Once in a while, I see my fellow TV investors praise a business just because they like the entrepreneur behind it. That kind of thinking might make you feel warm and fuzzy inside - but let's get back to reality.
Now, there is no business like show business, and there is no publicity like word of mouth. What is word of mouth, you may ask? Well, word of mouth is gold to Hollywood bigwigs, and it equates to box office bonanzas and hit TV shows.
A lot of times in this business, we are taking advantage of hot times in our career to do a lot of TV and a lot of radio and that sort of thing, and George is able to be so humble that he can get away with not doing those things.
I'd like to start trying different fields of work. I don't want to be stuck in just comedy, and I'd be interested to try to break into the movie business because it's so much different than television.
Crime is interesting. It's huge and fascinating, and it's what my business, TV and film, is largely based on. But the realities are tragic, and in crime drama you rarely see the pain of bereavement or any consequences. It's reduced to a chess game.
No matter how much technology changes scouting, no matter how much free agency and big TV contracts change the business of baseball, I hope and pray that the heart of the game will never change.
Television is a powerful medium that has to be used for something better than sitcoms and police shows. On the other hand, if you don't recognize the forces that play on what people watch and what they don't then you're a fool and you should be in a ...
My upbringing was very un-Hollywood... I was born in New York and grew up on a ranch. I was never really smitten by the business in those days, never a fan type - just a basic kid watching TV.
I think the association of economics with forecasting is unfortunate and is down to the fact that one great way to get an investment bank's name on business television is to hire a guy called a Chief Economist who will go and prognosticate.
I always knew I wanted to be in front of the camera. But even after 10 years behind the scenes at CBS News producing live segments, celebrity profiles, and breaking news, I still hadn't been given the chance to be on TV.
'The Stooges' used to be ubiquitous, back in the '60s and '70s. They were on TV all the time, but they're not on so much anymore. Kids aren't getting the chance to watch them, not to mention the fact that kids don't really necessarily relate to black...
It's nice because working in England I'm know for working in television and theater when you get a chance to come out, it is quite fun to be out from behind the mask. You need to let people know who you are.
And I thought, my God, there's an off chance that they will say something that's really worth preserving and there is one way to do that and I knew what it was because I come from television.
Being on a successful television show is a good thing. It's steady work. It's a chance to work with a group of people in an intimate way... where you develop a sort of shorthand with each other, and a trust.
One of the great upsides to a national book tour is the chance to break out of television's cocoon and interact directly with the American people.
When I was kid, I remember playing 'Vogue' by Madonna over and over and over again. And ah, you know, something about the beat was really cool, and Madonna, visually, was on TV all the time and I thought she was just so beautiful.
I think feature films sell on the idea, and I think TV works based almost entirely on execution. I don't think anybody is going, 'Wow, that show is executed poorly, but the idea is so cool I just have to keep watching.'
Social media is a really cool way to tell your story to people who are interested in hearing it. It's not getting put through the filter of a television executive who's decided you're too old to justify the expenditure.
I think because Skype is becoming so much more prevalent, and you're looking at someone else on a screen, it's going to work its way into movies and TV shows in all different ways, which I think is really cool.
It's only recently women got to be action heroes on TV. Progress is slow, and often non-existent. There's plenty of cool comics with female characters... But all it takes is one Catwoman to set the cause back a decade.
I remember in high school trying to get home from water-polo practice in time so I could see Happy Days on television when it first came on, because I was so blown away by it. It was just such a cool thing.
