By Shalini Ramachandran

Charles Dolan, a pioneer of the cable-television industry who launched Home Box Office and AMC Networks, died at age 98.

Dolan was the founder of Cablevision Systems, which over four decades grew into a leading pay-TV operator in the New York metropolitan area. Over the course of his career, his holdings in media included AMC Networks -- whose namesake channel aired "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad" -- Madison Square Garden Co., including the famous venue and ownership of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers; Radio City Music Hall; and the newspaper Newsday.

He "passed away peacefully from natural causes, surrounded by his loved ones," a family spokeswoman said. "Remembered as both a trailblazer in the television industry and a devoted family man, his legacy will live on."

Dolan, who was known as Chuck, often took a contrarian path compared with cable-industry peers and didn't shy away from a fight. He was one of the first industry executives to argue consumers should be able to buy cable channels a la carte instead of being forced to buy large bundles, an idea that is still resisted by entertainment giants. He took on major media companies in a landmark legal battle that ultimately legalized the cloud-based digital video recorder, an innovation now used by a host of online TV services.

Cablevision in recent years sold or spun off its media investments, including MSG, AMC and Clearview Cinemas, as the operator refocused on its core cable business.

Dolan for years toyed with the idea of selling the cable business itself, including to neighboring New York operator Time Warner Cable. But he always stepped back from such a move.

"If I had a nickel for every time we met with Chuck starting in the late '80s till the time I left in 2007, I could buy a lot of candy bars," said Richard Parsons, who oversaw Time Warner before it spun off Time Warner Cable. Parsons died earlier this week.

Dolan ultimately did let go of his crown jewel in 2016, at the age of 89, when a rich offer came in from a newcomer: Altice, the European telecommunications group controlled by French billionaire Patrick Drahi. The offer allowed the Dolan family a path for a lucrative exit at a time it was getting increasingly difficult for Cablevision to grow in the saturated cable market.

Dolan was born in Cleveland on Oct. 16, 1926. Innovation ran deep in the family. His father was an entrepreneur and inventor who sold patents to the auto industry, while his uncle created industrial products.

Cable-industry pioneer John Malone once said, after a deal with AMC, that one of Dolan's strengths was his "creative genetics."

Dolan's first foray into the media business came as a teenager, when he pitched photos and a column about the Boy Scouts to the Cleveland Press newspaper. That transformed into a regular drama program for local radio stations.

After their wedding in 1950, Dolan and his wife, Helen, spent their honeymoon on a cross-country road trip trying to promote a sports-radio-program venture, which ultimately failed. The couple's interest in media brought them to New York in the early 1950s for a job at Telenews, a syndicated news-film service for television.

One of his earliest business ventures was Teleguide, a service that delivered visitor information to New York City via a cable connection. In those days, cable television was still a nascent business focused on delivering TV signals to rural communities that were outside the reach of community antennas. A breakthrough moment for Dolan came in his discovery that coaxial cable -- which became the building block for early cable systems -- could deliver better TV signals to New York hotels than the rooftop antennas sandwiched amid the Manhattan skyline.

Dolan's next venture was Sterling Manhattan Cable, the country's first big-city cable operator. He secured rights to wire lower Manhattan in 1964 from the city's Board of Estimate, but the company was slow to grow. Early on, Dolan turned to deep-pocketed investors including Time Inc. and William Lear of Lear Jet for financial support. Hoping to lure subscribers, Dolan struck a deal with Madison Square Garden four years later for the exclusive rights to air National Basketball Association and National Hockey League playoff games involving the New York Knicks and Rangers, respectively -- the first of many programming deals to come.

Another big step came in 1971, when Dolan hashed out plans for what he described as "the Macy's of television," a commercial free channel for movies and sports that later evolved to become HBO. Time-Life took control of HBO several years later. Now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, it is still one of the most lucrative pay-TV channels.

In 1973, Dolan launched Cablevision, which was pieced together through the acquisition of cable systems around Long Island, N.Y. He went on to invest in local cable systems and TV programming. In 1976, Dolan launched a regional sports network, SportsChannel, and four years later founded Rainbow Media Holdings, which gave birth to big TV brands including AMC, Bravo and the Independent Film Channel.

He took Cablevision public in 1986, but retained a controlling interest in the company along with his family. In 1997, Cablevision took full control of Madison Square Garden, the home of the Knicks and Rangers, when it bought ITT's controlling stake. That allowed Cablevision to demand high carriage rates over the years for MSG Network, a lucrative regional sports network that aired the teams' games.

Dolan faced setbacks over the years. Like other pay-TV distributors, Cablevision endured its share of regulatory scrutiny and a series of high-profile standoffs with programming partners that angered some consumers.

The Dolan family attempted to return Cablevision to private ownership in 2005 and 2007, but investors shunned the move. Dolan also invested hundreds of millions of dollars in an unprofitable satellite-television venture called Voom. That set off a family and boardroom drama in the mid-2000s that pitted him against several Cablevision board members and his own son James Dolan, who was chief executive of Cablevision at the time.

Dolan later said, "Jim and other board members were concerned about the financial health of the company, so they said, 'Let's kill it before it kills us,' and I was on board with that."

Into his 80s, Dolan stayed deeply involved in his businesses, according to people close to him. He experimented with creating a high-speed wireless internet solution and sought out paths for AMC's global expansion, one of the people said.

Dolan and his wife, Helen, who died last year, had six children. He is survived by his children, 19 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

--Lillian Rizzo contributed to this article.

Write to Shalini Ramachandran at Shalini.Ramachandran@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 28, 2024 23:29 ET (04:29 GMT)

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