From 1979 to 1987, Slate portrayed Chuck Wilson on the ABC daytime soap opera One Life to Live. For a short time, from April to October 1985, while Slate was not on One Life to Live, he portrayed the character of Locke Walls on the CBS daytime drama (soap opera) Guiding Light. Slate appeared nine times on CBS's Gunsmoke. He also guest-starred three times on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour on CBS and then NBC, on CBS's Mission: Impossible, ABC's Bewitched, and NBC's My Name Is Earl.