Charles F. Dolan, who founded HBO, merged a group of small Long Island cable TV systems into a network he called Cablevision and amassed a fortune building an innovative communications, entertainment and sports empire that included Madison Square Garden and its professional teams, died on Saturday. He was 98.
A representative for Mr. Dolan’s family confirmed the death on Sunday in a statement, which did not say where he died.
Cablevision Systems Corporation had 1,500 customers when Mr. Dolan founded it in 1973. It was serving three million cable TV households in the New York metropolitan area and providing internet and digital telephone service when he reached a deal in September 2015 to sell it to Altice, a European media company, for $17.7 billion. Altice USA now runs it under the Optimum brand.
Mr. Dolan “helped establish cable television as an economic, social and cultural force…
