Media Quotes

A Collection of comments on the state of Entertainment.

A wounded man startles awake in an outdoor lounge chair, and before he dies he gapes in terror at the fresh, oozing sutures on his exposed abdomen. Damn! Some psycho has carved out his liver, but the organ is still nearby - and it's cooking on the grill!

No, this isn't a deleted scene from the director's cut DVD of Hannibal - it's just a random moment from Killer Instinct, one of Fox's new shows. Welcome to prime-time-network TV! (Rolling Stone, Oct. 20, 2005)

"The first step is to understand that TV is just a delivery system for ads. The only programming that really matters to those in power is the commercials (except on pay cable channels like HBO, where nothing matters except how many people subscribe). The success of a show is not measured by how good it is, or who says they loved it, or even how many people watch. A show is a success if the people who watched it go and buy the products that were advertised during the commercials. It is all about what is being sold and (just as important) who is doing the buying. That is why shows like 7th Heaven - which was the highest rated show on the WB network for years - was never considered as much of a success as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Dawson's Creek, two lower-rated shows on the same network. The perception was that the audience for the latter two shows had more money to spend, so advertising rates were higher, and therefore the shows were more profitable. It might not seem fair, but viewers need to understand that the most-watched shows aren't always considered the most financially successful." - Dean Batali, lead writer for That '70s Show and former writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer [Behind the Screen, a book about Christians in Hollywood]

"I'd like to be even more brutal and more weird. In our show, the sex scenes are very particular to what the characters are going through. I feel very lucky that we've gotten away with what we have, but I'd like to go even further." - Actor Julian McMahon discussing his role as a plastic surgeon on one of the most sexually explicit, profane, and violent television programs in the history of American television - Nip/Tuck on FX, NY Post.

"...Generations of viewers are accustomed to new fall lineups containing shows that might easily be considered horrors, but the 2005-6 season is dominated by a new brood of a relatively new breed: shows that are horrific on purpose, with gore as graphic and grisly as in many a monstrous movie." (Washington Post, September 18, 2005)

"'This year, I've heard less from standards and practices than ever before,' says Ryan Murphy, creator of FX's sexually precocious plastic-surgeon show Nip/Tuck. 'I'm surprised. I thought the climate since the election was more conservative, and would turn into this big battle.'" (Entertainment Weekly, Sept. 16, 2005)

"Children learn how to deal with relationships by what they see on TV. They see people having casual sex and using obscenity-laden language... I don't see how it could possibly be good for kids." - Faye Steuer, professor of psychology at Charleston College (Charleston Post and Courier, August 25, 2005)

"We played the game by day and lived the game by night." - an anonymous, incarcerated Oakland, Calif., gang member who says he and his friends used the Grand Theft Auto games as a kind of virtual reality training. His gang has been linked to car thefts and at least seven murders. [Reader's Digest, 8/05]

"Well, they're going to collect a lot of money when some of these TV shows are still on. " - President George W. Bush answering a question from C-SPAN Interviewer Brian Lamb about pending legislation that would increase FCC broadcast Indecency fines ten fold from 37,500 to 375,000 per incident.

"Copycat pranksters could face serious injury or death from electrocution." - U.S. electric utility companies in a letter to NBC warning them about an upcoming episode of "Fear Factor" which featured couples shocking themselves using high-voltage electricity for money and prizes.

"You don't understand how many places I go and the movie will come up, and they'll say, ‘My kids want to see that.' I'm like, No no no, it's not a kids' film'." - South Park co-creator Trey Parker speaking about their Team America: World Police movie, Entertainment Weekly, October 22, 2004, p. 61.

"It would seem to me that while we get a lot of broadcasting companies complaining about indecency enforcement, they seem ... willing to keep the issue at the forefront, keep it hot and steamy in order to get financial gains and the free advertising it provides." - FCC chairman Michael Powell, chastising ABC for opening its Monday Night Football broadcast with a racy ad promoting the series Desperate Housewives.

"I have been to something like 50 gang funerals where the guy in the coffin was no more than 20. The game companies don't see the family crying and the people in the coffin. They don't see the impact this has on our culture. They make or play their games in the studio, but for kids on the street it's a real life."- Terrance Stone youth leader and former gang member on how violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto has glamorized the gang lifestyle

"Just take a look at what Disney's The Incredibles did its first weekend. In two days, it grossed $70 million, and yet a family can't find a half-hour of programming in prime time they can watch together." - Steve Farella, president and CEO of media agency Targetcast TCM speaking about the disconnect between media buyers and voters.

