TV History Quotes

I grew up watching CNN, and my memory of CNN is James Earl Jones saying, 'This is CNN.'

'Fresh Off the Boat' will be syndicated. This show and these characters will live forever in the pantheon of classic family sitcoms.

My first job with a network was 'General Hospital,' and that was ABC. I feel like I have so much history with them, that they treat their shows well and they have good, discerning taste.

When reality television really hit, I just had a backlash towards reality. It seemed like a cheap way to make a product. And then when music reality and 'Idol hit,' I just didn't watch it, it seemed novelty. And of course the story of 'Idol,' this is one of the greatest stories in television history.

Nowadays, people always say, how come he's doing such young shows? But they never mention The Mod Squad. I was very proud of that show. It's the first time an African-American guy kissed a white girl.

'Cheers' was great. They paired me up with Shelley Long on this tiny bar set for the final audition. That was my first really big one, and we just clicked instantly - I still think I got the part because of Shelley.

When Joan Rivers walked through the curtain on 'The Tonight Show,' nobody in my house was allowed to utter a sound. Her gait was full of pep and purpose and her voice unmatched.

St. Elsewhere was certainly a great show.

When I was a kid growing up, there might be 10 shows on the air that had been on for ten seasons or eleven seasons. 'Gunsmoke' ran for over twenty years.

Pro wrestling has always been ingrained into American culture. It was one of the first things that was ever on television, so everybody watched it. Countless people tell me, 'I got into wrestling because my grandfather watched it.' It was always there.

People magazine had been around for a short period of time, but nobody had thought about putting entertainment news on a nightly basis on television.

I did a pilot for Fox years ago called 'Faceless,' with Sean Bean. I always thought it was such a cool show because it was really raw. I thought we were pushing it. This was back at a time before there was the 'cable standard.'

'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' was the best television, the best cast, the best-written television show ever.

If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.

So-called reality TV, which dominates British channels, is destroying what made it cherishable to me and lots of others in the first place. I loved Alan Clarke, Ken Loach and Alan Bleasdale's work. In fact the first TV dramas I ever saw were 'Screen Twos' produced by David Thompson, who also produced a lot of Alan Clarke.

People forget that in the early '70s, Saturday was the most-watched night of television of the week. It was where you found 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' and 'All in the Family.'

Reality TV started becoming big when I was in college, around 2002. I remember everyone kept saying, 'Man, you guys should do reality.' And I was always like, 'I don't know.'

I'm in my 10th generation of TV critic now.

When I was a kid, we didn't have a TV until the late '50s, but I can remember watching Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Steve McQueen, and 'Gunsmoke.'

I had started calling her Lucy shortly after we met; I didn't like the name Lucille. That's how our television show was called I Love Lucy, not Lucille.

Situation comedy on television has thrived for years on 'canned' laughter, grafted by gaglines by technicians using records of guffawing audiences that have been dead for years.

Pointless' - I think it's probably the greatest daytime TV show that has ever existed.

I do think there was an age of television back in the '90s that was a little bit more wholesome.

You know, when it was done originally, they always had to fight to keep it going at the end of each season. Now, The Odd Couple has become part of our language and culture.

When I was growing up we didn't have cable. All that came on Saturday morning was Notre Dame football, and I was there every time to watch it.