Tom Shales quotes

A fellow with the inventiveness of Albert Einstein but with the attention span of Daffy Duck. (Tom Shales)
People of a certain age look back on the Mayberry of 'The Andy Griffith Show' and become almost as homesick for that simple fictional hamlet as they do for their own home towns. View quote
Tom Shales
Perhaps Western civilization is in a post-decline phase, or maybe the decline is just taking a really long time, like the Roman Empire's did. The Romans had gladiators and Christian-hungry lions and that sort of thing. We have MTV. View quote
Tom Shales
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. View quote
Tom Shales
'Leave It to Beaver,' which ran from 1957 until 1963, was one of the strangest, sweetest, most distinctive domestic sitcoms of television's celebrated Golden Age. View quote
Tom Shales
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. View quote
Tom Shales
The once inviolate frame within which programs or commercials were displayed on television - always separately - has been violated to a pulp. Program content is seen increasingly as a mere backdrop on which ads are posted like billboards on a fence. View quote
Tom Shales
Gimmicks come and go; the cop show seems one genre that will never leave - not as long as people like to sit at home in the suburbs and see what awful things go on in the cities. View quote
Tom Shales
Crime dramas will never go away as long as people turn to television for, among other things, reassurance and comfort. View quote
Tom Shales
Like sugar and, oh - let's say the most tabloidy and gossipy reality television programs - credit is, for millions, genuinely addictive. View quote
Tom Shales
If the networks can get audiences to tolerate pop-up promos by the dozens, maybe they'll start selling pop-up commercials, too. (Tom Shales)
Jimmy Kimmel still comes across like a guy who crashed a party and got caught at it, yet adamantly refuses to leave. View quote
Tom Shales
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. View quote
Tom Shales
By a twist of fate rather than anything approaching journalistic enterprise, I did the last major interview with Johnny Carson. View quote
Tom Shales
The perils of credit and debt, especially perilous in the computer age, have long been acknowledged in pop culture, but very infrequently by TV. View quote
Tom Shales
Television's escapist programming naturally continues to endorse living beyond one's means as the time-tested American Way and rarely depicts families or individuals wracked by the pressures and miseries that come with excess. View quote
Tom Shales
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. View quote
Tom Shales
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. View quote
Tom Shales