"I find today's remedy totally inadequate. After all the bold talk, it's a slap on the wrist that can be paid with just seven and a half seconds of Super Bowl ad time." - Dissenting FCC Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein in the New York Times, on the $550,000 fine against CBS.

"Regardless of which level kids were at the beginning of this study, watching more sex on TV was associated with a much higher probability of moving up along the continuum."

"It's social learning: 'monkey see, monkey do'. "If everyone's talking about sex or having it, and something bad hardly ever comes out of it, because it doesn't on TV, then they think, 'Hey, the whole world's doing it, and I need to.' "

"Just making small reductions to what kids are exposed to could make a significant difference in how quickly they develop sexually." - Rebecca Collins, PhD, senior author of a new study called Watching Sex on Television Predicts Adolescent Initiation of Sexual Behavior, which appears in the September 2004 issue of Pediatrics.

"Simon is becoming a little cooler because he's catching up with a lot of issues that all my friends are dealing with or have dealt with, much more specifically. All my friends that I've told, 'So on the show this year, I have sex,' they're all like, 'That's awesome, finally!'" - Nineteen-year-old David Gallagher, who plays Simon Camden on WB's famously family friendly 7th Heaven. While the show has dealt with sexual issues before, this season's premiere featured a first: a Camden kid having premarital sex [New York Post, 9/7/04]

"The princess is the last frontier of acceptable girliness. It points to how crazy our times have become that I, as a feminist, am promoting princess culture because, hey, at least you don't have a 12-year-old wearing a thong." - Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls and staffer for Empower Project , on Hollywood's recent spate of princess movies [Los Angeles Times, 8/10/04]

"I think it's partly the listeners' fault. Our people are not used to writing letters of complaint, because in the countries they come from, they feel they don't have a voice." - Jerry Velasco of Nosotros, an advocacy group for Latino actors speaking about why Hispanics don't lodge FCC broadcast indecency complaints against Spanish radio stations, LA Times, August 23, 2004.

None of the industry members involved in the study denied that TV affects young viewers.  In the past, the industry insisted that viewing had little or no effect on youngsters. - Stanford professor Donald Roberts commenting on a  study conducted during 2001 and 2002 by researchers at Stanford University in California and Lewis & Clark College in Oregon and by independent researchers which analyzed how TV affects teens and included data from interviews with 45 network executives, producers and writers.

The current skirmish between the FCC, lawmakers and the creative community "causes me a lot of pain. I'm a great fan of freedom of speech, but are Howard Stern and Larry Flynt worthy of that protection? Yes, they are in the broader picture - but worth listening to?" he asks. "I thought that Steve Allen's heart was in the right place when he was trying so hard to get TV to clean up its act in the years before he died." Dick Smothers, Press-Telegram, 4/23/2004.

"This culture is in big trouble. All you see on television are debased images. Whether you believe it or not, black people do not want to see pictures of people wearing bulletproof vests." - Pop musician Prince, Rolling Stone, May 27, 2004, p. 58.

"There's nothing wrong with adults having access to adult entertainment, but there's a problem when kids do." - Author Bakari Kitwana (The Hip Hop Generation), Vibe, July 2004, p. 103.

"I find them too violent. And you'd think sex had just been invented. . . . I don't approve of censorship, but you've got to have stop signs at crossroads." - Veteran special effects movie maker Ray Harryhausen speaking about today's movies, Entertainment Weekly, June 11, 2004, p. 89.

"Things that everyone notices, like the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident, tend to be overreactions to societal transformations that have already happened. But things that sneak in under the radar, deceptive events that not everyone pays attention to, can be unsettling signposts leading to unsavory change." - Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic, in his review of the R-rated comedy The Girl Next Door, which he describes as a "sanitized and exquisitely titillating portrait of the world of pornography in the cozy sheep's clothing of a teenage movie"

"Mr. Stern's show has created a great liability for us and other broadcasters who air it," said Hogan, who suspended Stern in February from the six Clear Channel stations that carried him. "The Congress and the FCC are even beginning to look at revoking station licenses. That's a risk we're just not willing to take." - President of Clear Channel Radio John Hogan commenting on the decision to drop shock-jock Howard Stern from their radio stations permanently.

