Ted Turner, the brash broadcaster who changed TV news forever
when he founded CNN, has died. He was 87.
Turner was one of the 20th Century’s premiere titans of media. In his long, colorful career, he made a fortune in the billboard
business while still in his 20s, owned radio and TV stations and the Atlanta Braves, raced yachts and never stopped talking.
Turner was outspoken and fiercely competitive. In 1996,
he famously declared that CNN would “crush Rupert Murdoch like a bug” after Murdoch launched Fox News Channel 1996.
Based in Atlanta, Turner was nicknamed “the
mouth of the South” and “Captain Outrageous,” the latter nickname reflecting his two victories as a yacht skipper in the America’s Cup.
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His innovations in
television set the industry on new paths -- one in broadcasting and the other in TV news.
When Turner launched the 24-hour Cable News Network in 1980, cable TV was in its
infancy.
More importantly, no one up until that time had ever attempted to mount a TV news network that would operate 24 hours a day.
But that was Turner.
When the rest of the television world said “no you can’t,” he said “yes I can.”
“In 1980, many questioned the logic of launching CNN,”
said a statement Wednesday from David Zaslav, president and CEO of CNN’s current owner, Warner Bros. Discovery.
“Ted believed the world deserved access to news as it
happened, and he acted on that conviction. CNN fundamentally changed how the world experiences history in real time,” he said.
Based on a proposal that was first brought to him
by the late Reese Schonfeld, who became CNN’s first president, Turner financed the launch of CNN himself after selling a TV station he owned in North Carolina.
In 1969,
Turner bought a UHF TV station in Atlanta that he later turned into WTBS, where he pioneered the concept of a superstation that would be carried on cable systems around the country.
The move transformed a once-struggling UHF independent station into a national force in television from which Turner built a media empire.
After CNN and WTBS (rechristened
TBS -- Turner Broadcasting System), Turner launched additional basic cable channels, most notably TNT (Turner Network Television) in 1988 and Turner Classic Movies in 1994.
He also
established the first sports media empire in the cable industry, Turner Sports. Out of that came a partnership between TNT and the NBA that lasted through 36 seasons, ending last year.
Robert Edward Turner III was born in Cincinnati on November 19, 1938, and moved with his family to Savannah, Georgia, when he was nine.
His father ran one of the most
successful billboard advertising companies in the South, and his sone inherited it at age 24 after his father’s suicide in 1963.
The young Ted Turner grew the company
from a regional powerhouse to a global one and he made his first fortune and parlayed the money he made into his first investments in broadcast properties.
In 2006, Turner stepped
away from the TV business for the last time when he retired from the Time Warner board of directors.
In later years, he became the largest single landowner in the United States with
an estimated 2 million acres spread across eight states (he is now ranked fourth).
He was also a generous philanthropist, who pledged $100 million a year for 10 years starting in
1996 to aid United Nations causes -- a total of $1 billion.
Turner had five children and was married three times. His third wife was Jane Fonda, with whom he was married from 1991 to
2001.
He died surrounded by family members at his home in Tallahassee, Florida. No cause of death was available yesterday afternoon, but Turner had been diagnosed in 2018 with Lewy
Body Dementia, a progressive brain disorder eventually leading to death that affects both physical and mental abilities.
Ted Turner will be long remembered as one of the most
influential innovators in the history of American media, and also for his outsized personality.
He once said, “If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect.”
Photo credit: Bernard Gotfryd via Wikipedia and the Library of Congress