Dolan puts up $10M to save Voom

[Gregg Lengling]

Cablevision chairman Charles Dolan is personally putting up $10 million in cash and company stock to help keep Voom running this month while he tries to rescue the satellite TV service that has split members of his family and the board.

The amount, disclosed in a regulatory filing yesterday, provides more evidence of the great lengths to which Dolan, 78, the billionaire founder who has a controlling stake in Cablevision Systems Corp., is prepared to go to pull Voom back from near-death.

     
 
 
   
     
 
And it indicates that an overhauled board of directors is not easily giving in to Dolan's demands.

"The new board of directors is not willing to place shareholder capital at risk and is forcing Chuck Dolan to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions to develop Voom with his own capital," Fulcrum Global Partners analyst Richard Greenfield told investors yesterday in a research note.

On Tuesday, the new board suspended the shutdown of Voom until March 31 to give Dolan time to come up with a way to rescue it. He agreed to fund the extra costs of delaying a shutdown.

Dolan is racing to negotiate a deal with EchoStar Communications that would alter the one his son James, the Cablevision chief executive, signed in January to sell Voom's sole satellite for $200 million.

Yesterday's regulatory filing also gives another peek into how the company is trying to avoid a repeat of the showdown in which Dolan created a new renegade Web site for Voom last week after Cablevision ordered the old one taken down.

According to the filing, the agreement signed Tuesday with Dolan to suspend the shutdown of Jericho-based Voom stresses that neither he nor his son Tom, the Voom chief executive, will take actions or issue orders to override Cablevision management.

Cablevision has since re-activated the Web site.

The filing said Dolan owns 37 million shares, or 14.5 percent of the total shares of Cablevision stock, worth nearly $1.1 billion.

Voom had $660 million in 2004 losses and analysts speculate that Dolan may sell the company to finance future Voom losses.

"Mr. Dolan is likely preparing (or will shortly come to the conclusion) that the only way to fund Voom long-term is to put ... [Cablevision] up for sale," Greenfield told investors.

On Feb. 28, a majority of the old board, including James, had ordered that Voom be shut, leading Dolan to oust three directors and name five new ones, expanding the board's size by one to 15, including nine directly placed on the board by Dolan.

Yesterday's filing also revealed that the fifth new director, Dolan son-in-law Brian Sweeney, had taken his place on the board after the directors elected by Dolan voted him in.

Originally, Cablevision said the full board, including six independent directors, would have to vote to expand its size to make room for Sweeney.

But yesterday it said that was not necessary because there was a vacancy among the Dolan-controlled board seats.

[StarvingForHDTV]

The filing said Dolan owns 37 million shares, or 14.5 percent of the total shares of Cablevision stock, worth nearly $1.1 billion.

Voom had $660 million in 2004 losses and analysts speculate that Dolan may sell the company to finance future Voom losses.

You got to be kidding!  This Dolan dude sounds like a real nut.  Why piss away all of that money?

[easylistener]

Because it is the future.  If Voom would get a hd dvr out they will grow like no tomorrow.  That was and still is the only major problem with voom.