Charles Dolan, the savvy businessman who founded HBO in the early 1970s and later turned a small Long Island cable television business into a multibillion-dollar entertainment, sports and communications empire, has died. He was 98 years old.
Dolan’s family told Newsday, his newspaper, that he died of natural causes surrounded by his loved ones. “His legacy will live on as he will be remembered as a pioneer in the television industry and a devoted family man,” they said Saturday.
The Cleveland-born mogul got his start in the cable business in Manhattan. His Sterling Manhattan Cable Company was granted the rights by New York City in 1965 to wire cable TV service to the lower boroughs. This was a means to enable reception even in places where antenna reception is difficult, such as in high-rise buildings.
It was while building Manhattan’s fledgling cable business that Dolan came up with the idea to increase subscribers by offering exclusive programming through cable TV. His idea, detailed in notes from a 1971 vacation in France, was to give subscribers access to exclusive movies and sporting events. He then signed a deal with Madison Square Garden to exclusively broadcast games between the New York Knicks and New York Rangers.
“If I didn’t buy reception, I couldn’t buy movies or games,” he recalled in a 2013 interview at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania. “We wanted to offer a complete television service.”
His original idea, which he called the “Green Channel,” intrigued executives at Time Inc., the majority investor in Dolan’s Manhattan cable business.
Green Channel was renamed HBO before its launch, and executives including Dolan and Gerald Levin sought exclusive sporting events and movies.
“There was some discussion, and the first idea was to call it a ‘home box’ (slang for a box that delivers broadcast signals to cable homes),” Dolan recalls. “Then somebody said, ‘If we’re selling movies on the home box, why not make it the home box office?'” That’s what happened, and by the time it was converted to HBO. It didn’t take long. Everyone liked the name and that was the beginning. ”
However, Dolan’s Manhattan cable business struggled. According to Felix Gillette and John Kobrin’s 2022 book It’s Not TV, HBO attracted fewer than 10,000 subscribers in its first year, a number Levin called “very demoralizing.” “I’ll let you do it.” Time Inc. eventually bought out Dolan’s HBO stock in 1974.
But it was after this sale that Dolan became rich, bringing cable service to the New York suburbs through his Cablevision Systems company. Cablevision is based on Long Island and previously served most of the city’s fast-growing suburbs to the east, north, and west. It has expanded to other markets such as Boston, Cleveland, and Chicago.
At Cablevision, Dolan and his family attempted to replicate their success with HBO, launching a channel dedicated to movies called American Movie Classics in 1984. AMC and its sibling channels operated under the Rainbow Media banner, which is owned by Cablevision, but has since been spun off and now operates as AMC Networks Inc.
In 1994, Cablevision acquired a 50 percent stake in Madison Square Garden, which includes the namesake arena, the NBA’s Knicks, and the NHL’s Rangers, from Viacom for $1.1 billion, and three years later acquired the remaining 50 percent for $650 million. Acquired for $1,000,000. .
Dolan and Cablevision have built, bought and sold a variety of businesses over the years, including Sports Channel, America’s first regional sports network, and Clearview Cinemas, a New York-based theater chain. Cablevision also acquired electronics retailer The Wiz in 1998 and, at Dolan’s urging, acquired Long Island-based Newsday in a further $650 million deal in 2008.
In 2015, Charles and the Dolan family agreed to sell Cablevision to Patrick Drahy’s European telecom giant Altice for $17.7 billion. AMC Networks and Madison Square Garden remain owned by the Dolan family, with Charles’ son James Dolan running these businesses.
Charles Francis Dolan was born on October 16, 1926 in Cleveland. His father David was an inventor. Gillette and Kobrin said he came up with an early prototype of an automatic transmission for cars.
“When I learned how to drive, it was in a car without a clutch,” Dolan said. When you pull up to a gas station, the clerk will simply be surprised. ”
While attending Cleveland Heights High School, he earned $2 to write a weekly column for the Cleveland Press about Boy Scout activities, which led to him appearing on radio shows. He then served in the U.S. Air Force and studied at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio, before dropping out to pursue his interest in telecommunications.
With his wife, Helen, whom he married in 1951, he started a sports reel business and sent “Game of the Week” prints to television stations across the country in a syndication agreement.
He moved to New York as a producer for the syndication company Telenews, then joined Starling Television, eventually purchasing the company with a partner. Sterling helped clients reach target audiences with their films by showing them at conventions, typically held in New York.
One of his early deals with Sterling was to buy the cable rights to the 1968 Knicks-Rangers playoff game for $24,000.
“All home games were without power,” he said. “The stations didn’t air them because they were concerned that the gardens would jeopardize box office revenue. But our circulation was so low in Manhattan that they were willing to make us a deal. Ta.”
Although his wealth was built on providing television and Internet services, his time at the launch of HBO stayed with him. When asked by an interviewer at the University of Pennsylvania if he had ever thought about selling to Time, he replied: “Every day…I’ve never felt so far away from HBO.”
Dolan has six children, including James Dolan (and his wife Christine Dolan, CEO of AMC Networks) and Patrick Dolan, who runs Newsday. His brother, Larry Dolan, is the principal owner of baseball’s Cleveland Guardians. His wife passed away in August 2023 at the age of 96.
