All Quotes

"Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it."

"Like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn’t change people’s habits. It just kept them inside the house."

"One of television’s great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs."

"Seeing a murder on television can … help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some."

"Watching t.v. doesn't have much of a payoff."

"In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity."

"News is not at all an easy thing to do on television. A good many of the main news items are not easily made visual — therefore we have the problem of giving news with the same standards that the corporation has built up in sound."

"Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it."

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."

"On the big screen they showed us a sun But not as bright in life as the real one It's never quite the same as the real one."

"I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you—and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland."

"As I sat in my office last evening, waiting to speak, I thought of the many times each week when television brings the war into the American home. No one can say exactly what effect those vivid scenes have on American opinion. Historians must only guess at the effect that television would have had during earlier conflicts on the future of this Nation during the Korean war, for example, at that time when our forces were pushed back there to Pusan or World War II, the Battle of the Bulge, or when our men were slugging it our in Europe or when most of our Air Force was shot down that day in June 1942 off Australia."

"When the war finally started, we were ready. On January 16, 1991, CNN anchor Bernard Shaw reported to the world, “The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated . . .” As predicted, Iraqi power and communications systems were destroyed by stealth fighter jets and cruise missiles. Every media company based in Baghdad—except CNN—lost power and transmission capabilities. Only CNN broadcast live to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. All channels turned to us for exclusive coverage; there was no place else. Back then CNN was the only global 24/7 news channel. That live coverage of war—the first time it had been televised worldwide—transformed the media landscape. CNN became required viewing for informed citizens and heads of state, the one truly global news source. That has changed now, with multiple cable networks and news breaking on social media. But without the investment in journalism from visionary owners such as Turner, today’s networks focus more on commentary than newsgathering."

"We have found that television is such a huge part of baby boomers' DNA that it makes sense that so much of America's pop culture jargon comes from TV."

"“Come on,” I said, feeling tired and angry. “You don’t really think that. Nobody thinks that any more, do they? How can the public image be so far off from the reality? Does everybody pay more attention to damn television than to real life?”"

"This new request is for additional radio and television to Latin America and Southeast Asia. These tools are particularly effective and essential in the cities and villages of those great continents as a means of reaching millions of uncertain peoples to tell them of our interest in their fight for freedom. In Latin America, we are proposing to increase our Spanish and Portuguese broadcasts to a total of 154 hours a week, compared to 42 hours today, none of which is in Portuguese, the language of about one-third of the people of South America. The Soviets, Red Chinese and satellites already broadcast into Latin America more than 134 hours a week in Spanish and Portuguese. Communist China alone does more public information broadcasting in our own hemisphere than we do. Moreover, powerful propaganda broadcasts from Havana now are heard throughout Latin America, encouraging new revolutions in several countries. Similarly, in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, we must communicate our determination and support to those upon whom our hopes for resisting the communist tide in that continent ultimately depend. Our interest is in the truth."

"“Tee Vee is a disease.” “No,” said Alice, laughing. “That’s ‘T.B.’ T.V. isn't a disease. It’s the most wonderful thing. It’s a great box which sits in the parlor at the center of attention; although it clashes with the rest of the furniture and decor. It shows beautiful colored pictures. People sit and look at it all day and night while it tells people what they should think. And what is beautiful. And what is ugly. It is such a wonderful thing that people watch it until they no longer remember how to communicate with each other, and they don’t know how to read anymore, and they lose all their ambition, and they grow fat and all of their muscles stop working. “So you see, it’s not a disease at all. It’s just the most marvelous invention!”"

"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."

"The new values transmitters are the television producers, the movie moguls, the fashion advertisers, the gangsta rappers, and a host of other players within the electronic media-cultural complex. ... These trend-setters exert an extremely powerful hold on our culture and our children in particular, and they often have had little or no sense of responsibility for the harmful values they are purveying."

"The culture is unchallenged as the standard setter, and the child’s sense of right and wrong and his priorities in life are shaped primarily by what he learns from the television, the movie screen and the CD player."

"Television encourages separation: people from community, people from each other, people from themselves, creating more buying units and discouraging organized opposition to the system. It creates a surrogate community: Itself. It becomes everyone's intimate advisor, teacher and guide to appropriate behavior and awareness. Thereby, it becomes its own feedback system, furthering its own growth and accelerating the transformation of everything and everyone into artificial form. This enables a handful of people to obtain a unique degree of power."

"I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book."

"We really did try to make the show feel familiar and nostalgic without just being callbacks to things from people’s childhood. I don’t think that’s what nostalgia is even about. It’s about a certain comfort mixed with melancholy for something that’s lost or far away. When you make a film or TV show, you’re literally creating memories for people. Those memories we create go into people’s brains, and they become partially shared memories. So we wanted to create something that would be a good memory."

"Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coersion, brainwashing, and manipulation."

"Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders."

"Brendan Fraser — Damian Drake Jr. (D.J.), Himself"

"Jenna Elfman — Kate Houghton"

"Steve Martin — ACME Chairman"

"Timothy Dalton — Damian Drake Sr."

"Joan Cusack — Mother"

"Bill Goldberg — Bob Smith"

"Heather Locklear — Dusty Tails"

"Don Stanton — Mr. Warner"

"Dan Stanton — Mr. Warner's Brother"

"Matthew Lillard — Himself"

"Jeff Gordon — Himself"

"Kevin McCarthy — Dr. Miles Bennell"

"Ron Perlman — Acme VP, Never Learning"

"Joe Alaskey — Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Beaky Buzzard and Mama Bear"

"Jeff Glen Bennett — Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam and Nasty Canasta"

"Billy West — Elmer Fudd and Dr. Lorre"

"Eric Goldberg — Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales and Marvin the Martian"

"Bruce Lanoil — Pepé le Pew"

"June Foray — Granny"

"Bob Bergen — Porky Pig"

"Casey Kasem — Shaggy"

"Frank Welker — Scooby-Doo"

"Brendan Fraser — Tasmanian Devil and Tasmanian She-Devil"

"Danny Mann — Robo Dog, Spy Car"

"Mel Blanc (archival recordings) — Gremlin Car"