If Charles Dolan had never taken an interest in media, other business leaders and entrepreneurs would have found a way to harness the power of technology and the arts to lay the foundation for the pay television marketplace. But Dolan got there first.
The legendary founder of HBO and Cablevision, who died Dec. 28 at the age of 98, was the definition of a visionary and a pioneer. He recognized the potential of what wired TV service – in contrast to over the air broadcasts of local TV and radio stations – could bring to consumers. In the 1960s, Dolan saw the market demand for premium entertainment and sports, long before anyone ever paid a monthly cable bill.
John Malone, the Liberty Media chairman who was a peer of Dolan in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s as the CEO of cable giant Tele-Communications Inc., paid tribute to his colleague of a half-century.
“For over 50 years, I had the privilege of knowing Chuck Dolan as a partner, vendor, co-director, investor, customer and friend,” Malone told Variety in a statement. “His brilliant entrepreneurship helped build the cable industry and led the creation of great businesses in sports, entertainment and media.”
Beyond his skill in business, Malone highlighted the combination of integrity and derring-do that it took for Dolan to drive opportunity not just for his own business interests but for the nascent cable industry itself.
“The world needs more people like Chuck who are willing to take risks, to innovate and to do things in their own way — without concern for the way people think it should be done,” Malone said. “A better human being does not exist. We will miss him.”
Friends and colleagues pointed to Dolan’s unending drive to innovate and to launch businesses. He crafted the American Movie Classics channel in 1984, and he helped launch Bravo around the same time.
Josh Sapan, former CEO of AMC Networks, which remains controlled by the Dolan family, worked closely with Charles Dolan for more than 30 years as a senior programming executive. Sapan noted that Dolan deserves credit for launching the first regional cable sports network, coming out of Madison Square Garden, and later regional cable news channels via Cablevision’s News12 group.
“Chuck embraced the inevitably of change with a wildly clear picture of what would be next,” Sapan told Variety. “He was always inventing — never emulating.”
Dolan was the kind of boss who lets others enjoy the limelight – which is probably why his role as an architect of the modern TV marketplace is underappreciated, even among industry insiders.
“Chuck enthusiastically took up what was new and next even when it meant incurring on current business — and he did it all with a wit and a quiet generosity that allowed others to shine,” Sapan observed.
In business, Dolan was formidable but never unreasonable. After launching HBO, he left the company early on and turned his focus to building Cablevision into a powerhouse cable operator serving suburban families on Long Island. The depth of Dolan’s understanding of all aspects of the cable business was crucial to its growth.
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Jeff Bewkes, the former Time Warner CEO who also headed HBO for years, got to know his predecessor working across the table from him on carriage deals for HBO and other Time Warner channels with Cablevision. As a true father of cable, Dolan brought a unique perspective to the negotiating table.
“He was not anybody’s idea of a pushover. He was fair and reasonable. But he knew he was involved in a nascent industry,” Bewkes told Variety. “He knew if you have a take-no-prisoners attitude in negotiating, you’re going to kill the industry. He was pragmatic that way. He knew how fragile the programming side of the industry was and he didn’t want it to collapse.”
What’s more, “Chuck’s handshake was good for a deal,” Bewkes recalled. “Many times, we’d walk away [from negotiations] with a handshake and Chuck lived up to it.”
For Dolan, the spark that led to the launch of Home Box Office in 1972 was his experience working in New York with Sterling Television. Sterling had acquired the TV syndication company that Dolan and his wife of 73 years, Helen Dolan, started out of their home in Cleveland in the early 1950s.
The couple then relocated to New York, and Dolan launched an industrial films division for Sterling. And that led him to set up a deal with a clutch of high-end New York hotels to provide movies and informational content via closed circuit TV that was designed to reach tourists and convention-goers. Dolan took note of how often his clients commented on the strength of the picture quality on the hotel TV service in comparison to that of the local TV stations. That planted the seeds for two big ideas.
At the time, cable TV-like services were starting to pop up in rural areas of the country where radio and TV broadcast signals were hard to receive. Nascent cable services were formed to allow those households to have better picture quality for existing stations. Dolan realized that big cities such as New York also had demand for improved picture quality because of skyscrapers and other big obstructions that interfered with reception. And he saw that there was a hunger for more programming than could be found at the time on the limited number of locally oriented channels in the broadcast universe.
Throughout his long career, Dolan earned the respect and friendship of many rivals. Ralph Roberts, a fellow cable pioneer and founder of Comcast, was one of them, recalls Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast and a son of Ralph. Ralph Roberts died in 2015 at age 95.
“Chuck Dolan was in every sense a visionary and the industry would look nothing like it is today without his creativity, passion and commitment,” Brian Roberts told Variety. “He was a unique and amazing gentleman. Chuck and my dad shared the wonderful journey that has been the cable industry for six decades. He will be missed indeed.”
Early on in its development stage, the channel that became Home Box Office was dubbed “the Green Channel.” Dolan is said to have envisioned it as being akin to a video Macy’s, or a TV department store with a little something for everyone.
After years of planning and a few false starts, Dolan’s Sterling Television and its partner, Time Inc. , launched Home Box Office on Nov. 8, 1972. The entire audience at the time could have fit in a high school auditorium. HBO was received by all of 365 homes in Wilkes-Barre, Penn. – a prime spot for early cable because the local topography made it hard for residents to pick up broadcast signals from Philadelphia or New York. The first wave of HBO subscribers paid an extra $6 a month for the premium service.
HBO’s first night of programming consisted of a New York Rangers hockey game presented live from Madison Square Garden, which proved to be foreshadowing to the late 1990s when Cablevision acquired control of the team (plus the New York Knicks) and the venue. The NHL game was followed by an uncut airing of the 1971 Paul Newman-Henry Fonda drama “Sometimes A Great Notion.” That title certainly was prescient.
“Charles Dolan was a visionary creative, an extraordinary business leader and a great friend whose creation of HBO forever changed the quality and prestige of storytelling on television,” said David Zaslav, CEO of HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. “His impact continues to be felt today at HBO, Warner Bros. Discovery and across our entire industry.”
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From the Variety Archives
A story from the Nov. 17, 1982, edition of weeky Variety revisits HBO’s humble beginnings as the service marked the 10th anniversary of its launch.
