Charles Dolan, a titan of the early cable industry who owned Cablevision, launched HBO and AMC Network and later branched out into iconic New 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 cannot be overstated. In 1961 he started wiring New 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 would work with Hollywood studios to distribute movies. He was a trailblazer in tapping satellite technology to accelerate 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 most lucrative markets in 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 company is now home to AMC Network, IFC, WeTV, SundanceTV, BBC America and cstreaming services such as AMC+ and Shudder.
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 New York hotels. The channel launched in 1971 as the Green Channel –which also included tourist-friendly information about New York — and 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 picture that we provided to their guests in the hotel rooms was far superior to the picture they were getting from the television stations of all the regular television programming,” Dolan told Annenberg. “That made us think, ‘Well, maybe we can be of service not only to our customers and the hotels, but also to the residents of Manhattan. So we went back to the City and said, ‘May we have a franchise to provide an improved television service to the residents?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ And 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 other side of town. That was the beginning.”
By the 1990s, Dolan was the patriarch of the family that owned the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall. Dolan’s son James has taken up the baton as leader of MSG and other businesses. The Dolan family sold the Cablevision for $17.7 billion to Altice USA in 2016.
Born in Cleveland, Dolan served in the Air Force and attended John Carroll University before moving into media, according to a detailed biography from the Syndeo Institute, part of Denver’s Cable Center.
More to come
