How Charles Dolan changed TV forever, from HBO to Cablevision and beyond

"Sometimes a Great Notion" was the first movie shown on HBO, then known as Home Box Office Inc., the premium cable service that would change television forever. It was the brainchild of Charles Dolan.

On a rainy November night in 1972, the film starring, Paul Newman, was beamed by microwave cables to a few hundred viewers in Pennsylvania, along with a Rangers hockey game. Already known as an innovative cable entrepreneur, Dolan had convinced his partners at Time Inc. of the then-novel idea that cable TV could be more than just a device providing better reception for TV viewers accustomed to rabbit-ear antennas.

"We realized that if we provided more than a reception service — if we did sports and if we did movies — our service would be far more attractive to the residents of Manhattan," Dolan later explained when asked about the genesis of HBO. "Then came the idea."

The power of ideas was the hallmark of Dolan’s remarkable life. He died Saturday of natural causes at the age of 98, according to a family spokesperson.

Behind his humble demeanor was a dynamo who ranks among the television industry’s most impactful figures. While television is, by its nature, a collaborative venture, it was Dolan who was so often the singular driving force behind innovation. The son of an inventor, Dolan recognized that a good idea could make all the difference. And he proved so over and over again.

Soon after the forging of that HBO arrangement with Time, Dolan left to launch his own company on Long Island. Eventually known as Cablevision, it would become the centerpiece of his great fortune and lasting legacy.

At the beginning, business experts laughed at the idea that Long Islanders, especially close to New York City’s television towers beaming their programming for free, would be willing to pay for cable TV. But Dolan was convinced of his vision and would prove his doubters wrong.

"We lived in Massapequa at the time when the whole idea of television by wire began to develop," he recalled in 1988. "How wonderful it would be, was the thought, if such wires could run in Massapequa, etc., and carry many channels in addition to those we were now able to select from in that area."

Dolan’s bet on his new fledgling company carried considerable financial risk for himself, his wife, Helen, and his six children, including his oldest son, Patrick, who is now Newsday’s owner. But within the next decade, Cablevision took off, signing up tens of thousands of subscribers on Long Island, throughout other sections of the metropolitan area, and eventually in parts of 19 states. It would become one of America’s biggest cable television conglomerates, with Dolan’s firm coming up with a surprising amount of programming along the way.

Innovative programming

From the earliest days of his cable career, Dolan became convinced television watchers would be willing to pay for sporting events, including the games of the Knicks and Rangers, teams he would later own.

In the early 1970s, Long Islanders viewed TV sports over the air, rather than via cable. By securing the television rights to these games, his initial company, Sterling Manhattan Cable, helped define a new era for the then-infant cable industry.

Dolan later sold Sterling to Time Inc., but his idea became the model for sports TV ventures like ESPN and his own MSG Network, in which the Dolan family still maintains a controlling interest.

Dolan was a seminal force in the creation of CNBC, the leading channel for business news today. In the 1980s, he also helped create the Bravo channel, with Cablevision’s Rainbow Media division combining efforts with Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment. Although Bravo today is best known for its "Real Housewives" shows (and is owned by NBCUniversal), Dolan originally envisioned this channel as featuring shows about fine arts and films.

Perhaps Dolan’s biggest programming success, again helping to define the state of American television, came with what is now AMC Networks, with the majority stake owned by the Dolan family.

Started in the 1980s with other partners through his Rainbow Media subsidiary, AMC eventually contributed mightily by the 2000s to what is now viewed by many TV critics as "the golden age of cable TV."

While his former brainchild HBO was coming up with "The Sopranos" and "Game of Thrones," Dolan’s own brain trust of executives at AMC produced such seminal hits as "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad" and "The Walking Dead." Today, AMC Networks has made the jump to streaming services with its AMC+. It is the home for other channels, like IFC and Sundance TV.

Transforming the news

Dolan’s vision also extended to news, with what is now News 12 Networks, a 24-hour local television news service launched by Cablevision in 1986. News 12 began on Long Island and eventually spread to New Jersey and other parts of the New York City region. Its TV reporters covered many of the local stories important to Long Islanders, but often ignored by the big network-owned news programs run out of Manhattan.

News 12 was a first of its kind in the nation and soon other cable firms followed Dolan’s example. Its programming reflected Dolan’s vision of Long Island as a suburban place where faith and family were important. His own friendship with the late Catholic Msgr. Thomas J. Hartman inspired "The God Squad" discussion show with Rabbi Marc Gelman, which debuted in 1987 on Cablevision and eventually became a staple of the Telecare network run by the Diocese of Rockville Centre. For many years, the loyalty of News 12 viewers proved important to Cablevision’s business by keeping subscribers.

In 2008, Dolan realized another longtime goal by purchasing Newsday from the Tribune Company, publisher of newspapers in Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere. As a longtime Long Islander, Dolan had privately indicated his interest in the paper before, but quipped that it had never been offered for sale to him until then.

Dolan agreed to pay $650 million for Newsday, outbidding media magnate Rupert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post. For the next decade, the Dolans provided financial stability to Newsday, even though the number of traditional newspaper subscribers was shrinking on Long Island and across the nation. 

Soon after taking ownership of Newsday, he sent to some staffers a package containing a Kindle — the first model of the e-reading device developed by Amazon — along with a note that asked, "Do you think this has a future at Newsday?"

Dolan, who had often anticipated changes in the television industry, eventually decided to make another major shift. By 2015, streaming services like Netflix and others were providing most of their programming over the internet, rather than coaxial cable connected to utility poles used by firms like Cablevision.

In September of that year, Dolan and his family decided to sell Cablevision to Altice LLC for a reported $17 billion, an astounding price at the time. The Dolan clan kept their controlling interests in AMC, the Madison Square Garden-related businesses and elsewhere. By then, Dolan had ceded much of the control of his media empire to his son James and other family members. The Altice deal initially included Newsday, but it was later sold back to Dolan’s son Patrick, who remains the newspaper’s owner.

Throughout his career, Charles Dolan maintained a family businesslike quality to his media empire, unlike many other seemingly publicly owned media giants with which he competed avidly. Even his ideas that didn’t work or didn’t get off the ground — like Voom, his satellite TV venture — had the distinctive Dolan touch of innovation and farsightedness that involved his family.

Along with his business interests, Dolan and his family became significant figures in Long Island’s cultural life. As philanthropists, Charles and Helen Dolan were strong supporters of the pancreatic cancer-fighting Lustgarten Foundation, named for a top Cablevision executive who died from the disease in 1998. The Dolan Family Foundation has provided many other generous grants to numerous New York institutions, particularly on Long Island, devoted to health, education and religious purposes.

Though his personal generosity and business acumen will be remembered by many Long Islanders, Charles Dolan’s lasting legacy is in the power of ideas that helped transform television, the defining medium of our age, and the American society it reflected. Without calling overt attention to himself, Dolan became one of television’s most important players. It was his particular visionary genius that could recognize a "great notion" and act upon it to his tremendous success and to our grateful benefit.