Charles Dolan, media pioneer and Cablevision founder, dies at age 98

Charles F. Dolan, a media and telecommunications pioneer, of Cablevision Systems Corp. founded, has died, a family spokesman said on Saturday. He was 98.

Dolan first changed the television landscape in the 1960s when he laid cable in Lower Manhattan, betting that people would pay for programs that were better than those broadcast for free over the air. He then founded Home Box Office Inc., later known as HBO, American Movie Classics, and launched the country’s first 24-hour local news cable network, News12.

“He is one of the pioneers of cable television and one of the most brilliant people there is when it comes to programming and seeing the future,” Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, told Newsday in 1990.

On Saturday, the Dolan family said in a statement through a spokesman: “It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved father and patriarch Charles Dolan, the visionary founder of HBO and Cablevision.”

According to the family, Dolan died Saturday of natural causes and was surrounded by his loved ones at the time of his death.

“He is considered both a pioneer in the television industry and a devoted family man, and his legacy will live on,” the family said.

Cablevision purchased Newsday Media Group in 2008. Newsday is now owned by Dolan’s son, Patrick Dolan.

The senior Dolan, whose primary residence was in Cove Neck Village in Oyster Bay Town, expanded beyond television and owned controlling interests in companies that included Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers. The teams and sports and entertainment venues are now owned by the Madison Square Garden Company, whose CEO is Charles Dolan’s son James L. Dolan.

At the center of Charles Dolan’s holdings was Cablevision of Bethpage, which he founded in 1973 and expanded into one of the largest broadcast companies in the country.

Dolan turned over day-to-day control of Cablevision to his son James in 1995. However, the senior Dolan remained chairman until the company was sold to Altice in 2015 for nearly $18 billion.

Dolan had a reputation for being quiet and reserved. He rarely gave interviews. And for years he eschewed chauffeurs and drove his own car, even though he was one of the richest men in America.

He was married for 73 years to Helen Ann Dolan, who died last year. They have six adult children and lived on a 5-acre waterfront property, where for decades they hosted fireworks displays every Fourth of July, drawing hundreds of spectators who watched from boats in Long Island Sound.

Despite his polite demeanor—he spoke so quietly in meetings that people sometimes couldn’t hear him—Dolan had a reputation for closing deals with patient but intense zeal, sometimes taking years to get what he wanted. Rivals said he had waited decades for a chance to buy Madison Square Garden. When the opportunity arose, he jumped at it with abandon.

“I call him Bulldog Dolan,” former Univision chairman Andrew Jerrold “Jerry” Perenchio told the Los Angeles Times in 1994.

Dolan was born in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, one of four boys and the grandson of Irish immigrants. His father, David J. Dolan, was an inventor who developed a steering wheel lock to prevent would-be thieves from escaping in Ford’s Model T. He died of cancer in 1943, when Charles was 16, leaving him and his brothers to be raised by their mother.

At this point, Charles Dolan was already pushing into the media business. He earned $2 a week by writing a column about the Boy Scouts for the Cleveland Press.

Dolan worked at a radio station in high school, served briefly in the Air Force in the final days of World War II, returned to Ohio and enrolled at John Carroll University. There he met his future wife Helen Burgess in logic class.

Dolan left college before graduating and started a sports newsreel business in the couple’s apartment. Dolan and his wife used their kitchen as a studio, taping negatives to cabinets and putting together highlight reels that they sold to networks across the country.

However, the operation brought in little money. Dolan sold the company to a competitor, Telenews, in 1952, essentially trading his customers for a job with the company in New York City. The Dolans moved east.

In 1954, Dolan took a job at Sterling Television, where he helped launch a project to wire Manhattan with coaxial cable to carry news and tourism programs.

By the mid-1960s, cable television was a media backwater and limited to rural areas too remote for air signals. The conventional wisdom was that no one in a city or suburb would pay for television programming if it came with an antenna for free.

“No one but Chuck Dolan ever thought cable would make a difference outside of areas with poor reception,” said Perenchio, the former Univision executive.

In 1965, Dolan persuaded the New York City Board of Estimate—then responsible for the five boroughs—to award him the concession to wire the southern half of Manhattan. Dolan enlisted support from Time Inc. and others, then began the daunting task of laying underground cables amid the maze of buildings. Once it was up and running, Dolan’s company, Sterling Manhattan Cable, had to find a way to attract subscribers. He turned to sports.

In 1967, he signed a deal with Madison Square Garden to offer Knicks and Rangers playoff games. Back then, home games were blocked from regular television. So the only way to watch was to take a seat in the Garden — or subscribe to Dolan’s system.

“I remember walking down Third Avenue and every bar was packed to capacity,” Dolan said in Wired to Win, a 2003 book about the early days of cable television. “They were all on cable and showed the games that people couldn’t see on regular television. It was wonderful.”

But profits were still a long way off, and it would take more than just sports to keep Cable alive. Dolan, deeply in debt, needed more money to develop programs with broader appeal. In 1972, during a family vacation aboard the Queen Elizabeth II, Dolan hid in his cabin with an old typewriter and began writing.

As the ship steamed east toward France, he sketched out a blueprint for a national pay television network that he hoped would persuade Time Inc. – which already owned 20% of Sterling Manhattan Cable – to invest more money and that Taking business to the next level. He called it “The Green Channel.” America would know it as HBO.

The idea was to broadcast a mix of films and sporting events and broadcast them to other cable networks across the country. Time Inc. was impressed and the channel launched in November 1972.

Still, Dolan’s company struggled to turn a profit. His relationship with Time Inc. deteriorated. In 1973, Time Inc. purchased the company, including HBO. In exchange for giving up control, Dolan gave Time’s fledgling cable system in Nassau County, which had 1,500 subscribers.

“That was the beginning of Cablevision Systems Corporation,” Dolan said in the book “Wired to Win.”

Over the next few decades, Dolan built his subscriber base, established affiliates and developed programming, including SportsChannel, American Movie Classics, Bravo and others. He expanded to Brooklyn, the Bronx, Connecticut, New Jersey and elsewhere.

He took Cablevision public in 1986, but retained majority ownership.

“I have to admire the way Chuck built his company and maintained control,” John C. Malone, chairman of Liberty Media Corporation, told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. “It really is a miracle.”

In 1998, Dolan helped found the Lustgarten Foundation in Uniondale after Cablevision vice chairman Marc Lustgarten was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at age 51. The foundation is now the nation’s largest private supporter of pancreatic cancer research.

Dolan also served as a trustee of Fairfield University in Connecticut, where the business school is named after him. And although he never graduated from John Carroll University, he donated $20 million to the school in 2000 to build a science and technology center.

Dolan is survived by sons Patrick Dolan, Thomas Dolan and James Dolan; daughters Marianne Dolan-Weber, Kathleen Dolan and Deborah Dolan-Sweeney; and 19 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

The funeral preparations were still pending.

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