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television

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

2016 Presidential election It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. … The money's rolling in and this is fun. I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going. Leslie Moonves, then CEO of CBS, on round-the-clock coverage of Trump during the election  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Aging As populations age, there are more and more people living alone with their television sets. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, January 20-21, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Bad news A weak story with good film will beat out a good story with weak film. citation  David Halberstam, on television news  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters Who are the people who rule our country, the people most often invited on talk shows? The people on Mount Bullshit. Rutger Bregman [“Mount Bullshit” is Bregman's term for where people are when they think they know everything there is to know about a subject] © 2020 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say I do not watch much television. I know they like to say – people that don't know me – they like to say I watch television. People with fake sources – you know, fake reporters, fake sources. But I don't get to watch much television, primarily because of documents. I'm reading documents a lot. Donald Trump, quoted by New York Times, December 9, 2017, which reported, “People close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Fox News It's the closest we've come to having state TV. Nicole Hemmer © 2019 Kwiple.com
History In 2020, the United Kingdom's culture secretary asked Netflix to add a disclosure to the show [The Crown ] making it clear that it is, fundamentally, a work of fiction. Netflix declined, saying it was confident that viewers knew the show was fiction. Yet its executives surely understood that the series is appealing precisely because it presents its fictions with the swagger of settled fact. Megan Garber, “We're Already Living In the Metsverse”, The Atlantic, March 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse America's least-trusted institutions — Congress, television news and big business, says Gallup — are remorselessly heard-from. The most trusted are the military (a closed box to most citizens) and small business (too poor to advertise at scale). … The feeling of your pain, the stakeholder-flattery: ingratiation has been the way of public and private elites during the exact era that trust in them has dropped. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, February 26, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
National security Nothing anyone on the National Security Council staff, in the council's office or from across government can outweigh what the President hears from conservatives on cable television. Time  magazine, February 20, 2018 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Polarization What should we make of the fact that America's TV channels all carried the live jubilee festivities of an elderly monarch but will part ways on this week's hearings into an assault on US democracy? The light-hearted take is that the British crown is above politics, including in America. The darker interpretation is that the survival of US democracy itself is now a partisan issue. Edward Luce, Financial Times, June 8, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Politics If “the personal is political” was the slogan of the 1960s, docudramas seem to assume that the political is unfailingly personal. Eric Foner, “The Televised Past” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Presidential debates We're going to continue to have TV debates that serve the purposes of TV, especially commercial TV, rather than the interests of the voters. … The debates are not designed for you. The debates are not designed to enlighten us about who can do the job of the presidency because the debates have absolutely nothing to do with the job of President of the United States. Lawrence O'Donnell, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, August 1, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public broadcasting When you start looking at the places that will reduce spending, one of the questions we asked was, Can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? And the answer was no. We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we can't ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Mick Mulvaney, justifying proposals to stop funding CPB while raising military spending enough to pay for CPB for 121 years at 2016 levels © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie I was called “intellectual,” I guess, because I didn't know any better than to read the guests' books. Dick Cavett © 2018 Kwiple.com
Selfie I must be seen to be believed. Queen Elizabeth II, explaining that she wore colorful clothes so television cameras could easily pick her out in a crowd  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Snapshot She saw the votes on the board and said, “Fuck it, I'm just gonna vote for it just so I can go on TV and talk about it.” A former staffer's explanation of why Nancy Mace voted to oust Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House of Representatives even though he had directed millions of dollars to her 2020 election campaign [Mace is a poster child for the old adage, If you want a friend in Washington, get yourself a dog.] © 2023 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest The American Action Network PAC suffers premature congratulation running television ads celebrating Republicans who repaled Obamacare © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest  The president is an incredible advocate of the First Amendment. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, getting the “incredible” part right when asked about Trump's call for the Senate Intelligence Committee to look into what he calls “fake news” broadcast he claims by NBC and other “Fake News Networks” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Television As the broadcast era changed into one of cable and then streaming, TV was transformed from a wasteland into a bubbling sea of creativity. But it has become a sea in which everyone swims in smaller schools. Farhad Manjoo, New York Times, January 12, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Television The future of television is not on television. The future of television is on social media. Jorge Ramos © 2016 Kwiple.com
Television Most people look at Sesame Street and they see a show that educates children. Trump sees a show where a landlord is being forced to rent to black people. Bill Maher, March 17, 2017 on Trump's proposal to defund PBS © 2017 Kwiple.com
Television Never underestimate the power of being in people's living rooms for decades. That's what got Trump elected. This is now a as-seen-on-TV kind of country. Bill Maher © 2019 Kwiple.com
Television The trick [to succeeding in TV] is to care, but not too much. Give a shit — but not really. Larry King © 2021 Kwiple.com
 
Trumpists say People realize that no one on TV is under oath. Kellyanne Conway  © 2020 Kwiple.com