Two Cents

"There's a thing we have to worry about in television called headroom ... Because of Kerry's height within the frame, his picture was necessarily bigger ... And the result was you had more lectern and less Bush, and Kerry's shot, the other way around. And so he looked taller [and] the president looked smaller."

Fox News anchor Brit Hume

"The bottom line is, we are not going to bow to outside pressure on restrictions."

Fox News spokesman Paul Schur, on the agreement between the Bush and Kerry campaigns to ban reaction shots during the presidential debates

"Viacom is a gigantic organization. CBS is a gigantic organization. It's not like the presidency, where they do a line of succession. Like, if Dave goes down, then the president pro tem of comedy becomes Jon."

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart, when asked if he is being groomed to succeed David Letterman

"For many of us, The Daily Show was our first engagement with politics. Because of your program, more young Americans than ever are aware of the sad state of the country. It is our belief that an endorsement from you would further legitimize political participation in the eyes of our generation and give us the confidence to stand up for our future."

From an online petition asking Jon Stewart to endorse a candidate for president

"The president did not receive the questions in advance, nor were there any restrictions on what I could ask. Again, that's impressive."

Fox's Bill O'Reilly in a fawning "Talking Points Memo" after interviewing President Bush

"For all the talk of the diminishing authority and reach of broadcast-TV news, of its shrinking relevance and even its inevitable demise, the network-TV news anchor remains a significant public figure, an icon. In the Mount Rushmore of our cultural imagination, you'll still find the faces of Dan and Peter and Tom, just as an earlier generation would've found John and David and Walter."

Chicago Tribune critic Julia Keller

"The show was especially troubling because the child's behavior may have suggested symptoms of bipolar disorder, requiring treatment vastly different from a father being admonished to spend more time with his son to 'go fishing.'"

From a National Alliance on Mental Illness letter to Viacom Co-President Leslie Moonves, criticizing CBS's A Dr. Phil Primetime Special: Family First

"I'll answer that in obnoxious detail, because I think it's complicated. They're more entertaining, and I don't mean that pejoratively ... They are conservative talk radio on television, and they are very entertaining about it"

CNN's Aaron Brown, on why Fox News is beating his network in ratings, to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Melanie McFarland