Charles Dolan, the astute businessman who created HBO within the early Nineteen Seventies earlier than remodeling a small cable TV enterprise on Lengthy Island right into a multibillion-dollar leisure, sports activities and telecom empire, has died. He was 98.
Dolan’s household advised Newsday, the newspaper that they personal, that he died of pure causes, surrounded by family members. “Remembered as each a trailblazer within the tv trade and a loyal household man, his legacy will reside on,” they stated Saturday.
The Cleveland-born mogul obtained his begin within the cable enterprise in Manhattan, the place his Sterling Manhattan Cable firm was awarded rights by New York Metropolis in 1965 to wire the decrease a part of the borough for cable TV service. It was a technique to deliver reception to locations like excessive rises, the place antenna reception was tough.
It was whereas constructing out Manhattan’s fledgling cable enterprise that Dolan got here up with the thought to supply unique programming by cable TV to attempt to drum up subscribers. His concept, which he detailed in a memo whereas vacationing in France in 1971, was to present subscribers entry to unique films and sporting occasions. He subsequently lower a cope with Madison Sq. Backyard to air unique New York Knicks and New York Rangers video games.
“You couldn’t purchase the flicks and the video games except you additionally purchased the reception,” he recalled in an interview with the College of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg College in 2013. “We needed to supply an entire tv service.”
His preliminary concept, which he dubbed The Inexperienced Channel, was intriguing to executives at Time Inc., the bulk investor in Dolan’s Manhattan cable operation.
The Inexperienced Channel was renamed HBO earlier than launch, and Dolan and different executives like Gerald Levin sought out unique sporting occasions and movies for it.
“There was a dialogue, and the primary concept was, ‘Effectively, let’s name it The House Field [a slang term for the box that delivered broadcast signals to cable homes],’” Dolan recalled. “Then someone stated, ‘Effectively, if it’s House Field and we’re promoting films, why don’t we make it the House Field Workplace.’ That’s what it grew to become, and it didn’t take lengthy for that to transform to HBO. Everyone favored that identify, and that was the start of it.”
Dolan’s Manhattan cable enterprise, nonetheless, struggled. Based on Felix Gillette and John Koblin’s 2022 e-book, It’s Not TV, HBO mustered a scant 10,000 subscribers in its first yr, a quantity Levin known as “very demoralizing.” Time finally purchased out Dolan’s stake in HBO in 1974.
Nevertheless it was after that sale that Dolan made his fortune, bringing cable companies to New York suburbs through his Cablevision Techniques Corp. Based mostly on Lengthy Island, Cablevision supplied service in many of the metropolis’s fast-growing suburbs to the east, north and west earlier than increasing into such different markets as Boston, Cleveland and Chicago.
At Cablevision, Dolan and his household tried to copy their success with HBO, launching a movie-focused channel in 1984 known as American Film Classics. AMC and its sibling channels operated below the Cablevision-owned Rainbow Media banner, which it subsequently spun off and now operates as AMC Networks Inc.
In 1994, Cablevision acquired a 50 % stake in Madison Sq. Backyard, which included the namesake enviornment in addition to the NBA’s Knicks and NHL’s Rangers, from Viacom for a reported $1.1 billion, and it acquired the opposite 50 % three years later for $650 million.
Dolan and Cablevision launched, purchased and bought a wide range of companies over time, together with SportsChannel, the primary regional sports activities community within the U.S., in addition to the New York-based theater chain Clearview cinemas. Cablevision additionally acquired the electronics retailer The Wiz in 1998 and at Dolan’s urging bought Lengthy Island-based Newsday in 2008 in one other $650 million deal.
In 2015, Charles and the Dolan household agreed to promote Cablevision to Patrick Drahi’s European telecom large Altice for $17.7 billion. AMC Networks and Madison Sq. Backyard proceed to be owned by the Dolan household, with Charles’ son James Dolan operating these companies.
Charles Francis Dolan was born in Cleveland on Oct. 16, 1926. His father, David, was an inventor; Gillette and Koblin famous that he got here up with an early prototype of the automated transmission for cars.
“Once I realized how you can drive,” Dolan stated, “it was in a automobile that didn’t have a clutch. I’d pull right into a fuel station and the attendants would simply be amazed.”
Whereas attending Cleveland Heights Excessive College, he obtained $2 to jot down a weekly column for the Cleveland Press about Boy Scout actions, and that led to him showing on a radio program. He then served with the U.S. Air Drive and studied at John Carroll College in College Heights, Ohio, earlier than dropping out to pursue an curiosity in telecommunications.
Together with his spouse, Helen, whom he married in 1951, he launched a sports-reel enterprise, sending prints of a “Recreation of the Week” to TV stations across the nation in a syndication deal.
He moved to New York to supply for the syndication firm Telenews, then joined Sterling Tv, which he ultimately purchased with a associate. Sterling helped its shoppers attain their goal audiences with movies, often by displaying them at conventions held in New York.
One early deal he did with Sterling was shopping for cable rights to Knicks and Rangers playoff video games in 1968 for $24,000.
“All the house video games had been blacked out,” he stated. “The published stations didn’t carry them as a result of the Backyard was fearful about jeopardizing field workplace receipts. However our circulation was so modest in Manhattan that they had been prepared to make a deal.”
Whereas his fortune was made by offering TV and web companies, his time launching HBO continued to stay with him. When requested by the College of Penn interviewers if if he had ever considered its sale to Time, he replied, “Daily … I’ve by no means actually felt that a lot other than HBO.”
Dolan is survived by six youngsters, together with James Dolan (and his spouse, AMC Networks CEO Kristin Dolan) and Patrick Dolan, who runs Newsday. His brother, Larry Dolan, is the principal proprietor of baseball’s Cleveland Guardians. His spouse died in August 2023 at 96.