Bill Carter
William J. Carter joined The New York Times as a national media reporter in 1989. In addition to his work for the newspaper, Mr. Carter has written numerous articles for The New York Times Magazine, including four cover stories.
Mr. Carter has covered the television industry for over 25 years. From 1975 until 1989, he was a television critic for The Baltimore Sun, writing four to six columns, reports and features per week, as well as a weekly television sports column. From 1973 to 1975, Mr. Carter was assistant foreign editor at The Sun, substituting at times as foreign editor, national editor and news editor.
Mr. Carter's articles have also appeared in TV Guide, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Newsday, Advertising Age, The Washington Journalism Review and Electronic Media.
He has been a guest on many television and radio programs including, 'Nightline,' 'Today,' 'Good Morning America,' 'The Larry King Show,' ESPN Sports Century, and The MSNBC News with Brian Williams.
Mr. Carter is the author of the 1994 best-selling book, 'The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno and the Network Battle for the Night.' He is also the co-author of the 1987 book 'Monday Night Mayhem: The Inside Story of ABC's Monday Night Football.' In 2006, Mr. Carter published the book 'Desperate Networks' a behind-the-scenes story of some of the biggest shows on television.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. on August 31, 1949, Mr. Carter received a B.A. degree in English from The University of Notre Dame in 1971 (Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude) and an M.A. degree in journalism from The Pennsylvania State University in 1972. He is married and has two children.
(2006)
“Expats of any country are quick to lose their sense of humour, beaten down by a lifetime of defending the land they no longer live in.”
“Someone who spoke English had been listening to his speeches of promised freedom and would have realized they were the drunken lies of men who have titles of power but no authority to exercise it.”
“War is always more complex. Economics, history, religion all have a role, but not for the ones dodging the bullets. They just get blown around like seeds in the wind until the city folk with calculators and Swiss bank accounts stop talking rot from a bunker under a mountain.”
“Religion didn't matter to the city drunks but they knew it mattered to the village people. What the city people wanted was land. Power. But because that all sounds rather greedy and a bit crass, they made it religious and ethnic.”
“If there was a bad guy we could appeal to the people because, like it or not, we, the huddled masses, want our public figures to be good or bad but rarely allow them to mix the two. Not good an bad. We place people in these categories, which then creates a smooth story-line but also a dichotomy. It's why we like our male movie stars to be either bad boys or heroes, our leading ladies sluts or soccer moms. We like our politicians to be tough guys or saints. What we don't like are any signs of actual humanity, a mixture of the two. So we are left with the question: who is the bad guy? And is the bad guy in control of all that is bad?”
“Surely, when looking back, our lives can, for the most part, be accounted for in our interactions with others. That is where memories are stored, in one another. And yet each person is unique enough in his or her own thoughts that no two people are going to remember the same experience in the same way.”
“In this journey we call life, we are all ultimately alone.”
“I watched the refugee kids swim. They are easy to spot. They are the ones whose mothers stand on the shore watching the horizon instead of their child.”
“It's my experience that people want to do something, but become confused by an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, not knowing what to do, and in the end do the only thing they believe they possibly can: nothing.”
“That week we tried everything to bury our heads in the sand. But the problem remains the same world over; the sand is never quite deep enough.”
“It was not our war, but it would be our disgrace, our shame. The West was filling to declare a war over the price of oil, but when it came to the wholesale slaughter of human beings we folded our hands across our chests and tapped our heels, with great anticipation that Sunday's sporting events would be wonderfully entertaining”
“Grief produces an abundant energy that must find a way to burn itself up. And that is the fundamental problem, one that can take a lifetime to exhaust.”
“The one thought Conan had on the spot about the half hour at 11:35 was that it would likely exacerbate the problem he already had with Leno. 'So at least now, Jay does his show, but there's the break of the news, and that's kind of the reset button,' Conan said to Gaspin and Graboff. 'At 11:35 Jay's going to come out and do twenty jokes. And then what's he going to do?'When they replied that it seemed likely he would have only one guest, Conan said, 'OK. And then I come out and do what?'The NBC guys didn't really have an answer for that other than what Conan had already been doing: his own monologue. That this now seemed like a late-night pileup - three shows with monologues lined up end to end - was the implication no one had really addressed.Finally Conan did have something he really wanted to say, something that had almost burned a hole in his chest. 'What does Jay have on you?' Conan asked, his voice still low, his tone still even. 'What does this guy have on you people? What the hell is it about Jay?”