I think cable TV in the United States is amazing right now. It's reinvented television, really. What's going on in the States with some of these cable shows like 'Breaking Bad' and 'Mad Men' is amazing stuff.
There was a time in the 1930s when magazine writers could actually make a good living. 'The Saturday Evening Post' and 'Collier's' both had three stories in each issue. These were usually entertaining, and people really went for them. But then television came along, and now of course, information technology... the new way of killing time.
But obviously as television began, it so undercut movies that he was trying to think of a way to combine seeing these special things, and the fact that people were just captivated by the magic box.
In 1970, television ate my family. The Andy Warhol prophecy of 15 minutes of fame for any and everyone blew up on our doorstep.
When I started, TV was regarded as something that wasn't as great as film or theatre or radio, but it has proved to have far greater powers than those.
The Simpsons was pretty experimental at the time, but it attracted a lot of sitcom writers that felt confined by the limitations of live-action sitcoms in the '80s.
I think that Apple has revolutionized every other consumer industry; why not television? The complexity of the experience of using the television gets more and more complicated. So it seems exactly the sort of problem that if anyone is going to change the experience of what the first principles are, it is going to be Apple.
In 1948, television was introduced, and millions and millions of people lead larval, low-awareness, warehoused lives mainlining an electronic drug straight into their brains.
TV has changed everything.
I call the '70s the "golden age of television"; in the early '70s there were sensationally good shows.
I believe that cinema died on the 31 September 1983 when the zapper, or the remote control, was introduced into the living rooms of the world.
Over the years, TV has gotten so much better, especially with the advent of cable. The bar has been raised. I think HBO really set the standard with 'The Sopranos,' and then on mainstream TV, shows like 'Lost' broke amazing ground.
For years everyone looked toward the demise of radio when television came along. Before that, they thought talking movies might eliminate radio as well. But radio just keeps getting stronger.
It's how the '70s were for movies, the 2000s are for TV. I think it's a phenomenal time for TV and to be involved in it.
If you had told me in the Seventies and Eighties that TV would be as edgy or edgier than most films, and more intelligently written than most films, I wouldn't have believed it. There's great stuff out there.
There was a day when doing TV was like, oh my God, the end of your career. Now it's just like, we all want to do TV; we all want to do great TV.
We firmly believe the future of television is online, and Hulu has recognized the value of quality long-form series.
'Wiseguy' for its time was good. It was really good. And it holds up still. But a lot of the restraints have been taken off now.
It's the digital era. What makes it exciting is that it's both the Golden Age of television and the Wild West of television. Something is happening now that's unprecedented, and we know that we're a part of it. What could be more exciting or better than that? You can't lose because you're on the pony and you're staking the claim.
The whole cable-TV original programming just changed the nature of television.
I think people are going to places that they weren't able to with television before, and I think Netflix really paved the way for that. With freedom comes better content, and with better content comes great actors and a bigger audience. I think that has just snowballed into a movement for making really great TV.
Without 'Twin Peaks,' there would have been no 'Northern Exposure,' 'Picket Fences,' 'X-Files' or 'Alias.' It started the movement of 'off-center' television.
When I was growing up, there were just the three channels, so as a nation we all sat down to the same meal at the end of the day. Now there's been this explosion.
I think Netflix is responsible for what will become how we view television.
I think the amazing thing about 'Twin Peaks' was that it completely changed television from that point forward.
