After nearly fifty years of television, our population now
contains more people who have listened to laugh tracks all their lives
than people who haven't. It has trained them to laugh when somebody
says something funny whether it's funny or not, and to expect every
bon mot of their own to be greeted by gales of mirth whether it's bon
or not.
--Florence King

I think Groucho Marx said something like:
Television is a wonderful cultural media: each time someone switchs it on, I go to the next room and read.

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
........
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
........
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
..........
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall......
~Roald Dahl, television

Television is the first truly democratic culture – the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
~Clive Barnes

Seeing a murder on television can help work off some antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
~Alfred Hitchcock

All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?
~Nicholas Johnson

Television is simply automated day-dreaming.
~Lee Lovinger

Television is a medium. It is neither rare nor well done.
~Bill Moyers

I generally find television annoying because I'm a daydreamer and most shows only distract me from the plays being acted in my own mind. I know a show is good when it outperforms my daydreams and is something I could've never come up with myself, therefore I'm mesmerized. I like to say I hate television, but when it's good I love it.
~Ed Northstrum

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every seven minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
~R. Serling