List of Tom Shales Quotes

The Perils Of Credit And Debt, Especially Perilous In The Computer Age, Have Long Been Acknowledged In Pop Culture, But Very Infrequently By Tv.

Somewhere Around The Turn Of The Century, It Stopped Being Hip To Say You Never Watched Tv. Adults Are Much More Likely To Find Something To Engage Them On Television Than They Are At The Local Multiplex. Edges Are Being Cut On Television All The Time, But At The Movies Only Now And Then.

No Matter How Much Programming Improves, However, Media Savants Tend To See The Medium Living Out Numbered Days. It's Feared That The Internet Will Do To Tv What Tv Did To The Movies In The 1950s. But Instead Of Panicking, The Networks Are Finding Ways To Co-opt The Web.

Obviously Neither 'american Idol' Nor 'dancing With The Stars' Is A Variety Show In The Classic Sense, But The Way They Incorporate Elements Of Drama, Comedy And Suspense Is Moderately Ingenious.

Jimmy Kimmel Still Comes Across Like A Guy Who Crashed A Party And Got Caught At It, Yet Adamantly Refuses To Leave.

By A Twist Of Fate Rather Than Anything Approaching Journalistic Enterprise, I Did The Last Major Interview With Johnny Carson.

You Don't Hear Tv Cops Griping Because They Have To Enforce Some Draconian Law That Shouldn't Be On The Books In The First Place, Or Lamenting Vindictive Excesses In Sentencing. Hollywood, Supposedly A Frothing Cauldron Of Liberalism, Has Always Been Conservative On Crime.

If The Networks Can Get Audiences To Tolerate Pop-up Promos By The Dozens, Maybe They'll Start Selling Pop-up Commercials, Too.

Technically, 'kukla, Fran And Ollie' Was A Kids' Show, But Adults Watched Almost Religiously - And We're Talking Adult Adults, Celebrated Adults - Including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson And Lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

Like Sugar And, Oh - Let's Say The Most Tabloidy And Gossipy Reality Television Programs - Credit Is, For Millions, Genuinely Addictive.

Late-night Television Is Like The Cereal Aisle In The Supermarket: Too Many Choices. Also, Too Many 'different' Brands That Really Aren't Different At All.

In The 500-channel Universe, Which May, Of Course, Contain Many More Channels Than 500, The Fun Never Stops - Fun At Such A Fever Pitch As To Sometimes Seem Threatening, Numbing, Even Agonizing.