In 1982, the Walt Disney Company hired Wagner to oversee the development of a cable channel dedicated to children and family programming. With a $100-million budget, he recruited a staff of programmers to create new shows and draw on Disney's extensive library of films and programmes.

The Disney Channel, starting as a 16-hour-a-day cable service, had its premiere in April 1983. Wagner was president for about a year.

Wagner got his start in television in 1956 when, as a member of a troupe of United States Navy seamen, he did a stand-up comedy bit on The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1957, he also found an outlet for his primary passion, opera. He was hired as a host of Living Opera, a two-hour Sunday morning programme on WNYC that featured excerpts from recordings, interviews with music personalities and Wagner's backstage stories. He also wrote a selection of such anecdotes, Prima Donnas and Other Wild Beasts, in 1961

Alan Cyril Wagner was born in Manhattan on 1 October 1931.