Television Show Development Quotes

The thing to keep in mind is that's how I started long before MTV and Twitter and Facebook. I studied at broadcasting school so I could learn how to shoot and edit videos, and tried to create my own television show so we could see through these wacky visions we had of funny bits we wanted to shoot.

[Television] is a great medium for writers, because there's just no time for a studio to interfere very long. You write it, you shoot it; it's on TV.

American television is very much created by the writers, just the volume of it. The writers are so key. You're just trying to do something that serves that script. And in general, film isn't all about the script, really.

'Brisco' was the first show I created, and of course, at the time I had no idea what a special experience it was because I didn't have a frame of reference. After it was over I was like, 'Damn. Shoot. That was something special.' I'm still upset that it got cancelled.

I know Chuck Lorre personally, and am familiar with his work going back to 'Roseanne' and 'Cybil.'

I've had friends who did pilots, and I'd say, 'What happened to that?' and they'd say, 'It didn't go,' and it literally goes into a void of nothingness because no one gets to see it. All that money and talent and time put into it.

Michael Price is the showrunner so nobody works harder than him.

I don't profess to be Shonda Rhimes by any stretch of the imagination, or Dick Wolf. They're icons. I'm a filmmaker.

It was a very difficult time, 1984. 'Happy Days' ended. I said, 'There's no way I can be a producer.' My attorney said, 'You'll learn.' The first thing we sold was the 'MacGyver' television series. We shot 139 episodes between 1985 and 1992.

I've loved every minute I've spent in television. And I've had much more failure, as traditionally measured, than success in television. I've done four shows, and only one of them was the 'West Wing.'

Having done television for almost 20 years now, a pilot is kind of like a rough draft. It's like bringing people into your ultrasound and hooking up to the monitor and going, "Isn't my baby beautiful?" "Yeah. I can only see the outline of it, but it looks like it might be."

I would never, ever, ever, ever say I have regretted the 'A-Team,' 'Magnum PI' or 'Murder She Wrote' or any of the others I did - and if you mention a television series, I'm sure I had a hand in it.

Emily Kapnek's such a great writer, producer, creator.

My first venture into TV was a half-hour sitcom on Fox called 'Roc.'

I think Billy Ray has a lot of great stories up his sleeve. I've heard a lot of his plans for the show, should it go forward, and I think there's a lot in store for people, if it's given a chance.

Making a musical television show was always the ultimate dream. But I really didn't think it would ever happen. Because who's going to make a musical television show?

All the people I looked up to - Roseanne, Tim Allen, and Jerry Seinfeld - were stand-up comedians who used humor to get TV shows. I'm on TV now, and I'm working towards getting my own show.

I'm not a Larry David. I don't have a 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and a 'Seinfeld' in me.

Greg Berlanti, David Nutter, Andrew Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim are the people I wanted to work with. They're smart, they're funny, they're cool, they're edgy.

When I started out, I was a television writer, and we wrote a television show that was on live every week. And you didn't have the luxury of coming in and waiting to be inspired. You came in and you had to write. And you wrote, because it was going to be live on the air. So I can do that.

I watch 'Sons of Anarchy' and 'Game of Thrones' and 'The Walking Dead' and think, 'I want to create that kind of television!'

When we developed the 'Seinfeld' show, we took a bet on Jerry Seinfeld, who was not a household name. But Jerry had a voice. He was appearing on 'Late Night', on 'The Tonight Show', had some commercials out there, his voice of observational comedy, looking at the world around him, that voice was really starting to come into its own.

'Bonfire' was kicking around for a very long time. It was an idea I wanted to explore for a television show. Then I was given this weird gift of time when 'Jessica Jones' finished season one. I got really organized and just kind of banged it out, but it took a long time. It took two years to even have a first draft.