Ted Turner, CNN founder and cable TV pioneer, dies at 87 – Nationwide

Ted Turner, the brash and outspoken tv pioneer who created a media empire and reworked the information enterprise by creating CNN and introducing the 24-hour cable information cycle, died Wednesday. He was 87.

He died surrounded by his household, in accordance with Turner Enterprises, the corporate that oversees his huge companies and investments.

Turner was the power behind Cartoon Community, TNT and Turner Basic Motion pictures. However his pursuits expanded far past media — proudly owning skilled sports activities groups in Atlanta and big chunks of the American West, fueling conservation efforts via habitat restoration and endangered species work.

He donated a surprising $1 billion to United Nations charities and raced yachts too, profitable the America’s Cup in 1977.

Turner married actor Jane Fonda in 1991, when he was named Time journal’s Man of the Yr. By then, he was a star in his personal proper, incomes the nicknames “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South.”

He as soon as bragged: “If solely I had a bit of humility, I’d be excellent.”

He was slowed in later years by Lewy physique dementia. Lengthy since out of the tv enterprise, he targeting philanthropy and his greater than 2 million acres (800,000 hectares) of property, together with the nation’s largest bison herd.

His garrulous character generally overshadowed a pushed, risk-taking enterprise acumen. By the point he bought his Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner Inc. in a 1996 media megadeal, Turner had turned his late father’s billboard firm into a world conglomerate that included seven main cable networks, three skilled sports activities groups and a pair of hit film studios.

U.S. President Donald Trump, reacting to Turner’s dying, referred to as him “one of many Greats of All Time.”

“Every time I wanted him, he was there, at all times prepared to combat for an excellent trigger!” Trump posted on social media.

Turner’s signature achievement was creating CNN, the primary 24-hour, all-news tv community in 1980. At a time when information is immediately obtainable, it’s arduous to recall that the thought of letting shoppers determine once they select to be taught what’s happening on the planet was as soon as revolutionary.

Partly, Turner’s personal frustration with tv information was the instigator. He typically labored late after the community newscasts had gone off the air, and was in mattress by the point his native stations did their very own information.

He took an opportunity by beginning the operation generally derided because the “hen noodle community” within the early days of cable tv, dwelling in an residence above its Atlanta workplace.

“I used to be going to must hit arduous and transfer extremely quick and that’s what we did — transfer so quick that the (broadcast) networks wouldn’t have the time to reply, as a result of they need to have executed this, not me,” Turner recalled in a 2016 interview with the Academy of Achievement. “However they didn’t have the creativeness.”

CNN’s breakthrough got here throughout the Gulf Battle with Iraq in 1991. Most tv journalists had fled Baghdad. CNN stayed, capturing photographs of a conflict’s outbreak, with anti-aircraft tracers streaking throughout the sky and correspondents flinching from the concussion of bombs.

“His past love was household and he had 5 kids. However very shut behind, he’s at all times instructed me that his best achievement was CNN, however he had so many through the years,” Tom Johnson, CNN’s president from 1990 to 2001, instructed The Related Press on Wednesday.

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Turner was promised a continued position in CNN after his firm’s sale to Time Warner for $7.3 billion in inventory however was regularly pushed out, a lot to his remorse.

“I made a mistake,” he later mentioned. “The error I made was shedding management of the corporate.”

That very same 12 months — 1996 — noticed the start of Fox Information Channel and arrival of a brand new dominant mogul in cable information, Rupert Murdoch. Turner as soon as in contrast Murdoch to Adolf Hitler, however the bitter rivals later reconciled over their concern for the setting.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav referred to as Turner a visionary and a trailblazer.

“Ted’s entrepreneurial spirit, artistic ambition and willingness to take dangers modified the media trade ceaselessly,” Zaslav mentioned in a word to workers Wednesday.

Robert Edward Turner III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati. When he was 9, his household moved to Savannah, Georgia. After being expelled from Brown College for sneaking a feminine pupil into his room, Turner got here to Atlanta to work for his father’s billboard firm.

After his father’s 1963 suicide, Turner took over the corporate. In 1970, he purchased an impartial UHF station with a weak sign that didn’t even cowl Atlanta.

