When we started with 'Big Brother' and created the reality genre, no one could ever foresee that there was so much space in the genre that it could deliver so many formats. There will be periods where there is not enough new stuff to keep the genre alive. But it will never die.
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.
I've known John Landgraf for 20 years. He said it perfectly. People will ask if I've seen X. My response has often been, 'Seen it? I've never heard of it.'
Television viewers, they've been around a long time. They've been watching this thing now for 50 years. I mean, they know exactly what's happening when it comes to television programming. You can't put anything over on them anymore.
I watch 'Electronic Boy' faithfully every week - not because I like the show but because I'm interested in where the smartest T.V. producers and directors are going, what direction they are headed in.
We pitched 'Sightseers' as a TV idea originally, and it was rejected because it was too dark. But then things like 'Dexter' came out, 'Breaking Bad'... There are so many sophisticated dramas now with comic elements to them.
After the success of 'Empire' and 'How to Get Away with Murder' and 'Scandal' and 'Power' and 'Black-ish', which all had characters that were genuine, authentic, and had the language of real people, I found myself coming into pilot season and every network just wanted to have their version of one of those shows.
I worked in television now for a few years. I think summer has become a really exciting time for television shows. And I think it's become a time for shows to distinguish themselves.
TV has taken a crazy turn, especially in the industry of food, where everything is either a competition show or a sort of reality show. We've lost the kind of shows that are, like, 'Here's how you do this,' like the old Julia Child shows.
In a business that's driven purely by economics, the fact that one or two unique shows happen to get on and reach a public for a brief time doesn't constitute a trend.
Back when we started this show, the hottest program on television was 'Keeping Up With the Gabors.'
I think the good thing about 'Take Me Out', which is kind of a compliment to us really, is that when it started doing well round about the second series and people started getting into it, all of a sudden every time you turned over a channel there's a new dating show on.
Personally, I don't get that whole reality show thing. It was much smaller, and it's grown. It's like an epidemic. I'm still rather confused by it.
I think television has always been one to replicate when something's successful.
You know how trends go with television. Next year, the networks might not be open to taking risks.
Tween programming is so retro that the shows even have theme songs, something the quest for more commercial time drove out of prime-time television years ago.
People were fed up with reality shows about midgets getting married and weird Jerry Springer talk shows. There had been a real dry spell of intelligent family-oriented viewing: the type of program that Mom, Dad and the kids can all watch together. With 'Lost,' there are just so many characters for people to invest in.
Yeah, the sitcom world is dead. It's all reality.
Everyone says TV's going down the tubes, and it's all reality, but there's some really good writing and some amazing opportunities if you're lucky enough to throw your hat in the ring.
There's a female writer-performer thing going on in TV right now.
The landscape of daytime has changed. I'm not so sure people go to daytime TV for kumbaya moments anymore.
When you're allowed to tell stories with ambiguity and darkness and things that are still unresolved, that's the dream scenario as opposed to having to fit into a more procedural mode or something a little more conventional. That's not what's working on TV right now.
Nobody really knows what makes a hit TV show.
When we did 'Thirtysomething,' television was either about doctors, lawyers, or cops.
I'm a very big believer that the reason you've seen this huge surge in superheroes both on television and in film is...part of it of course is zeitgeist. There's no denying that there's a huge appetite on the part of the audience in both TV and film for these kind of adventures.
