Charles Dolan, media pioneer and Cablevision founder, dies at 98
Charles F. Dolan, a media and telecommunications pioneer who founded Cablevision Systems Corp., has died, a family spokesperson said Saturday. He was 98.
Dolan first changed the landscape of television in the 1960s, when he laid cable in lower Manhattan and gambled that people would pay for programs superior to those broadcast for free over the air. He went on to found Home Box Office Inc., later known as HBO, American Movie Classics and launched the country’s first 24-hour cable channel for local news, News 12.
“He’s one of the pioneers of cable television and one of the most brilliant people there is when it comes to programming and seeing what’s ahead,” Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, told Newsday in 1990.
“It is with deep sorrow that we announce the passing of our beloved father and patriarch, Charles Dolan, the visionary founder of HBO and Cablevision,” said a family statement sent by the spokesperson Saturday.
Dolan died of natural causes and was surrounded by his loved ones at the time of his death, according to the family.
“Remembered as both a trailblazer in the television industry and a devoted family man, his legacy will live on,” the family statement said.
Cablevision purchased Newsday Media Group in 2008. Newsday is now owned by Dolan’s son Patrick Dolan.
The senior Dolan, whose primary home was in Cove Neck Village in Oyster Bay Town, expanded beyond television to own a controlling stake in companies that owned 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 Dolan.
At the center of Charles Dolan’s holdings was Cablevision of Bethpage, which he founded in 1973 and built into one of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies.
Dolan passed day-to-day control of the company to his son James in 1995. But Charles Dolan remained chairman of the board until the company was sold to Altice in 2015 for nearly $18 billion.
Charles Dolan in 1979. Dolan had just announced a new cable network in Queens. Credit: Newsday/Dick Yarwood
Dolan had the reputation of being soft-spoken and reserved. He rarely granted interviews. And for years he eschewed chauffeurs and drove his own car, despite being one of the richest men in America.
He was married for 73 years to Helen Ann Dolan, who died last year. They have six grown children and lived on a five-acre waterfront estate in Cove Neck, where for decades they hosted annual July Fourth fireworks displays that attracted hundreds of onlookers who watched from boats in Long Island Sound.
Despite his courtly demeanor — he spoke so softly in meetings that people sometimes couldn’t hear him — Dolan had a reputation for pursuing deals with patient yet intense fervor, sometime taking years to get what he wanted. Competitors said he waited decades for a chance to buy Madison Square Garden. When the opportunity arrived, he leapt with abandon.
“I call him bulldog Dolan,” former Univision chairman Andrew Jerrold “Jerry” Perenchio told the Los Angeles Times in 1994.
In 1998, Dolan helped found The Lustgarten Foundation of Bethpage, which is now the nation’s largest private supporter of pancreatic cancer research.
Dolan was also a trustee of Fairfield University in Connecticut. And despite never graduating from John Carroll University, in 2000 he gave the school $20 million to build a science and technology center.
Dolan is survived by children Patrick Dolan, Thomas Dolan, James Dolan, Marianne Dolan-Weber, Kathleen Dolan and Deborah Dolan-Sweeney; and their 19 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements were pending as of Saturday.
With James T. Madore, Joe Ryan and Dandan Zou
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