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Charles Dolan Dead: Media Pioneer and HBO Founder Was 98

He also had holdings including AMC Networks, Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks.

Charles Dolan, the astute businessman who created HBO in the early 1970s before transforming a small cable TV business on Long Island into a multibillion-dollar entertainment, sports and telecom empire, has died. Dolan and Cablevision launched, bought and sold a variety of businesses over the years, including SportsChannel, the first regional sports network in the U.S., as well as the New York-based theater chain Clearview cinemas. With his wife, Helen, whom he married in 1951, he launched a sports-reel business, sending prints of a “Game of the Week” to TV stations around the country in a syndication deal.

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