“Exterior shots showing blue skies add a levity and brightness to each show.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“The ground beneath you is shifting, and either you get sucked in by holding on to old ways, or you take a giant step forward by taking some risks and seeing what happens.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“You can’t change how people act, but what you can change is how you react.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“In the American office lexicon, ‘aging’ – and its close cousin ‘old’ – are inconsistent modifiers. While older women are often labeled as ‘tired’ and ‘out of touch,’ aging men get to be ‘distinguished’ and ‘seasoned.’”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I think reading a room – reading the personalities, reading body language – is kind of a lost art.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Rapid response is essential in the fight against hate.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“This is the person you think is your antagonist, who ends up being your greatest ally: the person who pushes, criticizes, and challenges you to meet a standard of excellence you might not otherwise achieve.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Science fiction is not quirky anymore; we live in a futuristic world now.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“We may be more sophisticated in how we hide it, but there are still so many phobias in this world, whether it’s Islamophobia, xenophobia or homophobia. I’ve been trying to do things that expose and help teach and draw attention to all of the ‘isms’ and how we do or don’t deal with them in our world.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“If I say something, I mean it. If I promise something, best as I can, I’m going to follow through. If I say I have your back, I genuinely mean it.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Realistically, guys who are into gaming are not necessarily watching television.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“There were a lot of misperceptions that Sci Fi was for men: that it was for young men, and that it was for geeky young men. We had to broaden the channel to change the misconceptions of the genre.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I bobbed and weaved through my career. And in hindsight, though I’d like to say it was a plan – it was not – the bobbing and the weaving gave me a broad base from which to become an executive who could say, ‘OK, I’ve done this, and I’ve done this, and I’ve done this.’ And nobody could BS me, because I’d done most of it.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“It’s all about tuning out the noise, tuning out all the stuff that simply doesn’t move the game forward – the doubt, the personal agendas, the often deafening fear of judgment and the need to please – so that you can ultimately get to that place of quiet, of calm, where you can focus on what really matters.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Harvey Milk gave hope to generations of gay and lesbian Americans by encouraging them to live their lives openly and to speak out against the discrimination and prejudice they faced.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I can’t tell you how many meetings I open up with, ‘My voice is last.’ I don’t want anybody to hear my opinion before I hear everybody else’s opinion.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Some mentors are more challenging than others.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Being complacent was never going to teach us anything.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“My parents weren’t at all in entertainment, but when I look back, something along the line prepared me and opened me up to entertainment.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I’m very lucky that my husband is a true partner in child-rearing. If I get home late, he gets home early or vice-versa. I travel more, and he’s able to spell me when I’m gone.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“My parents did great and provided well, and gave all their kids personal, moral, ethical values, not a belief that we were entitled to something.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“The biggest mistake to me is complacency.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“To put it bluntly, I feel relevant and valuable, and I am struggling to understand why, when women reach age 65, they encounter an invisible barrier of perception that says it’s time to walk away. Shouldn’t we have a choice in the matter? Shouldn’t our experience and energy be worth more?”
― Bonnie Hammer
“For me, turning 65 doesn’t include walking away from my profession because of age; I love my job and the company I work for.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“As a working woman at the height of my career, I know age has only enhanced my professional and personal abilities. It has brought a sense of calm to the drive for success.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“The younger me was motivated by a need to please others, by the pressure to climb the corporate ladder and make money, and by a fear of failure – all of which became more and more intense as I navigated the competitive landscape.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I have tremendous admiration for companies with the kind of pioneering spirit and innovation eBay has demonstrated from day one.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Prejudice and discrimination based on our differences is an unfortunate fact of life.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“We are not born knowing how to hate; we are taught how to hate.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Channel brand is so key.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I’ve never wanted to be a woman playing a guy; I love being a woman.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“When NBC bought USA and SCI FI in 2004, Jeff Zucker put me in charge of USA Networks. We did a lot of research to find out what was working and what wasn’t, and we actually had to hear a lot of things we didn’t like. USA was predictable; it was boring.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“My career is really, really important, and I love it, but the life highs – like seeing my son graduate – need to me to be more important than the career highs, which are fleeting.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“My very first real job in the industry was as a production assistant on a show called ‘Infinity Factory’ in 1976.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Many of the top-grossing movies of all time are science fiction.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Most people assume wrongly that science fiction is a male-based genre, when, in fact, there are far more women who tune into sci-fi than anyone expects.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Getting to a 1 rating in households is a sign that we’re building momentum. It gives us bragging rights.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I’ve been trained and lived my entire life on the smallscreen.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“My dream isn’t running a studio or doing anything managerial in any way, shape, or form.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“My dream would be producing, maybe directing – definitely not writing – one feature film.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“The TV mini-series is kind of a lost genre because the networks have given up on it.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Oftentimes, when a movie turns into a series, you never retain the creative auspices. You buy the idea, you buy the franchise, and then you bring in a whole new creative team and copy the tone or sensibility.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I wouldn’t be comfy going toe to toe launching a new scripted show against broadcast.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“’Farscape’ is a fabulous vehicle for looking at ethical, moral, political, and social issues.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“The biggest challenge to thriving in the marketplace is identifying the strategic moves that will keep us ahead of the competition.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Just because something is working today doesn’t mean it will work forever.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“You can’t trademark the word ‘sci-fi.’”
