The brash television pioneer, who died on May 6 aged 87, made his greatest mark on the news business when he launched CNN nearly half a century ago and with it, the 24-hour cable news cycle, a revolutionary moment that transformed the industry. His media empire grew to include CNN International, the Cartoon Network, TNT and Turner Classic Movies. Then he used his riches to become one of America’s most extensive landowners, dedicating his final years to preserving natural habitats, saving endangered species and reducing
nuclear weapons. A Southerner with outspoken wit, he earned the nicknames ‘‘Captain Outrageous’’ and ‘‘The Mouth of the South’’ during his youthful years. ‘‘If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect,’’ he once bragged. Turner was a celebrity in his own right when he married actress Jane Fonda in 1991, just before being named Time magazine’s Man of the Year. Slowed late in life by illness and long out of the television business, Turner concentrated on philanthropy — donating $1 billion to United
Nations charities — and his more than 800,000ha of property, including the nation’s largest bison herd. Robert Edward Turner III was born in 1938, in Cincinnati. When he was 9, his family moved to Savannah, Georgia. After being expelled from university for sneaking a female student into his room, Turner went to Atlanta to work for his father’s billboard company. His ambitions at that point were broad, he later recalled: ‘‘I used to tell people I wanted to become the world’s greatest sailor, businessman and
lover all at the same time’’. On December 17, 1976, he began transmitting the station to cable systems across the country via satellite. It became TBS Superstation: ‘‘It was the start of something bigger than we ever imagined,’’ Turner said. TBS’ collection of old movies and The Andy Griffith Show reruns was augmented by Turner’s acquisition of baseball’s Atlanta Braves, which slowly attracted fans across the nation and declared themselves ‘‘America’s team.’’ Fresh from skippering his boat, Courageous, to the 1977 America’s Cup title, a
very inebriated Turner was captured by TV cameras stretched out on the floor at the victory celebration. Turner managed to insult many with his shoot-from-the-lip style. An atheist since his only sister died of lupus at age 17, he called Christians ‘‘losers’’ and ‘‘Jesus freaks,’’ later apologising. In the 1980s, Turner went deeply into debt to buy MGM, another move greeted with scepticism. But the acquisition gave his company a huge library of vintage movies that eventually launched the TNT and Turner Classic Movies networks.
His devotion to older movies earned Turner a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004. He was also criticised for adding colour to classic movies like Casablanca, which he said he did to appeal to a younger audience. TBS also acquired the Hanna-Barbera animation library, which led to the Cartoon Network. Turner’s signature achievement was creating CNN, the first 24-hour, all-news television network in 1980. It was born of frustration — he often worked late after network newscasts had gone off the air,
and was in bed by the time his local stations did their own news. He took a chance by launching what some called the ‘‘chicken noodle network’’ in the early days of cable television, living in an apartment above the office. ‘‘I was going to have to hit hard and move incredibly fast and that’s what we did — move so fast that the [broadcast] networks wouldn’t have the time to respond, because they should have done this, not me,’’ Turner recalled in a 2016
interview with The American Academy of Achievement. ‘‘But they didn’t have the imagination.’’ CNN’s breakthrough came during the Gulf War with Iraq in 1991. Most television journalists fled Baghdad. CNN stayed, capturing images of the war’s outbreak, anti-aircraft tracers streaking across the sky and correspondents flinching from the concussion of bombs. Turner was promised a role in CNN after his company’s sale to Time Warner for $7.3 billion in stock but was gradually pushed out, much to his regret. ‘‘I made a mistake,’’ he later
said. ‘‘The mistake I made was losing control of the company.’’ During a speech in 1996, Ted Turner said he sold Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner partly to keep the company away from Rupert Murdoch whom he once compared to Adolf Hitler. The bitter rivals later reconciled over environmental concerns. Married three times and a father of five, the mustachioed Turner wooed beautiful women with a roguish charm. He was married to Fonda from 1991 to 2001. She quit acting while married to Turner,
but tired of his philandering and divorced him, although they remained friends. Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.8b at the time of his death. He had enough time, and money, to devote his energy to such lofty goals as promoting world peace and protecting the environment. ‘‘See, my life is more an adventure than a quest to make money. Adventure is going out and doing something for the pure hell of it,’’ Turner once said. ‘‘You just want to see if you can do
it, period. There’s no thought of gain other than your own satisfaction.’’ — Agencies
Ted Turner, CNN, 24-hour cable news, media mogul, landowner, philanthropy, United Nations charities, Cartoon Network, TNT, Turner Classic Movies, environmental protection, nuclear weapons