Who is Charles Dolan? (Newsday 3/30/05)
http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzchuck4195722mar30,0,1176375.story
Who is Charles Dolan?
Stubborn visionary . . . pioneer . . .risk taker . . . and cliff diver
BY MARK HARRINGTON AND TOMOEH MURAKAMI TSE
STAFF WRITERS; Staff writer Harry Berkowitz contributed to this story.
March 30, 2005
Dolans by the dozen and their closest friends had amassed once again for the family's annual sailing vacation in the Caribbean. One day, a group of younger Dolans decided to try cliff diving from a 25-foot height, leaving the adults to less-death-defying activities.
Msgr. Tom Hartman, a longtime friend and confidant of Cablevision chairman Charles Dolan who accompanied the family on the trip five years ago, remembers that Dolan, then in his early 70s, went off with the cliff divers.
"The kids thought it was the neatest thing, that Uncle Chuck would do something like that," said Hartman, who has known Dolan for more than 30 years. " ... He was first out. He kept going back and trying it again."
To Hartman, the story epitomizes Dolan: "He's a risk taker. He's risked his entire future about 10 times, and he's always come out on top."
But will he come out on top in his latest gambit? In recent weeks, the risk-taking, quietly competitive entrepreneur has been thrust into a rare spotlight in the wake of an uncharacteristically public boardroom tussle at family-run Cablevision. It's a battle that ostensibly pits the founding father against his chief-executive son, James, in a board fight set to come to a head March 31. Charles Dolan has reshuffled the company board to buy time to keep his dream of a high-definition satellite TV service, called Voom, alive, a plan his son and former board members rejected as an expensive pipe dream.
People who know Chuck Dolan say they are unsurprised this soft-spoken media luminary would bring his considerable holdings to bear to keep his satellite vision alive. If it means culling and recasting his board of directors, riling investors and exposing a rare schism in the Dolan clan - so be it.
"Chuck doesn't give up on a vision or a dream easily," said Computer Associates founder Charles Wang, who counts Dolan as "one of the people I go to for advice." The rule for the Dolan vision: "Pragmatic or not, he'll drive it."
"True entrepreneurs never look at things and position themselves from the standpoint of, 'What if it fails?'" said Wang, who owns the Islanders and a vast real estate empire after retiring from CA in 2002. "You look to position it to make it win."
A record that speaks volumes
And Dolan is a man who has repeatedly won. He silenced skeptics in the 1970s when he bought Long Island cable franchises that seemed superfluous, given the free network programming broadcast from the city. He is the visionary who launched HBO, and he bought Madison Square Garden and the Knicks and Rangers.
Dolan is "one of those guys who creates businesses," Wang said. "He's not a technician, but he knows the media business, and he has a deep appreciation for technology." As such, "he recognizes the whole world is changing, that you can get content through satellite, the telcos, cable," and broad-band Internet.
The high-definition TV edge of a service, Wang said, will make its way to market, and Dolan understands the potential.
Hartman, who launched the religious cable channel Telecare and ran it for more than 30 years, noted that the public bickering was unusual for the family. But, he said, "I believe they'll get over it and you'll see Jimmy and Chuck working together on new projects."
People who have dealt with Charles Dolan over the years suggest that the quiet man commands big respect, even among boardroom titans. Leo Hindery Jr., who outmaneuvered the Dolans in high-tension negotiations with the YES Network over Yankees games, detailed the most practical way to deal with Dolan in his 2003 book, "The Biggest Game of All."
"You don't tell Chuck Dolan anything," Hindery told then AT&T Corp. chief executive Mike Armstrong. "You ask him, and you ask him very politely."
Dolan's approach can be deceptively courtly. A former media industry executive described the Cablevision patriarch's approach as non-confrontational - the opposite of that of his chief executive son.
Chuck "never bellows or pounds the table. He's congenial even in difficult negotiations," the source said. "His tendency when he doesn't agree with you is to just say, 'Let me think about that,' and to kind of walk away from it rather than pound the desk or yell about it." The negotiators may never hear back from him.
