Dolan Puts Up Own Money to Keep VOOM Alive

The extension of VOOM’s operations through the end of this month announced on Tuesday will be funded entirely by Chuck Dolan’s own pocketbook, more specifically through a $10 million stash of cash and stock he has authorized to be spent on VOOM. In an SEC filing submitted on Thursday, Cablevision’s chairman said that the VOOM operations payments will first come from the cash, then his Class-A stock in Cablevision, and finally his Class-B stock. Any cash or stock not used will be returned to him.

You’ve got to hand it to Chuck Dolan: he puts his money where his mouth is. However, you get the feeling that this $10 million in cash and stock to fund VOOM’s operations for the next three weeks is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Dolan’s willingness to dump Cablevision in favor of his pet satellite project. If he can somehow negotiate an agreement with EchoStar that enables him to acquire VOOM’s satellite assets from that company and its remaining assets from Cablevision, it will require a substantial amount of cash.

He only really has one way to obtain said cash, and that’s by putting Cablevision on the block. As the shareholder who controls the majority of the company’s voting shares, he has nearly unlimited power to do just that, particularly after packing Cablevision’s board with friends and supporters last week. Time Warner and Comcast undoubtedly await this outcome with breathless anticipation, eager to gobble up Cablevision’s roughly 3 million New York-area customers.

So paradoxically, VOOM -- the little upstart satellite company with fewer than 50,000 subscribers -- could end the existence of the fifth-largest cable provider in the U.S. as a stand-alone entity.