Joseph J. Collins, a pivotal figure in the evolution of television’s transition from broadcast dominance to cable and ultimately the internet, died Thursday at his home in Rhode Island. He was 81.

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“Joe was instrumental in building the first cable systems, upgrading them to deliver hundreds of channels, then video on demand, and finally the broadband streaming and internet apps that we all use every day now,” former Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes said in a statement.

Collins grew up in upstate New York and graduated from Brown University in 1966. He went on to serve in the Navy, where he earned a Combat Action Ribbon for his service during the Vietnam War. After his service, he enrolled in Harvard Business School, then took a job with American Television and Communications, a predecessor to Time Warner Cable. He eventually became president of ATC. In 1984, he was named president of HBO, helping set the stage for its eventual merger with Time Warner Cable, where he served as CEO until 2001.

Collins helped turn Time Warner Cable into a juggernaut found in millions of homes while also helping establish it as an early provider of broadband internet. He is credited as among the individuals who foresaw that digital technology could transform cable into a telecommunications delivery system. After Time Warner’s landmark merger with AOL in 2001, Collins was named chief executive of AOL Time Warner Interactive Video, helping usher in the home-internet age.

“You’re actually — we think — to a large extent going to be getting telephone service over the cable, so that infrastructure that we’ve put in place to deliver more television is capable of delivering even more things and as the world goes to digital the list of things that can be delivered over cable becomes unlimited from a communication standpoint,” he said in a 1999 interview with The Cable Center, home to the Cable Hall of Fame.

In 2005, Collins was named to Comcast’s board of directors, a role he held for a decade. Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News. He also served twice as chairman of the National Cable Telecommunications Association, as well as a chairman of C-SPAN.

A lifelong sailor, Collins set up an investment group that acquired boat yards and marinas across New England in his retirement years. He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Maura; four children; and 11 grandchildren.