57 Quotes by Dick Wolf

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

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 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 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.

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.

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?

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

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