“The TV business is uglier than most things.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

Originally published in the San Francisco Examiner (4 November 1985), this is often quoted as concluding with the statement "There's also a negative side." Research by David Emery, in Your Guide to Urban Legends http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dubiousquotes/a/hunter_thompson_2.htm indicates that these words, however were not included by Thompson himself in the published version.
1980s, Generation of Swine (1988)
Context: The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The TV business is uglier than most things." by Hunter S. Thompson?

Hunter S. Thompson photo

Hunter S. Thompson 268

American journalist and author 1937–2005

Related quotes

“People who won't have a TV set in their house get more pleasure from their refusal than most of us get from TV.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“I don’t need to know most of what’s fed to us by newspapers and the TV. It’s largely useless information and daily moaning. There are only a few things in business that I really want to know about. Tell me about manufacturing productivity, employment, the balance of payments and borrowing levels. With these things you can decide on how to run a business, a constituency or even a country.”

Ivor Tiefenbrun (1946) Scottish businessman

INTERVIEW: Ivor Tiefenbrun – Of High Fidelity & Integrity http://www.hnwmagazine.co.uk/interview-ivor-tiefenbrun-high-fidelity-high-integrity/, HNW Magazine, 2 December 2012.
2012

“The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“TV executives think that the programs with the highest ratings are what TV viewers want, rather than what they settle for.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

Taking It All In (1983), Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers (1980-06-23)

“I think television's become a downright dangerous thing. It has no moral barometer whatsoever. If you want to talk about something that is all about money, just watch the television. It's damn dangerous. TV does not care about you or what happens to you. It's downright bad for your health now, and that's not a far-out concept. I think watching the TV news is bad for you. It is bad for your physical health and your mental health. The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rolling Stone interview (2002)

“For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

“Life gets higher ratings than TV.”

Paul Glover (1947) Community organizer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; American politician

http://www.paulglover.org/greenpresident.html (Green Party presidential manifesto), January 2009.

“Rest assured,
for every piece of business the most businesslike thing is
to choose the right moment.”

Menander Dyskolos

Khaireas.
Dyskolos

“TV is not good at covering single events. It needs a ritual, a rhythm, and a pattern…[TV] tends to fosters patterns rather than events.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder (1976)

“The business of software building isn't really high-tech at all. It's most of all a business of talking to each other and writing things down. Those who were making major contributions to the field were more likely to be its best communicators than its best technicians.”

Tom DeMarco (1940) American software engineer, author, and consultant

Why Does Software Cost So Much?: And Other Puzzles of the Information Age, (1995), p. 218.

Related topics