Bill Daniels; Sports Programming Pioneer Considered Father of Cable TV Industry

Bill Daniels, a cable television and sports programming pioneer, died Tuesday afternoon in Rancho Mirage after a long illness. He was 79.

Daniels, who was considered the father of the cable industry, died at Eisenhower Medical Center.

Although his primary residence was in Colorado--home to his cable brokerage company, Daniels & Associates--he had spent most of his time in recent years at his property in Del Mar, Calif.

Daniels sold all but a few of his cable systems in the late 1980s, retaining ownership of Carlsbad Cablevision, which is one of the smallest systems in the country to be fully upgraded for advanced new services.

“Bill was a real visionary, a wonderful cheerleader in attracting investors to cable and a marvelous mentor to many, many people,” said John Saeman, a longtime friend and a business partner for 35 years. “A lot of people are crying on the phones today. People loved Bill Daniels.”

Daniels was instrumental in building the nation’s cable infrastructure. He formed Daniels & Associates in 1958 to bring capital sources to the fledgling industry to spur his own efforts as well as industrywide growth, Saeman said. The company is one of the leading investment banks to the cable industry today.

Daniels also was an early champion of expanding cable beyond its origins as a service for improving television reception in rural areas, and realized that exclusive programming was a vital ingredient for growth. He was an early investor in sports programming and founded Prime Ticket, a Los Angeles-based owner of regional sports channels that became the foundation for News Corp.’s regional cable sports juggernaut.

An avid sports fan, Daniels also held a minority interest in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team and sponsored amateur and professional boxers and sports teams. He was a founder of the failed U.S. Football League and the LA Express.

A decorated World War II naval fighter pilot, Daniels was a New Mexico Golden Gloves champion.

He was also a dedicated philanthropist whose donations included a $22-million gift to the University of Denver. In January, he pledged most of his $1.1-billion estate to send thousands of underprivileged students across the West to college. The Daniels Fund, his foundation, is the largest in Colorado.

“Bill genuinely cared about people,” Saeman said. “He gave so much to so many, particularly to those who were down and out, and [he] will continue to live on forever through the Daniels Fund.”

Leo J. Hindery Jr., the chief executive officer of Global Crossing who until recently was head of AT&T;’s cable group, is one of the many people who relied on Daniels’ counsel.

“He had this magical ability to be there when you needed him,” said Hindery, who is credited with saving Tele-Communications Inc. from financial disaster as its president in 1997. “I went to him before I joined TCI. He sent his plane for me, and I saw him for 30 minutes. He gave me the courage; he told me to go. He said it was my destiny, that this is what I was born to do. He had unbelievable generosity, and most of it was anonymous.”

In recent years, Daniels had worked to locate the National Cable Television Center and Museum in Denver, where it is based at the University of Denver. The school also named the Daniels College of Business in his honor.

Born in Greeley, Colo., July 1, 1920, Daniels graduated from the New Mexico Military Institute in May 1941. In 1952, he constructed a community antenna television system in Wyoming, becoming the first to relay a broadcast signal using microwave technology and giving residents their first taste of easily accessible TV. His dedication to cable started there.

At a time when talk of cable ventures was considered a crazy notion, Daniels was determined to help make it a force in America’s communications.

He owned and operated hundreds of cable television systems in the 1980s before consolidating most and selling them.

Daniels, who was divorced and had no children of his own, ran for Colorado’s Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1974, getting through the nominating process but losing to John Vanderhoof in the primary.

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Associated Press contributed to this story.