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Howard Beale: I'm gonna blow my brains out right on the air, right in the middle of the seven o'clock news. Max Schumacher: Well, you'll get a hell of a rating, I'll tell you that. A 50 share, at least. We could make a series of it. Suicide of the Week. Aw, hell, why limit ourselves? Execution of the Week. Howard Beale: Terrorist of the Week. Max Schumacher: I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, automobile smash-ups: The Death Hour. A great Sunday night show for the whole family. It'd wipe that fuckin' Disney right off the air.

Network (film), CC BY-SA 4.0

Howard Beale: [on the air] Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the 24th, and this is my last broadcast. Yesterday I announced on this program that I was going to commit public suicide, admittedly an act of madness. Well, I'll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit. I just ran out of bullshit. Harry Hunter: [picks up ringing phone in editing room] Mr. Schumacher's right here, do you want to talk to him? Howard Beale: Am I still on the air? I really don't know any other way to say it other than I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. And if we can't think up any reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit. Max Schumacher: [on the phone] Yeah, Tom, what is it? Howard Beale: We don't know why we go through all this pointless pain, humiliation, and decay. So there better be someone somewhere who does know. That's the God bullshit. Max Schumacher: He's saying that life is bullshit, and it is, so what are you screaming about? How

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Diana Christensen: I think we can get a hell of a Movie of the Week out of it, maybe even a series...Look, we've got a bunch of hobgoblin radicals called the Ecumenical Liberation Army who go around taking home movies of themselves robbing banks. Maybe they'll take movies of themselves kidnapping heiresses, hijacking 747's, bombing bridges, assassinating ambassadors. We'd open each week's segment with their authentic footage, hire a couple of writers to write some story behind that footage, and we've got ourselves a series. George Bosch: A series about a bunch of, uh, bank-robbing guerrillas? Barbara Schlesinger: What are we gonna call it - the Mao Tse-Tung Hour? Diana Christensen: Why not? They've got 'Strike Force', 'Task Force', 'SWAT'. Why not Che Guevara and his own little 'Mod Squad'. Look, I sent you all a concept analysis report yesterday. Did any of you read it? Well, in a nutshell, it said, 'The American people are turning sullen. They've been clobbered on all sides by Vietna

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Diana Christensen: We just increased our audience by twenty or thirty million people in one night. Now, you're not gonna get something like this dumped in your lap for the rest of your days, and you can't just piss it away. Howard Beale got up there last night and said what every American feels, that he's tired of all the bullshit. He's articulating the popular rage. I want that show, Frank. I can turn that show into the biggest smash on television. Frank Hackett: What do you mean, you want that show? It's a news show. It's not your department. Diana Christensen: I see Howard Beale as a latter-day prophet, a magnificent messianic figure, inveighing against the hypocrisies of our times, a strip Savonarola, Monday through Friday. I tell you, Frank, that could just go through the roof. And I'm talking about a six dollar cost per thousand show! I'm talking about a hundred, a hundred thirty thousand dollar minutes! Do you want to figure out the revenues of a strip show that sells for a hund

Network (film), CC BY-SA 4.0

Nelson Chaney: All I know is that this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting. Frank Hackett: We're not a respectable network. We're a whorehouse network, and we have to take whatever we can get. Nelson Chaney: Well, I don't want any part of it. I don't fancy myself the president of a whorehouse. Frank Hackett: That's very commendable of you, Nelson. Now sit down. Your indignation is duly noted; you can always resign tomorrow.

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Max Schumacher: He could be jumping off a roof for all I know. The man is insane. He's not responsible for himself. He needs care and treatment. And all you grave-robbers think about is that he's a hit! Diana Christensen: You know, Max, it's just possible that he isn't insane, that he is, in fact, imbued with some special spirit. Max Schumacher: My God, I'm supposed to be the romantic. You're supposed to be the hard-bitten realist. Diana Christensen: All right. Howard Beale obviously fills a void. The audience out there obviously wants a prophet, even a manufactured one, even if he's as mad as Moses. By tomorrow, he'll have a 50 share, maybe even a 60. Howard Beale is processed instant God, and right now, it looks like he may just go over bigger than Mary Tyler Moore. Max Schumacher: I am not putting Howard back on the air. Diana Christensen: It's not your show any more, Max, it's mine. Frank Hackett: I gave her the show, Schumacher. I'm putting the network news show under programming.

Network (film), CC BY-SA 4.0