TV Scheduling Quotes

The TV season is a year-long thing now, and the networks are starting to look at it that way, thanks to cable, satellites, and competition.

When you're working on a television series, you only get a very short off-season. The scheduling of TV is relentless.

We had - there was 'Laverne and Shirley,' but 'Happy Days' started off the evening, and then, you know, we just sort of swam along with them.

Television is not an easy medium, as keeping the audience glued to the TV screens day after day is something which requires a lot of effort.

When it moved to Friday night it disappeared, when they find another show that can do what The Simpsons does, they will be delighted to do cancel The Simpsons.

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.

I'm amazed by just constantly - there's not a week that goes past where there's not someone in Ulan Bator or Rio De Janeiro suddenly says, 'Ooh, 'Downton' started this week.' You completely forget it's staggered across the world.

Fred Silverman, the head of ABC, he offered me a lot of comedy series but I told him I'd already been the best comedy series around, "The Odd Couple," and so when he saw that I did Quincy he called my agent and said, Jack turns me down? All my good series and he ends up playing an undertaker." And this was the HEAD of ABC series.

I tape over most of them with Corrie or Neighbours. Most of them are crap. They can f***ing make anyone look good. I signed Marco Boogers off a video. He was a good player but a nutter. They didn't show that on the video.

If you're on Thursday night at 8:30, because the history of that time slot has been so disastrous, there's a hell of a lot of numbers pressure.

The scheduling thing is really weird with TV shows. Certain projects haven't been able to work out because of the schedule, so some of it is out of your control. You don't have very many opportunities. There isn't much time, so you want to make sure you're going to be doing something that you really feel good about or that you're going to have a good creative experience doing. You're taking up vacation time from your job, so you want it to be meaningful.

Up until the time Turner Broadcasting bought Hanna-Barbera, it was essentially an independent studio whose planning cycle had to be nine months. You got a pickup in January, and you put it on the air in September. That's been the cycle.

In the summertime, it's always hard to introduce new series; everyone's ready for that in the fall.

When you fall into a midseason slot, you have the sort of blessing of not being on television while you shoot most of your season.

There seems to be a vulnerability at the networks in late night. They are losing more and more audience, particularly young viewers who are now looking at cable television. 'Tonight' is an old show. CBS has reruns, and having a public affairs series like 'Nightline' on ABC is a big mistake.

Cable shows do 13 episodes. I get that. I can wrap my head around 13 episodes. You make them all, you post them all, and then you get to air them. The network cycle is way more intense. There's more episodes.

What I learned, a little too late, was that the 'traditional' Martin Short target viewer weighs under 300 pounds. Unfortunately, I was on during daytime.

There's nothing worse than putting two similar shows back-to-back. Viewers don't want to watch one show and then sit through another half-hour of almost the same thing.

You know how trends go with television. Next year, the networks might not be open to taking risks.

If we had a perfect world, we can do 'Scandal' during the day and 'Murder' at night - that's the optimal thing.

I don't think anyone who runs a TV show would ever say to you, 'I have a grasp on running a TV show.' Maybe that's not true. Maybe there are people that do. I don't know.

Everyone hopes to get a fall slot, but I'm just happy to get on the air.

I've been writing so much. And what happens with TV is that they split [Taboo] into two blocks, so you get a director that does four and another director that does another four. You commit yourself to seven days a week, for 12 or 13 hour days for a long time. I couldn't really do that.

I think it's fun to have people see everything at once, and then I think certain shows are very well-suited to being on every week and being spread out over months.

With films, you are not so much on a schedule. TV is all about scheduling.