Charles Dolan was born on October 16, 1926 in Cleveland, Ohio, the founder of the American network of cable and satellite channels Home Box Office (HBO), which became especially famous thanks to the TV series Game of Thrones. His father was a businessman and his mother was a housewife. There is no information about Chuck’s childhood in public sources, as for education, he entered John Carroll University, but he was expelled from there. The future billionaire went to work, tried himself in trade, film distribution.
In the late 1950s, Charles was already married and, with the support of his wife, began to record short sports films on reels and sell them. In the early 1960s, Dolan founded Teleguide Inc, which provided cable services to hotels in New York City, and in 1965 created Sterling Manhattan Cable, the first urban cable TV operator in the United States. However, the cost of laying the underground cable was $300 per mile, which was expensive, so Dolan began to incur losses. And even the 20,000th client base did not bring the income necessary to cover the costs. Therefore, he decided to sell 20% of the company’s assets to Time-Life Corporation, and by the fall of 1973, she bought Sterling Manhattan Cable in full.
But 2 years before that, Charles had a bold idea: to launch a satellite channel and he even came up with the name The Green Channel. Dolan presented his project to the top management of Time-Life, who considered it too bold for that time. But the businessman managed to convince them. The corporation launched a pilot project in Allentown, Pennsylvania, offering subscribers free use of the channel for the first month. As a result, half of the subscribers participating in testing the channel bought a subscription to it.
Charles and the Time-Life tops were pleased with the results and chose the name Home Box Office (HBO) for the channel, which began broadcasting in November 1972 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The first thing he showed was the motion picture “Sometimes a Great Idea” starring Paul Newman, and after the film, the New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks game began broadcasting at Madison Square Garden.
Charles Dolan
A year later, HBO had 8,000 subscribers, and after another 2 years, the client base grew to 100,000 clients in Pennsylvania and New York. In September 1975, HBO began broadcasting by satellite, becoming the first television channel to provide a signal via satellite, thus beginning to broadcast a separate program for the Eastern and Pacific time zones. For the first 9 years HBO broadcast from 15:00 to 00:00 every day. By 1980, the channel was broadcast in 50 US states. In the same year, it became networked by launching the Cinemax channel.
In May 1983, The Terry Fox Story was the first film shown by HBO on a subscription basis. In the same year, the first HBO children’s program, Fraggle Rock, premiered. In January 1986, HBO became the first satellite pay channel to encrypt its signal from unauthorized viewing.
Film “The Terry Fox Story”
In January 1989, HBO added another channel to its network, Spanish Selections from HBO and Cinemax in Spanish. Within 2 years, HBO and Cinemax became the first premium services to offer multiplexed channels to customers, and in 1993, HBO became the world’s first digital television service, and the network also had HBO Family, MovieMax, MaxLatino, OuterMax, and 5StarMax.
In the 1990s, the network actively produced its own original programs.
And in the summer of 2001, viewers had the opportunity to choose and watch any program at any time thanks to HBO on Demand.
The HBO Go Internet service appeared in February 2010, it showed its own films and HBO programs.
The series “Game of Thrones”
The first season of HBO’s iconic TV series Game of Thrones, based on George R. R. Martin’s novel A Song of Ice and Fire, premiered in April 2011. In April 2012, viewers started watching season 2, season 3 – in March 2013, season 4 – in April 2014, season 5 – in April 2015, season 6 – in April 2016, season 7 – in July 2017- th, the final season 8 – in April 2019.
In 2015, the HBO Now service appeared for users of personal computers, smartphones, tablet devices and digital media players. Unlike HBO Go, it did not require a TV subscription and was only available to the network’s US customers. In 2015, the network announced the return of children’s programming to the broadcast network.
In October 2016, AT&T announced its intention to acquire Time Warner, which owned the HBO network, for $108.7 billion, the deal was completed in June 2018. In January 2022, it was revealed that HBO would launch a streaming service in Korea, intensifying competition between global platforms in the local market.
At the end of 2021, HBO’s revenue was $168.9 billion, the total number of HBO and HBO Max subscribers was 73.8 million.