A Quote by Fred Silverman
I didn't even think demographics until I got to ABC. They were the first to go for 18-to-49. But, at CBS, it was just, 'Let's get 'em in the tent.'
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If one were to go back to the '50s, the most popular TV genre on the air in the United States were Westerns. You could go turn on ABC or CBS on any night and you'd almost have three full hours of everything from 'Bonanza' to 'Rawhide' to 'Wanted Dead or Alive.'
He used to have a tent show, a little tent show, and I thought I was going to get a job working one year on the tent show, but he closed it down and I never got to go out there, but anyway, he had a sax and played drums.
When I started out as an activist, the issues were much clearer. There's advantage to the new media, but on the other hand, you miss the ability to frame an issue that you had when there were just three TV networks: CBS, NBC, and ABC. So the whole world could see the same police dogs. The same Bull Connor and his white tank. Now you've got narrow-casting. The media is all fragmented. It's so hard to get people to focus in a sustained way.
You get notes from two studios and a network instead of a studio and a network. Although we early on forced them all to do their notes together. I make them all talk to each other first. Because we went through the pains of getting notes from ABC and at the time it was Touchstone, that were opposite - and then CBS notes that were opposite again. So it was, you guys are going to have to work it out as to what is the most important note.
A lot of times people who write sitcoms for the 18 to 49 crowd think writing for kids is easy. It really isn't. First of all, you're very restricted in what you can do.
Look, America was a narrowly divided country in 2000;49-49 was what Michael Barone called it. It's a 49-49 nation.
ABC wouldn't be a player in the news major leagues until the 1970s, when Roone Arledge brought to ABC News the energy and programming approach he had applied to ABC Sports.
My relationship to the desecration of the earth was very theoretical and intellectual until I got sick. I could never watch anything about polar bears dying or the death of bees. There were certain things I knew I couldn't go near because they were too devastating. But I don't think until I got cancer did I get it in my body, what was happening to the earth. I finally went: "Oh! Earth! Organism!"
When I first broke through, there was only NBC, CBS and ABC, and they had news in the morning and in the evening - there wasn't no 24-hour news.
The important thing, once you get 'em laughing, is to keep 'em laughing until you're through. With a 90-minute feature, you've got to stop the laughter and then pick it up again, which is tough.
We got sacked for the first time when we were just 18 and you realise that this whole industry is transient and changeable.
It's not about 'NBC is evil.' It's about that media structure - CBS, ABC, CNN, even some of the smaller operations are now multinationals, with these extraordinarily diverse holdings.
The financing of all TV shows is dictated by finding an audience between 18 and 49. I have now passed beyond 49, so probably, I am no longer a desirable commodity for TV. And I am at peace with that; that's fine.
I'd like CBS, at this point, to say where they got those documents from. I think they should say where they got these documents because I thought it was a very poor job of reporting by CBS.
You've got to be like a fan at your show, just wild out. I make eye contact. I get in the crowd and kick it with 'em, stage dive, mosh. I make 'em laugh. I go out there and turn up, have fun. There's no set list; I don't have rehearsals.
I recognized... very, very early on that ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News were dependent on The Associated Press and Reuters. So my daily intake of information is from watching the newswires.
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