Charles Dolan

Charles Francis Dolan (born October 16, 1926) is an American billionaire businessman, best known as founder of Cablevision and HBO. Today, Dolan controls Madison Square Garden Sports, MSG Networks, Madison Square Garden Entertainment, Madison Square Garden, MSG Sphere at The Venetian, MSG Sphere London, Radio City Music Hall, BBC America and AMC Networks. As of October 2021, his net worth was estimated at US$5.6 billion. Early life The son of an inventor, Dolan was born in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. He served in the United States Army Air Forces at the end of World War II and studied at John Carroll University, before dropping out and entering the telecommunications field. His father, David, sold a patent to Ford Motor. Career Dolan's earliest professional endeavors focused on the packaging, marketing and distribution of sports and industrial films, which he produced with his wife in their Cleveland home and then sold to televisions stations which syndicated the material. Dolan sold his interests to Telenews in exchange for a job, and when he was 26 years old, he moved to New York and founded Teleguide Inc, a service that provided information to hotels. That same decade, Dolan founded Sterling Manhattan Cable, the first company to wire buildings to have cable television access. In its early years, Sterling forged first-of-its-kind agreements to bring New York professional sports teams, cultural programming and movies into the homes of New York City cable viewers, including agreements with the New York Knicks and New York Rangers. Two years later, he sold Sterling Cable's Manhattan operations to Time Inc and renamed his Long Island business Cablevision Systems.