"Unfortunately, where music has gone these days, it's really more about sex than it is about intimacy. It would be nice to see us get back to being in love and being intimate as opposed to just having sex."
- R&B producer/singer Babyface

"I know this is going to sound cheesy and like I'm trying to be Miss America, but the most important responsibility a celebrity has is to set an example and be a role model. I want to make sure that no matter how long I go through this, I don't fall into the trap of changing and modifying how I do things that aren't a positive example. I want to remain somebody that the entire family can listen to or watch." - American Idol TV show runner-up Clay Aiken, Reuters, February 22, 2004.

"I do understand that there were a lot of people that were completely offended by what happened, including my own family. And I think that's probably the part that's frustrating the most for me and it's completely, completely, completely, regrettable." - Justin Timberlake's responding about the Super Bowl incident, ABCNews, February 4, 2004.

"We support the creative community, but we have to take into account what's in the culture right now and be sensitive about that." - MTV spokeswoman Jeannie Kedas speaking about the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident, Associated Press, February 10, 2004.

"The now infamous display during the Super Bowl halftime show, which represented a new low in prime-time television, is just the latest example in a growing list of deplorable incidents over the nation's airwaves." - FCC chairman Michael Powell, Associated Press, February 11, 2004.

"Our culture is obsessed with the people we see on television and watch in the movies." - American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, Entertainment Weekly, January 9, 2004, p. 48.

"God cannot directly intervene . . . Everyone is allowed to say no to God, including Joan . . . God can never identify one religion as being right." - Joan of Arcadia TV show creator Barbara Hall's 10 commandments for Joan's God, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 16, 2003, H10.

"Every Monday at my high school, the girls in my newspaper class discuss the highs and lows from the latest episode. Most talk about how much they want Big and Carrie to reunite; others wonder what the heck Samantha was wearing. Not only do they talk about the girls, some of them have started to look like them. Hip accessories from the show lurk in the hallways at my school. ... I couldn't help but wonder: Where will us teens get our new fashion trends, once Sex and the City ends its six-year run on HBO?"  -17-year-old Washington, D.C., high school student Nadia Saah, writing for USA Today about how influential the sexually explicit cable series has been for teens.

"I was doing all right on 28 bucks a week as a garbage man," he said. "It doesn't matter, stuff like that." - Mel Gibson when asked by Diane Sawyer about the $30 million of his own money that he put into his controversial movie "The Passion of the Christ"

"This company won't be a poster child for indecency." - Viacom President Mel Karmazin ( In a conference call to Infinity Radio Employees after testifying at a congressional hearing on broadcast indecency.)

"...I rant about it in the book, too, about the sort of 'Sex and the City' world. That really bothers me that Samantha, who is one of sickest characters on television becomes a role model...It's such a divorce from reality. I treat Samanthas all the time. They're horrible, miserable human beings who will suffer with their behavior...Then to put her up as a role model becomes confusing, people start to feel flawed. They engage in behavior that's supposed to be cool and good and don't feel right..." - Dr. Drew Pinsky (Dr. Drew from Loveline)

"I'm not sure black folks fully understand the power that media has in our life. We are becoming who they portray us as being. We've allowed ourselves to become a collection of negative statistics. Simon says dress like a gangster, and we do. I'm amazed by what I see on television or in the movies. I'm saying, either I overslept or someone stole my culture." - Actor Tim Reid ("WKRP in Cincinnati"), quoted by the Associated Press on April 18, 2003

"I think that movies or other media may be able to provide the spark for anxiety and consequent violent acting out by teens, although I'm quite skeptical about movies doing this in the absence of other triggers." - Jay Reeve, a senior psychologist at Bradley Hospital in Providence, R.I., on how movies can contribute to (but not solely cause) violent behavior [ABC News Online, 7/10/03]

"I think we've just gotten rid of the whole notion of even a bit of responsibility. You know, there's one thing to be artistic and stuff, but you used to have a conscience about things and a heart about things. ... I'm almost frightened for the kids of today, but I think everybody's kind of just thrown even a little bit of conscience out the window for entertainment purposes." - P.O.D. lead singer Sonny Sandoval

