The History of Cablevision
Cablevision Systems Corp. is a telecommunications, entertainment and media company whose primary products include cable television, telephone, and high-speed Internet access. As of 2011, the company's subscribers included about 5 million households and business in the New York Metropolitan area. Founded by cable TV pioneer Charles F. Dolan in 1973, the also owns a group of media and programming properties, including Newsday, Star Community Publishing, and News 12 Networks. Cablevision is based in Bethpage, N.Y., and Dolan is its president and CEO.
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Background
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Dolan was one of the early pioneers of cable television. In 1965, he started a cable TV company, Sterling Manhattan, and obtained a franchise to provide cable TV in the southern part of Manhattan. Dolan also created the Home Box Office (HBO) channel, the nation's first paying TV channel. However, one of Dolan's partners in the Sterling venture, Time Inc., which owned 80 percent of the company, decided to liquidate in 1973 after Dolan accumulated significant debts. However, Dolan was still convinced that TV viewers in Long Island wanted alternative, commercial-free viewing options to the free, over-the-air TV broadcasts, and that they would be willing to pay for it. Dolan created Long Island Cable Communications Development Co. and began offering HBO to subscribers on Long Island.
Growth
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The successes with HBO allowed Dolan to raise venture capital and attract more customers. The company gained broadcast rights for local sports teams that were blacked out, including the New York Mets, Islanders, Nets and Yankees games. After enlisting help from other business partners such as magazine publisher Hugh Hefner, raising more capital, Cablevision expanded into new markets, including New Jersey, Yonkers, New York, and in Chicago. As of 1980, Cablevision had 155,000 subscribers and was valued at $250 million.
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Rainbow
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As Cablevision continued growing through the 1980s, the company formed Rainbow Programming Services, a subsidiary designed to create new cable TV programming. Rainbow soon developed the American Movie Classics Channel and Bravo, which each showed memorable and classic films. In addition, Rainbow also established cable channels to cover news and sports. Sports Channel was highly successful, earning revenues from advertising and subscriptions.
Business Expansion
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Between the late 1980s through the 1990s, Cablevision completed several acquisitions that expanded its number of subscribers and the types of services it offered. This included purchasing a regional Los Angeles sports channel, two cable TV systems in Cleveland and Long Island, which had grown its subscriber base to about 2 million as of 1992. Cablevision also established Cablevision Lightpath in 1994, and as telecommunications deregulation took effect in the late 1990s, Lightpath began offering residential telephone and basic Internet services over its fiber optic network in 1998. Cablevision also purchased Madison Square Garden, and two local professional sports teams, the Knicks (basketball) and Rangers (hockey).
Later History
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In July 2011, Cablevision spun off Rainbow Media Holdings into a separate, public company, named AMC Networks, which owns several national entertainment networks. In addition, Cablevision also launched a separate company, the Madison Square Garden Co., which owns the Garden, and Knicks and the Rangers.
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