Dan Patrick

But when MTV came along, CNN and ESPN were the only 24-7 cable shows.

Cable was in its infancy.

The rural communities of America starting in the mid-70s were the ones who embraced cable television.

Turn of the decade...

You know, it was only those two channels.

MTV comes along and blows everybody away.

And within one year, there were several million people who were addicted to it.

But that first month was experimental.

I'd say the whole first year was an experiment.

We changed everything every day from the set to what we did as hosts on the show.

The one thing I really appreciate about MTV was that we were going to blow the model up.

What's a TV show?

What is a talking head in between the videos about?

We're not newscasters.

We became everybody's friends.

We were the liaison between the wild world of rock and roll and people sitting in their homes in the middle of America watching at two in the morning, you know, watching these crazy videos.

It was an atmosphere.

that we created and uh... again early on was held up with duct tape uh... and later i got put paid at the very end of my life at mtv in eighty seven i finally got paid a fair wage what were you making when you first started i was making uh... around thirty five thousand dollars

Which, to me, was better than the starving actor wage I was making.

I was bartending, waiting tables, and my criteria for a gig.