & Costello. My television influences were 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' 'Benny Hill,' and 'Hee Haw.'

The original Dean Martin Comedy Hour handed me some hysterical sketches. I've got highlights on tons of these variety shows, given to me by their great writers. I'd love to be doing all that again.

I grew up on variety shows. I'm from the '60s and '70s. I loved watching Flip Wilson. I loved watching Sid Caesar's 'Your Show of Shows,' 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' I love all of those variety shows.

When my generation, those early days of television - I know I've been thinking about this lately - my two flashes of me as a little boy. One, I'm standing in front of the radio freaking out that Nat King Cole's singing 'Lady of Spain', just this stuff coming out of the radio, and Guy Williams singing 'Wild Horses' coming out of the radio.

We had - there was 'Laverne and Shirley,' but 'Happy Days' started off the evening, and then, you know, we just sort of swam along with them.

I watched a lot of old movies, and a lot of Carol Burnett and Andy Kaufman.

I loved TV, and I watched anything with music - 'Hee Haw,' 'Happy Days,' anything like that. So I loved the Monkees.

I used to watch a lot of Nick at Nite as a kid, and it would play the original 'Saturday Night Live,' 'The Carol Burnett Show,' and 'Laugh-In.'

It was a period when live TV was just starting and getting popular and they took it seriously too. Not so much like TV now. They did Hemingway and Faulkner - and they’re all wonderful artists and it just was very creative at that time.

American radio from the '30s through the '60s was just fabulous. There was such a diversity.

I want to see better quality of comedy on TV.

The writing was vastly superior to almost anything that was on the air. It's one of the great shows. It was an important show... 'St. Elsewhere' was one of the great shows in the history of television.

Happy Days,' 'Laverne & Shirley,' 'Mork & Mindy' - it takes no effort at all to conjure, physically, the profound excitement I felt watching these shows in prime time. I remember sitting on the floor, too close to the TV, rapt.

We're going to continue to focus on family comedies because that is something that our audience really comes to ABC for. But at the same time, we're going to push the boundaries of what a family comedy actually means.

His name was Fred Rogers. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a time, and his parents, because they were wealthy, had bought something new for the corner room of their big redbrick house. It was a television.

I love TV and am happy doing TV shows.