A case in point: the time Dolan and top Time Warner executives came "very close" to a merger deal more than a decade ago. This is how the former media industry executive recalled the incident:
"They had a final meeting to discuss the few details left, and it was clear that Chuck had second thoughts. Top executives were astonished.
"Chuck said, 'Let's put everything on hold while I think about it.' [A top Time Warner executive] said, 'When will you get back to me?' Chuck said, 'I don't know, but I'll get back to you after I think about it.' He never got back to him."
Dolan, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed.
Entrepreneurial roots
Despite the prominence he has gained on Wall Street and in keeping with his low public profile, Charles Dolan is not as well-known in his hometown, where he maintains his roots through family and charity work. His younger brother Larry, owner of the Cleveland Indians, is better known there.
The second of four sons, Charles Dolan's upbringing in Cleveland Heights, a hilltop suburb east of Cleveland, was middle-class and unglamorous.
His grandfather emigrated from Ireland in the 1870s. His father, David, was an inventor who counted among his patented works a "lock wheel" anti-theft device for Ford cars. His mother, Corinne, was a secretary for the charity arm of the local Roman Catholic diocese.
Though David Dolan died when Charles was 16, the son found a generous and entrepreneurial spirit in an uncle, Thomas Dolan, owner of a cellophane manufacturing company who helped support the family and funded his nephew's first business efforts.
Charles attended John Carroll University, a small Jesuit school in University Heights, Ohio, but dropped out after three years. He and wife, Helen, who attended night classes at John Carroll, started a small business out of their apartment, distributing short sports films to TV stations.
Undercapitalized, they sold to a service in New York and moved east, where Dolan joined Sterling Television. There, he helped establish Sterling Manhattan Cable and won key contracts to wire the city for cable. Realizing content was king, he negotiated exclusive cable agreements to carry Knicks and Rangers games, and he went on to launch Home Box Office.
After Time Warner, an 80 percent owner of Sterling, decided to pull the plug on the operation in 1973, Dolan lost control of HBO. But he walked away from the deal with enough money to buy Sterling's former Long Island cable franchises - giving birth to Cablevision.
Because Dolan did not grow up with wealth, some who know him say he is unattached to it, perhaps allowing him to take the kind of risks that have marked his career. His motivation, they say, has always been about his passion and vision.
The same old Chuck
"He hasn't changed since the day I met him 55 years ago," said Jean Dolan, a sister-in-law. "Only his toys have changed - from maybe pizza to a filet mignon, from a rowboat to a sailboat."
In an interview from his Fort Myers, Fla., home, William Dolan, a retired grocer and Jean's husband, said Charles was the caring big brother who never got angry.
"Larry and I played a lot of sports, and Charles and Dave did not," he said. "But Charles would be at those games to watch his brothers. ... He came to see the ballgame, and if you won, that was wonderful, and if you didn't win, he'd probably say, 'But boy, you played well.'"
Jean Dolan knows how competitive her brother-in-law can be. Before Charles Dolan owned any teams, he and Jean bet against each other on football; when he lost, he mailed her a $20 bill in pieces, forcing her to go to the bank to cash in.
And he's not one to back down, said Jean Dolan, recalling how she would unsuccessfully try to negotiate the point spread in their betting. "He'll say, 'I'll give you 12 points.' And I'll say, 'Come on, Charles, give me more than 12,'" Jean said. "He'll say, 'I'll give you 10 points.' And then it goes down, down, down ... I learned I take the first offer he gives me."
Now, as he attempts to salvage his latest dream, Dolan faces perhaps the roughest odds of his storied career.
Hartman, of Telecare, noted that even though his friend is intensely competitive on the tennis court, their matches often end with Dolan vanquished.
"He's still trying" to win on the court, said Hartman, who, with Dolan's counsel, built Telecare into the nation's largest producer of Catholic programming before stepping down recently as its head. At the same time, Hartman said, in the high-stakes world of media where Dolan stands as a titan, "I'm still trying."
http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzchuck4195722mar30,0,1176375.story
Who is Charles Dolan?
