Ratings Pressure Quotes

Television is much more difficult because at every moment the network can force you to change things based on their belief about what would make it popular. You're in a constant debate with a gun at your head, and the gun is cancellation. So it's hard to win the arguments.

When you're doing a network show in the States, you're just a slave to the ratings. There's so much money invested that there's this pervasive atmosphere of fear and anxiety. Every morning after an episode of your show airs, everyone is fixated on the numbers to try and determine how the show did.

It's the ratings, stupid, don't you know? They've got us putting more fuzz and wuzz on the air, cop-show stuff.

It felt really nice to not have anybody talking about numbers, and no one is talking about ratings. From my experience, it felt like there was one person running the ship and it felt like there was space for Jenji to be at the helm. That's not what I've experienced in television before. It felt more akin to an interesting movie, where there were producers who were really excited by the work and wanted to make space for the director's vision to be sort of shared with an audience. It felt more cohesive.

I truly feel like my job is to make the shows. That's what I'm paid to do. It's somebody else's job to market them, and it's somebody else's job to pay attention to the ratings, because if I paid attention to all that, my head would explode.

It seems to me we are losing our way in an effort to get the ratings.

Chris Wallace is probably the most of an exception because his program, 'Fox News Sunday,' also airs on Fox broadcast stations. So he doesn't feel as many of the same ratings pressures to please the right wing audience versus all the rest of the programs.

When you're with a big TV channel, there's a sense of having to behave in a certain way in order to get audience figures.

I'm apparently attracted to things that are on the edge of what America really wants to watch: 'Six Feet Under,' 'Sports Night,' 'Dirty Sexy Money,' and 'Parenthood' were always struggling in the ratings. It was kind of heartbreaking not knowing if we get to come back every season.