DICK WOLF

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

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.

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

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

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.

As soon as you become complacent your show gets canceled.

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.

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

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 hardly see myself as a futurist.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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