Wit & Attitude Quote by Dan Fogelberg

Fogelberg is taking a swing at television not as technology, but as an atmosphere: bright, flattening, and politely hostile to the mess that makes rock feel alive. Calling TV a "foolish medium" isn’t just a gripe about sound quality or camera angles. It’s an artist defending a particular kind of authenticity - the sweaty, imperfect feedback loop between performer and crowd - against a platform built to domesticate it.

The sharpest move is the line "Nobody ever comes off well on TV". That’s a blanket statement, but it works because it smuggles in a truth about the medium’s power. TV doesn’t merely show you; it edits you, frames you, and converts charisma into a set of optics: how you look under studio lights, how you read in close-up, whether your intensity plays as passion or awkwardness. Rock 'n roll thrives on scale and volume, on being too much. TV specializes in trimming "too much" into something safe enough for the living room.

There’s also self-protection here. Fogelberg, often tagged as sensitive and singer-songwriter earnest rather than swaggering rock god, is rejecting a stage where that earnestness could be recoded as softness, where the camera can turn sincerity into cheese. It’s a subtle critique of a culture that treats musicians like content - interchangeable guests on a schedule - instead of builders of a mood you have to enter. In that sense, the quote doubles as an argument for live music as the last place artists can’t be reduced to a shot list.