I was writing for live television. And I said to myself, someday, soon as I can, I have got to do a situation comedy.
I rode into the dawning world of television in 1944 on a train.
If you spend any time on the shooting of a drama, for television or movies, it's very slow and there's a lot of standing around.
I think you know, to not open your mind to television is silly because there's so much good work happening on television.
I think it sort of dawns on you that if you're not gigging constantly you're not actually relevant. You may be relevant to a different part of the media now, to television commissioners and editors, but to a young live-comedy audience you're not, really.
With a play, you do it and it's gone. Films always date. Television drama always dates. Television comedy, for some reason, seems to go on.
The arrival of television established a mass-media order that dominated the last 50 years. This is a personal media revolution. The distinction between the old order and the new order is very important. Television delivered the world to our living room. In the old media, all we could do was press our noses against the glass and watch.
People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway.
It's a tribute to the human brain that anyone is able to function out there on television in a talk situation that is entirely artificial.
I love doing a television show. It just always feels like it's a little while before you find something that feels unique and that feels like a character that you really want to play for awhile.
We believe only what we see. So, with television, we believe everything.
In television, there's no time. You can't walk around and get into the mood. Nobody is going to wait for you. They're like, "Let's go!," and I'm like, "Wait, I haven't gotten in the mood!"
It's funny that and the same statement [Barack Obama] made when he's talking about Republicans and the Iranians, he's talking to Republicans through the television. He said, if any of you are watching this, you need to think about who you're hurting.
I joke that I learned the essentials of storytelling from Hanna-Barbera, but I pretty much did. That kind of television is what enamored me as a kid, and that's what really got me hooked. You could say that's where it all began.
There is no reason to confuse television news with journalism.
Ronald Reagan is clearly to television what Franklin Roosevelt was to radio.
With television you are producing hours and hours of music and for film it is a shorter experience for both the audience and for you as a composer.
I never stopped making pictures. There were times when more of my income was coming from other sources, and I had to devote more time to television and movies and records.
Most of the time people are aiming so low on television. They're trying to reach that common denominator, especially on network television.
I didn't want to do television at all. I really didn't want to do it. I really thought I was just going to be doing theater and doing movies.