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. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
There are other options out there, after all, like read a book, go on the Internet, rent a movie. – Dick Wolf
The ad revenues still go up because nothing dependably delivers the eyeballs that successful series do. – Dick Wolf
The heart and soul of network programming is series programming, the weekly repetition of characters you like having in your house. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
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? – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
I do love television. But the business is accelerating and people are not getting the chance to fail. – Dick Wolf
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. – Dick Wolf
