People do have viewing patterns, and you disrupt those at your own peril. That's something that everybody learned after 1988. The numbers have gone down every year since that strike. Big time.

It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.

As soon as you become complacent your show gets canceled.

If you're going to vote on a television contract, there is a certain rationality to saying that the same structures that are applied to Health Plan participation should be placed on the right to vote on a strike.

It's show business. No show, no business.

I would say that if you really wished to be a working member of the community, don't go out on strike because then there's no work and no potential of work.

And the consumer doesn't care. They don't watch networks, they watch TV shows.

I think most people don't react well to being screamed at. It's counterproductive.

There are other options out there, after all, like read a book, go on the Internet, rent a movie.

I don't think you can really make television based on what you think audiences want. You can only make stories that you like, because you have to watch it so many times.

You have this disturbing reality that there are a lot of people who would rather say, 'I'm on strike' than 'I'm unemployed.' And those are the people who vote for strikes.

People recognize certain things, like 'D' means 'this dialogue stinks.' We're dealing with shows that are written here, shot in New York and posted back here. Accurate communication is a necessity.

Everybody knows things are not the same. The people running the TV end of a major vertically integrated company know how much money a successful show can make.

There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric.

I hardly see myself as a futurist.

The most positive step is to try to expand the employment base by making it, if not economically friendly, at least not economically disastrous, for studios to take on deficits.

I get bored with establishing shots of people getting out of cars and walking into buildings, getting into elevators and then 45 seconds later they have a line.

The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.

The heart and soul of network programming is series programming, the weekly repetition of characters you like having in your house.

The threat to free television. The reason television is free is because it is a life support system for commercials. That fundamental aspect is about to change.

If the scripts are not good, I'll tell somebody, 'This isn't good.'

TIVO executives stand up and say, 'Well, we're not getting rid of commercials, but we are letting them fast forward, because people like commercials, and if they see one that they like they stop and watch it.' I mean, please.

The ad revenues still go up because nothing dependably delivers the eyeballs that successful series do.

I do love television. But the business is accelerating and people are not getting the chance to fail.

Advertising is the art of the tiny. You have to tell a complete a story and deliver a complete message in a very encapsulated form. It disciplines you to cut away extraneous information.

I try to just communicate what I want done as clearly and simply as possible.

There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

Their argument is that most shows are losers, which is true, but it's also disingenuous to say, 'We are not going to take the risk unless it is totally covered by the few successful shows that are out there.'

People do have viewing patterns, and you disrupt those at your own peril. That's something that everybody learned after 1988. The numbers have gone down every year since that strike. Big time.

The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks.

Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off.

The environment doesn't change that radically. You are still going to go home at night and NBC is going to be there, ABC and CBS will still be there.

I was raised not to be rude, but I also try to get the best work out of people.

When it went on the air, the sales department hated it. It was the highest advertising pullout show in the history of NBC. At the early focus groups, people were saying, 'Who are these people? Why should we watch them?

I said, 'Okay, it's the year 2000, I'm getting a computer and a Palm Pilot.' I know how to check my e-mail, and I've listed some phone numbers on it. Half the time the battery has gone out so I can't use it.

It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

I mean it's the most objective industry in the world. If your numbers stink, you're out. If your numbers are good, you get more money. It's the most Darwinian, it's beautiful, it's brutal, it works.

You know too well the forces which compose their army to dread their superior numbers.

He's a world-famous name to people who care about his music, but there are many people who have never heard of George Gershwin and those numbers increase.

But that is the only thing that slows me down is the system. No one, two or three was big enough to slow me down, only the system. It was the system that slowed me down to make my numbers fall. Not because I am older.

I think my numbers speak for themselves.

Baseball people, and that includes myself, are slow to change and accept new ideas. I remember that it took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms.

For a London play, rehearsal time would be four weeks for the entire show. In films, I'd spend six weeks on the big dance numbers to get them perfect before the actual shooting.

We typically hear numbers that there are 34 million households that are in stocks in some form. Well, I say that what's occurred is if you have a job in this country, you're in stocks.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

We have seen Indians in immense numbers, and all those on this coast of the Pacific contrive to make a good subsistence on various seeds, and by fishing.

Now, I feel that if somebody looks through all the numbers through all those years, they will find one for Julius Rosenberg, and it is worth finding if it is such an important issue.

I differ materially from Capt. Lewis, in my account of the numbers, manners, and morals of the Sioux.