Originally, MTV had started off advertiser-supported, which means we didn’t charge cable operators to carry us. But now we needed money, so we had to go back and tell them, “Pay us or we’re going to go out of business.” If we hadn’t gotten those fees, MTV probably wouldn’t be profitable today. John Malone, chairman of the biggest cable provider, ATC, decided he didn’t want to pay us a lot of money, and he needed negotiating leverage, so he got Ted Turner to start the Cable Music Channel. I’m not sure Turner realized he was the stalking horse, but he was.

And the day we went public, Turner announced CMC, right on top of us. So we went into the war room and decided a couple of things. We were going to go see John Malone at ATC and try to cut a deal. But first, we were going to start a fighting brand. A fighting brand is: Let’s say you produce coffee, and it’s a great coffee, and somebody starts a competitor. The best thing for you to do is start competitive coffee to fight with the new competitor and keep your big brand out of the fight. HBO started Cinemax as a fighting brand against The Movie Channel. Whatever The Movie Channel would do, Cinemax would do. And that really knocked the legs out from under The Movie Channel.

So we came up with the idea for VH1. Turner was going to be family-friendly, he was going to sell his spots cheaper, he was going to be free to the cable operator. So we came out with VH1 and we said, “We’re gonna be free to the cable operator. We’re gonna be family-friendly. We’re gonna sell our spots cheaper.” Whatever he was, we were gonna be. I think VH1 cost $5 million. It was the cheapest network ever done. I didn’t care if it got beaten up and its teeth knocked out in the fight. I just wanted to keep my baby—MTV—out of the fight. We didn’t care a bit if VH1 was good.