"I don't like the ones that glorify antisocial behavior, like Grand Theft Auto and Vice City. We actually had a rule at Atari, which seems kind of quaint now, that you could blow up a tank, a plane, a car- but you couldn't do violence against a human." - Atari creator Nolan Bushnell, when asked if the graphic nature of today's video games bothered him [Newsweek, 8/18/03]

"TV is the most powerful thing that has ever been invented." - Ozzy Osbourne, USA Today, June 10, 2003, D1-2

"People's misery becoming entertainment, that's what's dangerous. And that seems to be the place we're going. I worry about television." - George Clooney, quoted by Reuters, February 11, 2003

"Clive [Davis] tried to tell me that saying certain words in a song- or as he says, ‘putting some balls into it'- isn't bad, it's just strong emotion. Well, there are certain words and emotions I don't want kids hearing, and I'm not changing because they think it's going to sell better. This is going to sound horrible, but I got 12 million votes doing what I did." -American Idol finalist Clay Aiken, describing pressure he got from RCA to "edge-up" his songs to boost sales [Time, 10/5/03]

"American children, I'm afraid, are addicted to television." - First Lady Laura Bush [Guardian Unlimited, 9/30/03]

"There has been erosion in respect for the media by its guardians, and the proliferation of reality television is probably the best example." - David E. Kelly, creator and writer for ABC's The Practice, discussing the invasion of reality television and its effect on the overall product on television.

"I've been fortunate. I haven't had too many auditions. I slept with all the right people." -Pamela Anderson, in People Magazine.

"Mario will never start shooting hookers!" --Nintendo Senior Vice President of Marketing George Harrison on the "Nintendo Difference" (as quoted in the August issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly)

"The following cartoon is rated CFFA, cartoons for f****** adults; not for kids" -This is the advisory that appears on the screen before TNN airs episodes of its new stripper based cartoon Stripperella.

"What reality TV does is legitimates voyeurism. It allows us to really indulge our prurient interests, our wish to be excited, to be scandalized, to be shocked." - Media analyst Dr. Stewart Fischoff on the 6/25/03 episode of Oprah.

"We're not putting something on because we want to be salacious. We're trying to adapt a wonderfully intelligent, well-written piece of material," NBC executive producer Ben Silverman talking about his new fall show, Coupling, in an interview with Variety.  This "wonderfully intelligent, well-written" production is adapted from a BBC television program.  Scripts have included characters having sex in a bar bathroom, and lines like "one swallow does not a girlfriend make."

 "Basically, the problem is people see our logo, they see hazing. They think we're involved in supporting hazing. We're trying to get the record straight."  Brett Radmin, a co-founder of Greek101.com, asking that his product no longer be used on MTV's Greek Life.

"We have reached a point where we would like to cancel cable and throw out our TV, everything we really like gets canceled." -Rose Marie Shema, 76, of Hendersonville, N.C., in the May 4^th USA Today.

 "They are sending a message that they don't approve of the content of those magazines. We defend their right to do that." Nadine Strossen, constitutional law professor at New York Law School and the president of the American Civil Liberties Union on Wal-Mart's decision to pull magazines Maxim, FHM and Stuff from its shelves.

"Television exposure during adolescence has also been linked to subsequent aggression in young adulthood.  A 17-year longitudinal study concluded that teens who watched more than one hour of TV a day were almost four times as likely as other teens to commit aggressive acts in adulthood."  The Kaiser Family Foundation, TV Violence Fact Sheet, Spring 2003

"Well, this is my answer and it is going to be very short: I always find myself going back to the The Weather Channel." - Bill Cosby when asked what he thought of the quality of television today.

"What I'm most proud of is the fact that there's a lot of sleazy shows on television, reality oriented. I'm actually hearing from kids saying they enjoy this show. And it's nice that you can actually have some measure of success without compromising principles. I'm very proud of that." - Talk-show host newcomer, Michael Essany on The Tonight Show, discussing his new show on E!

"Let the FCC take me off the air, I don't care.  Foul language is all around us; porno is rampant and, you know what? The country's running fine.  Bleep the whole g*damned show and get rid of me. My time has passed." - Nationally syndicated shock-jock, Howard Stern, upset that the FCC is considering strong action against radio shock-jocks who go too far.