Charles Dolan, the billionaire who founded HBO in 1972, passed away on Saturday, Dec. 28, at the age of 98.
Videos by Suggest
His loved ones released a statement revealing he died of natural causes.
“It is with deep sorrow that we announce the passing of our beloved father and patriarch, Charles Dolan,” the statement read. “The visionary founder of HBO and Cablevision.”
According to the New York Post, Dolan started his career in 1952 when he was 26 years old. He founded Sterling Manhattan Cable in 1962, which had exclusive agreements with the pro-sports teams in New York.
Twenty years after establishing Sterling Manhattan Cable, Dolan founded Home Box Office (HBO), which was dubbed the first-of-its-kind premium cable channel. The following year, Dolan founded Cablevision.
He also founded News 12 in New York City, which was the first 24-hour cable channel for local news in the U.S.
Dolan is survived by his six children, including his son, New York Knicks Executive Chairman James Dolan, 19 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. He is preceded in death by his wife, Helen Ann Dolan, who passed away in 2023.
Charles Dolan Once Opened Up About Establishing HBO, Its Growth Over the Years
During a 2013 interview with his alma mater, University of Pennsylvania, Dolan opened up about first establishing HBO. His company was originally distributing commercial motion pictures at the time.
“We worked for sponsors of those films, everybody from the American Medical Association to Swift & Company,” Dolan explained. “Our sponsors had an interest in reaching particular audiences. Those audiences were not easy to reach.”
Dolan then said that he and his team thought it would be “great” if they could run the distributed movies over a wire. This wire would be attached to New York City hotels and play on antenna systems.
“So we went to the City of New York,” he continued, “and they said, ‘Well, that’s a pretty commercial purpose. Don’t you have something else you can do that would be of greater service to the people in the hotels?'”
He and his team used a Teleguide system. When the Teleguide wasn’t running, his team would run the movies.
“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,” he pointed out.
He and his team went to the city again. This time they asked if they could have a franchise to provide an “improved television service” to the residents.
“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,” he added. “That was the beginning. It’s a great story, though. It’s amazing to think of how that happened and the changes that have spun out from it. So, here are these movies.”