Ricky Schroder Quotes

As I slowly managed to take what I had learned into a transition from contestant to announcer and warm-up, I first had to prove myself on pilots. And as you know, many pilots are taped for each show that is lucky enough to breakthrough to being a series.

I have a new television show in the works, and that is all I can say right now.

Pilot season in L.A. is just this blood bath. They make so many pilots, and such a small percentage are picked up. And then if you are picked up, there are so many variables. You have to get a good time slot, and you have to get promoted. And then you have to thrive in that time slot.

I feel terrible for directors of TV because all the episodes have to look the same. They make a great series for five or six years, and then when it's canceled, they can't break out on their own.

I began directing episodes, which was a great light every couple of months. We never short-changed our audience, but it became something that you had to work at rather than something that was a pleasure.

From an actor's point of view, you never really like to hope that anything will go beyond the pilot. I'd always say to my agent every time I filmed a pilot, 'Great! Well, I'll see you at pilot season.'

There's definitely a wave of Brits doing great work on American television, and I wouldn't mind being one of them!

Now that I know what goes into making a pilot, keeping it on the air, and keeping your fans, I'm at a point now where I do a pilot and just hope for the best. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.

Anyone with a show on T.V. will tell you it's backbreaking work. And if you have a big personality, which I have, and you're a perfectionist, there's going to be head-butting.

There have been times - and not just on 'The Newsroom,' but on 'The West Wing,' 'Sports Night,' 'Studio 60'... - where it was hard to look the cast and crew in the eye, when I put a script on the table that I knew just wasn't good enough.

I finally achieved my dream by being a TV showrunner.

I would love to work with Pendleton Ward who created 'Adventure Time,' and I'm dying to work with Ryan Murphy. I'm obsessed with 'American Horror Story' and everything he does.

With network shows, writers can be so protective of every syllable.

As actors, if you get a pilot on HBO or on USA, your odds are good that it's going to get picked up.

For sure, without question, the writing is better on TV pound for pound than movies because the businesses have changed so much. So all the great writers would rather work for TV, and they do.

I've never worked in the U.K. television industry, but my guess it that it's a tough world for directors.

Most producers I've known were writers first, and writing is a vital part of any game show. You could easily argue that the writing is the key ingredient that makes 'Jeopardy!' so great.

I wrote a number of pieces in the year 1966 that were so bad that, although I'm a great collector of my own pieces, I have never collected them.

I think that if you're improvising on TV, it's a great way to help the dialogue between actors and writers.

In the TV world, we are seeing a lot more power going to the writer. I sense it is a writer's medium.

When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.

Before 'New Girl,' I had just been grinding in TV for a really long time. I had been testing for so many shows and not getting them. You don't know how difficult it is or how lucky you have to be - and I only say lucky because there are so many people out there - to get a show on the air and keep it going.

That's the hard part of television: When you walk into the network tests, you're signing away seven years of your life.

I don't want to carry a network show. I don't want to give up 10 months, working 17 hours a day, up at five in the morning.

Working on TV can be quite insular.