Paul F. Harron Jr., longtime CEO of Harron Communications, died Dec. 8 at age 63, his company said Monday.
The cause of death was lung cancer.
After becoming CEO in the mid-1970s, Harron expanded a cable operation that had about 30,000 customers to one with 330,000 customers when it was sold to Adelphia Communications Corp. in 1999. His father, also named Paul Harron, was a cable pioneer who built the cable system in Utica, N.Y., his first, in 1964.
In recent years, the company now called Harron Entertainment has been making cable acquisitions and aspired to get back to the 300,000-customer level, company officials said. It had retained about 30,000 customers in New Hampshire and acquired systems from New England Cable and Gans Communications Inc. in 2000 and 2004, respectively, for a total of about 110,000 customers in five states.
Harron was also a founding member of C-SPAN, and he started Metrobase Cable Advertising, which was later sold to Comcast Corp. He was president of Harron Management Co., which included numerous Harron radio and television holdings and a private-venture-capital fund.
He was a graduate of Holy Cross College and attended Malvern Preparatory School in Malvern, Pa., to which he was a significant donor.
Funeral services will be held Wednesday at Saints Simon and Jude Catholic Church, 8 Cavanaugh Court, West Chester, Pa., at noon. For more information, call the Donohue Funeral Home in West Chester at 610-431-9000.
