the founder of HBO, AMC and Cablevision was 98

Charles F. Dolan, the pioneer and founding businessman HBO in the early 1970s, he merged a group of Long Island cable television systems into Cablevision, and later created the AMC channel, died. He was 98 years old.

“It is with deep sorrow that we announce the passing of our beloved father and patriarch, Charles Dolan, the founding visionary of HBO and Cablevision,” a spokesman for Dolan’s family said in a statement provided to him. Entertainment Weekly Saturday. “Mr. Dolan, aged 98, died peacefully of natural causes, surrounded by loved ones.”

They continued: “We are remembered as both a pioneer in the television industry and a devoted family man, and his legacy will live on.”

A native of Cleveland, born on October 16, 1926, Dolan would become a television expert in the 1960s when he created the nation’s first urban cable television network, Sterling Manhattan Cable. From there, he looked for a way to offset the cost of wiring densely populated neighborhoods in New York City, which led him to create a network that offered full-length, commercial-free movies to subscribers who paid extra to watch them.

The network was originally called The Green Channel, Dolan explained in a 2013 oral history of the creation of HBObut that soon changed as the idea evolved.

“There was a discussion, and the first idea was, ‘Well, let’s call it The Home Box,'” Dolan recalled. “Then somebody said, ‘Well, if it’s Home Box and we’re selling movies, why don’t we make it Home Box Office?’ That became it and it didn’t take long to convert to HBO Everyone liked the name and that was the beginning.

HBO’s launch in 1972 became the blueprint for premium channels, featuring commercial-free live events, sports and movies for a monthly fee. Although consumers would begin to turn to cable as their preferred TV experience, the business initially struggled, and by 1974 Time Inc. bought Dolan’s stake in HBO.

Following that sale, the mogul made his fortune with Cablevision, which he founded in 1973. The company offered service in Long Island and New York City before expanding to markets such as Boston, Cleveland and Chicago. Dolan completed the sale of Cablevision to Altice for $17.7 billion in 2016.

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Dolan also founded the American Movie Classics (AMC) cable channel in 1984, and in 1986 launched News 12, the first 24-hour local news cable channel. The billionaire businessman also held controlling stakes in companies that owned Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers. He was also the founder and chairman of the Lustgarten Foundation, the world’s largest private funder of pancreatic cancer research.

He is survived by his six children, 19 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. His wife of 73 years, Helen Ann, died in August 2023, aged 96.