Charles Dolan, a titan of the early cable industry who owned Cablevision, launched HBO and AMC Network and later branched out into iconic Recent York venues and sports teams, has died. He was 98.
Dolan’s death was reported Saturday by Newsday, the Long Island newspaper owned by the Dolan family.
Dolan’s influence in shaping the contemporary television business can’t be overstated. In 1961, he began the strategy of wiring Recent York for cable with the launch of Manhattan Cable Television. A decade later, in 1971, he had the vision to launch Home Box Office as a service that will work with Hollywood studios to distribute movies. He was a trailblazer in tapping satellite technology to speed up the distribution of cable programming across the country.
From 1973 to 1985, Dolan was founder and general partner of the cable company serving Long Island that became the Cablevision multi-system operator serving one of the crucial lucrative markets within the country. He was CEO of Cablevision from 1985 to 1995. Cablevision’s programming arm eventually transformed into AMC Networks, home to the channel that was founded as American Movie Classics. The corporate is now home to AMC Network, IFC, WeTV, SundanceTV, BBC America and streaming services equivalent to AMC+ and Shudder. AMC Networks was spun off as a separate company from Cablevision in 2011.
Dolan has served as chairman emeritus of AMC Networks since September 2020.
In a 2018 interview with the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication, Dolan explained that the concept for HBO grew out of a more limited service that Dolan’s company assembled to distribute movies to high-end Recent York hotels. The channel launched in 1971 because the Green Channel –which also included tourist-friendly details about Recent York. It was relaunched in 1972 as Home Box Office when Dolan and his partners received an investment from Time Inc.
“We found subsequently that the hotel people were telling us that the image that we provided to their guests within the hotel rooms was far superior to the image they were getting from the tv stations of all of the regular television programming,” Dolan told Annenberg. “That made us think, ‘Well, possibly we may be of service not only to our customers and the hotels, but in addition to the residents of Manhattan. So we went back to the City and said, ‘May we’ve got a franchise to offer an improved television service to the residents?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ And so they gave us a franchise to serve the residents of Manhattan as far north as 89th Street on one side of town and 72 Street on the opposite side of town. That was the start.”
By the late Nineteen Nineties, Dolan was the patriarch of the family that owned the Recent York Knicks, Recent York Rangers, Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall. Dolan’s son James has taken up the baton as the highest leader of MSG and other businesses. The Dolan family sold Cablevision for $17.7 billion to Altice USA in 2016. Dolan’s offspring remain lively in media and entertainment, most recently because the backers of the Sphere Entertaiment Co. which has made a splash in Las Vegas with its immersive-experience venue that’s expanding into other cities.
Born in Cleveland, Dolan served within the Air Force and attended John Carroll University before moving into media, in line with an in depth biography published by the Syndeo Institute, a part of Denver’s Cable Center. Within the Fifties, Dolan and his wife of 73 years, Helen, began a business out of their home producing short movies of sporting events for syndication to local TV stations. That company was acquired by a bigger outfit which led the Dolans to relocate to Recent York. Eventually, Charles Dolan and partners launched Sterling Movies USA, which distributed industrial movies to targeted audiences, often groups gathered at convention hotels.
Around this time, cable TV service was beginning to take root in rural areas where residents had trouble receiving clear broadcast TV signals. Big cities didn’t have much need for cable until Dolan realized that service could possibly be spotty in areas of Manhattan due to tall buildings and other obstructions.
“It was while wiring a hotel to choose up the Teleguide signal that Mr. Dolan recognized that the identical method could possibly be used to bring cable television to individual homes in Recent York, where tall buildings provided obstacles to satellite signals. In 1964, Mr. Dolan approached the town together with his idea. The next yr, he was awarded a franchise to wire the lower half of Manhattan — so began Sterling Manhattan Cable,” the Syndeo Institute biography states. “Knowing that his fledgling cable service needed more customers to lure more funding, in 1968, Mr. Dolan struck an unprecedented take care of Madison Square Garden to hold the Recent York Knicks and Rangers play-offs exclusively on cable for $24,000. This may be the primary of many local programming offerings created by Charles Dolan.”
Nearly 30 years later, in 1997, Dolan’s business empire would acquire full control of the Knicks and Rangers in addition to Madison Square Garden after buying out its then-partner ITT.
Throughout his profession, Dolan emphasized that his corporations at all times focused on providing unique content and revolutionary technique of distributing them to consumers. Technology was a way to an end for Dolan.
“That is what we imagine in,” Dolan told the Recent York Times in 1997 when he acquired MSG and the teams. “We’re not within the cable business. We’re within the content and programming business. We’re fundamentally a regional company, and if you happen to see yourself that way, and Madison Square Garden is offered, you possibly can’t help but want it. Our whole objective is to provide the general public higher access to more events.”
A yr after HBO got off the bottom in 1972, Time Inc. exercised its choice to buy out Dolan’s stake within the service. Dolan used the proceeds to purchase a small cable service on Long Island that he would construct into Cablevision. When asked in 2018 by Annenberg Center researchers if he regretted separating from HBO so soon, he replied: “Day by day.”
ln its later years, Cablevision was ahead of the curve in its embrace of DVR technology, HD picture quality, video on demand options and other consumer-friendly innovations.
Helen Dolan died in 2023 at age 96. Along with James Dolan, Charles Dolan’s survivors include five other children and various grandchildren.
