John Malone and Brian Roberts pay tribute to cable titan Charles Dolan
If Charles Dolan had never taken an interest in the media, other business leaders and entrepreneurs would have found a way to harness the power of technology and art to lay the foundation for the pay TV market. But Dolan got there first.
The legendary founder of HBO and Cablevision, who died on December 28 at the age of 98, was the definition of a visionary and a pioneer. He recognized the potential of what wired TV services – as opposed to over-the-air broadcasts from local TV and radio stations – could do for consumers. In the 1960s, Dolan saw the market demand for premium entertainment and sports long before anyone ever paid a monthly cable bill.
John Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media who was a colleague of Dolan in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as CEO of cable giant Tele-Communications Inc., paid tribute to his colleague of half a century.
“For more than 50 years, I have had the privilege of knowing Chuck Dolan as a partner, salesperson, co-director, investor, client and friend,” said Malone. Variety in a statement. “His brilliant entrepreneurship helped build the cable industry and led to the creation of great companies in sports, entertainment and media.”
In addition to his skills in business, Malone emphasized the combination of integrity and grit that Dolan needed to create opportunities not only for his own business interests, but for the emerging cable industry itself.
“The world needs more people like Chuck who are willing to take risks, innovate and do things their own way – without worrying about how people think it should be done,” said Malone. “There is no better person. We will miss him.”
Friends and colleagues pointed to Dolan’s endless drive to innovate and start businesses. He founded the American Movie Classics channel in 1984 and helped launch Bravo around the same time.
Josh Sapan, former CEO of AMC Networks, which is still controlled by the Dolan family, worked closely with Charles Dolan as a senior programmer for more than thirty years. Sapan noted that Dolan deserves credit for launching the first regional cable sports network, originating from Madison Square Garden, and later regional cable news channels through Cablevision’s News12 group.
“Chuck embraced the inevitability of change with a very clear vision of what the future would be,” Sapan said. Variety. “He was always inventing – never emulating.”
Dolan was the kind of boss who lets others take the spotlight — which is probably why his role as architect of the modern TV market is underappreciated, even among industry insiders.
“Chuck enthusiastically took on what was new, even if it meant dealing with issues at hand – and he did it all with a humor and a quiet generosity that allowed others to shine,” Sapan noted.
In business Dolan was formidable, but never unreasonable. After launching HBO, he left the company early and turned his attention to building Cablevision into a powerhouse cable operator serving suburban families on Long Island. Dolan’s deep knowledge of all aspects of the cable industry was crucial to its growth.
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Jeff Bewkes, the former Time Warner CEO who also led HBO for many years, met his predecessor while working across the table on carriage deals for HBO and other Time Warner channels with Cablevision. As the true father of cable, Dolan brought a unique perspective to the negotiating table.
“He wasn’t anyone’s idea of a con artist. He was fair and reasonable. But he knew he was involved in an emerging industry,” Bewkes said Variety. “He knew that if you adopt a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude during negotiations, you are going to kill the industry. In that respect he was pragmatic. He knew how fragile the programming side of the industry was and he didn’t want it to collapse.”
Besides, “Chuck’s handshake sealed the deal,” Bewkes recalled. “We often ran away [from negotiations] with a handshake and Chuck made it happen.”
For Dolan, the spark that led to the launch of Home Box Office in 1972 was his experience at Sterling Television in New York. Sterling had taken over the TV syndication company that Dolan and his 73-year-old wife, Helen Dolan, had founded from their home in Cleveland in the early 1950s.
The couple then moved to New York and Dolan launched an industrial film division for Sterling. And that led him to strike a deal with a number of luxury hotels in New York to offer films and informational content via closed-circuit TV aimed at reaching tourists and convention goers. Dolan noted how often his customers commented on the strength of the picture quality on the hotel’s TV service compared to that of the local TV stations. That planted the seeds for two big ideas.
At that time, cable TV-like services began to emerge in rural areas of the country, where radio and TV broadcast signals were difficult to receive. Emerging cable services were established to give those households better picture quality for existing stations. Dolan realized that major cities like New York also needed better picture quality due to skyscrapers and other large obstacles that hindered reception. And he saw that there was an appetite for more programming than was then available on the limited number of locally oriented channels in the broadcast universe.
Throughout his long career, Dolan earned the respect and friendship of many rivals. Ralph Roberts, a fellow cable pioneer and founder of Comcast, was one of them, recalls Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast and a son of Ralph. Ralph Roberts died in 2015 at the age of 95.
“Chuck Dolan was a visionary in every sense of the word, and the industry would not be what it is today without his creativity, passion and dedication,” said Brian Roberts. Variety. “He was a unique and wonderful gentleman. Chuck and my father shared the wonderful journey that the cable industry has been on for sixty years. He will indeed be missed.”
Early in its development, the channel that became Home Box Office was dubbed “the Green Channel.” Dolan would have imagined it as a video Macy’s, or a TV department store with something for everyone.
After years of planning and a few false starts, Dolan’s Sterling Television and its partner, Time Inc., launched Home Box Office on November 8, 1972. The entire audience could have fit into a high school auditorium at the time. HBO was received by all 365 homes in Wilkes-Barre, Penn. – a prime spot for early cable television, as local topography made it difficult for residents to pick up broadcast signals from Philadelphia or New York. The first wave of HBO subscribers paid an extra $6 per month for the premium service.
HBO’s first night of programming featured a New York Rangers hockey game presented live from Madison Square Garden, which turned out to be a foreshadowing of the late 1990s when Cablevision gained control of the team (plus the New York Knicks) and the venue. The NHL game was followed by an uncut broadcast of the 1971 Paul Newman-Henry Fonda drama, “Sometimes A Great Notion.” That title was certainly prescient.
“Charles Dolan was a visionary creative, an extraordinary business leader and a great friend whose creation of HBO forever changed the quality and prestige of television storytelling,” said David Zaslav, CEO of HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. “His impact is still felt today at HBO, Warner Bros. Discovery and across our industry.”
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From the Variety Archive
A story from the November 17, 1982 edition of Weeky Variety revives HBO’s humble beginnings as the service marked the 10th anniversary of its launch.