Stubborn visionary . . . pioneer . . .risk taker . . . and cliff diver
BY MARK HARRINGTON AND TOMOEH MURAKAMI TSE
STAFF WRITERS; Staff writer Harry Berkowitz contributed to this story.
March 30, 2005
Dolans by the dozen and their closest friends had amassed once again for the family's annual sailing vacation in the Caribbean. One day, a group of younger Dolans decided to try cliff diving from a 25-foot height, leaving the adults to less-death-defying activities.
Msgr. Tom Hartman, a longtime friend and confidant of Cablevision chairman Charles Dolan who accompanied the family on the trip five years ago, remembers that Dolan, then in his early 70s, went off with the cliff divers.
"The kids thought it was the neatest thing, that Uncle Chuck would do something like that," said Hartman, who has known Dolan for more than 30 years. " ... He was first out. He kept going back and trying it again."
To Hartman, the story epitomizes Dolan: "He's a risk taker. He's risked his entire future about 10 times, and he's always come out on top."
But will he come out on top in his latest gambit? In recent weeks, the risk-taking, quietly competitive entrepreneur has been thrust into a rare spotlight in the wake of an uncharacteristically public boardroom tussle at family-run Cablevision. It's a battle that ostensibly pits the founding father against his chief-executive son, James, in a board fight set to come to a head March 31. Charles Dolan has reshuffled the company board to buy time to keep his dream of a high-definition satellite TV service, called Voom, alive, a plan his son and former board members rejected as an expensive pipe dream.
People who know Chuck Dolan say they are unsurprised this soft-spoken media luminary would bring his considerable holdings to bear to keep his satellite vision alive. If it means culling and recasting his board of directors, riling investors and exposing a rare schism in the Dolan clan - so be it.
"Chuck doesn't give up on a vision or a dream easily," said Computer Associates founder Charles Wang, who counts Dolan as "one of the people I go to for advice." The rule for the Dolan vision: "Pragmatic or not, he'll drive it."
"True entrepreneurs never look at things and position themselves from the standpoint of, 'What if it fails?'" said Wang, who owns the Islanders and a vast real estate empire after retiring from CA in 2002. "You look to position it to make it win."
A record that speaks volumes
And Dolan is a man who has repeatedly won. He silenced skeptics in the 1970s when he bought Long Island cable franchises that seemed superfluous, given the free network programming broadcast from the city. He is the visionary who launched HBO, and he bought Madison Square Garden and the Knicks and Rangers.
Dolan is "one of those guys who creates businesses," Wang said. "He's not a technician, but he knows the media business, and he has a deep appreciation for technology." As such, "he recognizes the whole world is changing, that you can get content through satellite, the telcos, cable," and broad-band Internet.
The high-definition TV edge of a service, Wang said, will make its way to market, and Dolan understands the potential.
Hartman, who launched the religious cable channel Telecare and ran it for more than 30 years, noted that the public bickering was unusual for the family. But, he said, "I believe they'll get over it and you'll see Jimmy and Chuck working together on new projects."
People who have dealt with Charles Dolan over the years suggest that the quiet man commands big respect, even among boardroom titans. Leo Hindery Jr., who outmaneuvered the Dolans in high-tension negotiations with the YES Network over Yankees games, detailed the most practical way to deal with Dolan in his 2003 book, "The Biggest Game of All."
"You don't tell Chuck Dolan anything," Hindery told then AT&T Corp. chief executive Mike Armstrong. "You ask him, and you ask him very politely."
Dolan's approach can be deceptively courtly. A former media industry executive described the Cablevision patriarch's approach as non-confrontational - the opposite of that of his chief executive son.
Chuck "never bellows or pounds the table. He's congenial even in difficult negotiations," the source said. "His tendency when he doesn't agree with you is to just say, 'Let me think about that,' and to kind of walk away from it rather than pound the desk or yell about it." The negotiators may never hear back from him.
