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His possible business options have been varied and prolific: he founded HBO, bought Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks, and took over a Long Island newspaper.
By Richard Goldstein
Charles F. Dolan, founder of HBO, merged an organization of small Long Island cable television systems into a network he called Cablevision and amassed a fortune by building a cutting-edge empire in communications, entertainment and sports that included Madison Square Garden and its professional teams. . Samedi. Il 98 years old.
A representative for Mr. Dolan’s family reported the death in a statement Sunday, which did not specify where he died.
Cablevision Systems Corporation had 1,500 customers when Mr. Dolan founded it in 1973. It was serving three million cable TV households in the New York metropolitan area and providing internet and digital telephone service when he reached a deal in September 2015 to sell it to Altice, a European media company, for $17.7 billion. Altice USA now runs it under the Optimum brand.
Dolan “helped make cable television an economic, social, and cultural force in the United States in the last quarter of the 20th century,” wrote mass communications expert Douglas Gomery in the 2004 issue of the “Television Encyclopedia. “a publication of the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago.
The deal with Altice, completed in June 2016, included the Long Island-based Newsday and Mr. Dolan’s News 12 cable stations providing news from the New York metropolitan area. But the Dolan family regained control of Newsday two weeks later, buying back a 75 percent interest for an undisclosed sum.
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