― Bonnie Hammer
“E! needs to be and really wants to be the pulse of popular culture.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I’ve not had any interest in running a movie studio, but I want to make one feature film.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I didn’t really have a road map ever.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I’m a big believer that sci-fi lives in literature, that the true sci-fi population is out there reading a gazillion authors.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“E! has the possibility of growing exponentially, and yes, I believe it could be a top 10 network.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“There’s an abundance of hope in Hollywood, as if it’s fueled by the sun, and maybe it is.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Hope is a key ingredient in what drives creativity – the hope of bringing to life what exists in the imagination, of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary – so it’s completely logical that Hollywood is the entertainment capital of the world. It’s full of people bursting with the desire to make the world laugh, cry, think.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I’m a Brooklyn-born, Queens-raised, Manhattan-honed New York gal who entered college with only the vaguest ideas about what was coming next.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“My Hollywood is a place where anything can happen, where dreams can become reality, and reality often morphs into fiction. It’s a place where people’s day jobs create magic.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“We can sit back and be part of a hurting America, or we can channel our energy into something positive and do what we can to break the cycle of hate.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Where we’ve been wise is that, while ‘Monk’ may have been a risk at the beginning, we’ve built its success and built on its success. We looked at what was working and why it was working.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I basically hit the deck running as soon as I wake up and don’t turn my brain off till long after the lights are out.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“As any female executive with a family knows, you’re making mental lists all through the night. You’re often not sure you’ve managed to sleep at all.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I think it’s the nervousness and the worry that it won’t last forever that keeps us working so hard.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“’Stargate SG-1′ is one of Sci Fi’s sure-fire hits. It’s got one of the best ensemble casts on television and one of the best production teams as well.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“’Glory’ pays tribute to honorable men who faced unimaginable discrimination even as they fought to preserve basic human rights.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“’Political Animals’ was before its time: a little darker, a little edgier. The audience wasn’t ready for it.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“We couldn’t own Sci Fi; it’s a genre. But we can own Syfy.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“With ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ we had such resistance from the fan base to changing it. The upshot was, we ultimately won them over.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“From my point of view, ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ isn’t just a science fiction masterpiece; it also happens to be one of my favorite books ever.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“It’s very hard to tell somebody how to write when they’re so good, and they’re a brilliant writer and a really good guy.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“A black actor is perfect for ‘Kojak.’”
― Bonnie Hammer
“You may not know it now, if you studied communications or engineering, law or medicine, business or classics: you’re a storyteller, too.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“The one thing that makes me nuts is if there’s a problem or something that I don’t know about.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I always want to do better; I always want to find a new challenge.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“What keeps me up is always raising the bar, and what makes my team happiest and also most worrisome is I’m always asking for more.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“The loudest voice in the room doesn’t always work. In fact, it usually grates to the point – to the point that when you really need to be loud, nobody listens.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Horror is a part of science fiction. It belongs in the definition of sci-fi.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Sci-fi is speculative fiction. ‘Field of Dreams’ is sci-fi.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I read a lot of sci-fi when I was younger. Loved it from the literary point of view.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“My mother was a full-time mom, and Dad started his own business. He was a mini-American dream story. Came from Russia at age 4, started his own pen business in Brooklyn. The company isn’t around now, but he created his own healthy little world, leaving a decent legacy. My dad taught at Cooper Union but was never fully graduated himself.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“When I was a young executive, I was always nervous that my idea wouldn’t be great. So I asked around, ‘What do you think of this?’ That became my filter for whether my idea was good enough. Then I realized it just plain made me smarter.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Women have an instinct for what the market is. We have tremendous insight in terms of understanding products and consumerism.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I’m a chick. I like shopping.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“I will never not take anyone’s phone call.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“Summer is a great opportunity for all of cable. People love to find original episodes.”
― Bonnie Hammer
“There’s so much interest and curiosity about alien life, interstellar travel. It’s always in the news.”
― Bonnie Hammer
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