A case in point: the time Dolan and top Time Warner executives came "very close" to a merger deal more than a decade ago. This is how the former media industry executive recalled the incident:
"They had a final meeting to discuss the few details left, and it was clear that Chuck had second thoughts. Top executives were astonished.
"Chuck said, 'Let's put everything on hold while I think about it.' [A top Time Warner executive] said, 'When will you get back to me?' Chuck said, 'I don't know, but I'll get back to you after I think about it.' He never got back to him."
Dolan, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed.
Entrepreneurial roots
Despite the prominence he has gained on Wall Street and in keeping with his low public profile, Charles Dolan is not as well-known in his hometown, where he maintains his roots through family and charity work. His younger brother Larry, owner of the Cleveland Indians, is better known there.
The second of four sons, Charles Dolan's upbringing in Cleveland Heights, a hilltop suburb east of Cleveland, was middle-class and unglamorous.
His grandfather emigrated from Ireland in the 1870s. His father, David, was an inventor who counted among his patented works a "lock wheel" anti-theft device for Ford cars. His mother, Corinne, was a secretary for the charity arm of the local Roman Catholic diocese.
Though David Dolan died when Charles was 16, the son found a generous and entrepreneurial spirit in an uncle, Thomas Dolan, owner of a cellophane manufacturing company who helped support the family and funded his nephew's first business efforts.
Charles attended John Carroll University, a small Jesuit school in University Heights, Ohio, but dropped out after three years. He and wife, Helen, who attended night classes at John Carroll, started a small business out of their apartment, distributing short sports films to TV stations.
Undercapitalized, they sold to a service in New York and moved east, where Dolan joined Sterling Television. There, he helped establish Sterling Manhattan Cable and won key contracts to wire the city for cable. Realizing content was king, he negotiated exclusive cable agreements to carry Knicks and Rangers games, and he went on to launch Home Box Office.
After Time Warner, an 80 percent owner of Sterling, decided to pull the plug on the operation in 1973, Dolan lost control of HBO. But he walked away from the deal with enough money to buy Sterling's former Long Island cable franchises - giving birth to Cablevision.
Because Dolan did not grow up with wealth, some who know him say he is unattached to it, perhaps allowing him to take the kind of risks that have marked his career. His motivation, they say, has always been about his passion and vision.
The same old Chuck
"He hasn't changed since the day I met him 55 years ago," said Jean Dolan, a sister-in-law. "Only his toys have changed - from maybe pizza to a filet mignon, from a rowboat to a sailboat."
In an interview from his Fort Myers, Fla., home, William Dolan, a retired grocer and Jean's husband, said Charles was the caring big brother who never got angry.
"Larry and I played a lot of sports, and Charles and Dave did not," he said. "But Charles would be at those games to watch his brothers. ... He came to see the ballgame, and if you won, that was wonderful, and if you didn't win, he'd probably say, 'But boy, you played well.'"
Jean Dolan knows how competitive her brother-in-law can be. Before Charles Dolan owned any teams, he and Jean bet against each other on football; when he lost, he mailed her a $20 bill in pieces, forcing her to go to the bank to cash in.
And he's not one to back down, said Jean Dolan, recalling how she would unsuccessfully try to negotiate the point spread in their betting. "He'll say, 'I'll give you 12 points.' And I'll say, 'Come on, Charles, give me more than 12,'" Jean said. "He'll say, 'I'll give you 10 points.' And then it goes down, down, down ... I learned I take the first offer he gives me."
Now, as he attempts to salvage his latest dream, Dolan faces perhaps the roughest odds of his storied career.
Hartman, of Telecare, noted that even though his friend is intensely competitive on the tennis court, their matches often end with Dolan vanquished.
"He's still trying" to win on the court, said Hartman, who, with Dolan's counsel, built Telecare into the nation's largest producer of Catholic programming before stepping down recently as its head. At the same time, Hartman said, in the high-stakes world of media where Dolan stands as a titan, "I'm still trying."
Personally, I enjoyed that little "glimpse" of the "private lives", and I am further convinced that the light at the end of the tunnel will probably not be a train! 