On Dec. 17, 1976, he started transmitting the station to cable programs throughout the nation through satellite tv for pc. It turned the TBS SuperStation. “It was the beginning of one thing greater than we ever imagined,” Turner mentioned in 1996.

TBS’ assortment of previous films and “The Andy Griffith Present” reruns was augmented by Turner’s acquisition of baseball’s Atlanta Braves, which slowly attracted followers throughout the nation and declared themselves “America’s group.”

Within the Nineteen Eighties, Turner went deeply into debt to purchase MGM, a transfer once more greeted with skepticism.

However the acquisition gave his firm an enormous library of classic films that finally launched the TNT and Turner Basic Motion pictures networks. His devotion to older films earned Turner a star on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame in 2004. He was additionally criticized for including coloration to traditional films like “Casablanca,” which he mentioned he did to attraction to a youthful viewers.

TBS additionally acquired the Hanna-Barbera animation library, which led to the Cartoon Community.

“He sees the apparent earlier than most individuals do,” Bob Wright, former president and CEO of NBC, instructed The New Yorker in 2001. “All of us take a look at the identical image, however Ted sees what you don’t see. And after he sees it, it turns into apparent to all people.”

He revealed his ambitions as a youthful man: “I used to inform individuals I wished to turn into the world’s best sailor, businessman and lover all on the similar time.”

Requested to share the key to his success, he mentioned: “Early to mattress, early to rise, work like hell and promote.”

For a lot of his life a partying roustabout who wooed stunning ladies with a roguish allure, the mustachioed sportsman married 3 times. He was married to Fonda from 1991 to 2001. She stop performing whereas married to Turner, however uninterested in his philandering and divorced him, though they remained mates.

“He was horny. He was sensible. He had 2 million acres by the point I left. It might have been straightforward to remain,” Fonda as soon as mentioned of her relationship with Turner.

He struck up friendships with world leaders, bonding with Cuban chief Fidel Castro over looking and arguments about politics.

Turner constructed a sports activities empire, at one level proudly owning skilled baseball, basketball and hockey groups in Atlanta. He was greatest remembered on the helm of the Atlanta Braves, turning the perennial doormats into champions within the Nineteen Nineties. Their former stadium, constructed for the 1996 Olympics, was named Ted Turner Discipline.

He acquired tens of millions of acres in ranches full with roaming buffalo and was Nebraska’s largest non-public landholder. He spoke typically of reviving the West’s bison herds, and in 2002 began a restaurant chain serving bison burgers, Ted’s Montana Grill.

Forbes estimated his web value at $2.8 billion on the time of his dying.

He had sufficient time, and cash, to commit to such lofty targets as selling world peace and defending the setting.

“See, my life is extra an journey than a quest to generate profits. Journey goes out and doing one thing for the pure hell of it,” Turner as soon as mentioned. “You simply need to see if you are able to do it, interval. There’s no considered achieve apart from your personal satisfaction.”

By the years, Turner’s antics often overshadowed his enterprise actions.

Recent from skippering his boat “Brave” to the 1977 America’s Cup title, a really inebriated Turner was captured by TV cameras stretched out on the ground on the victory celebration.

Turner managed to insult many along with his shoot-from-the-lip type. An atheist since his solely sister died of lupus at age 17, he referred to as Christians “losers” and “Jesus freaks,” later apologizing.

He as soon as steered in a speech that unemployed Black individuals be used to haul cellular missiles with ropes “just like the Egyptians constructing the pyramids.” After civil rights leaders demanded an apology, he mentioned he was simply joking.

Different occasions, his humor saved him from probably awkward conditions, like when he talked to an viewers in Berlin in 1999. “You already know, you Germans had a nasty century,” Turner mentioned, in accordance with The New Yorker. “You had been on the fallacious facet of two wars. You had been the losers. I do know what that’s like. After I purchased the Atlanta Braves, we couldn’t win, both. You guys can flip it round. You can begin making the precise selections. If the Atlanta Braves might do it, then Germany can do it.”

Turner grabbed a management position in American philanthropy along with his 1997 pledge to provide $1 billion, or $100 million a 12 months for 10 years, to United Nations charities. At the same time as Turner’s fortune shrank after the AOL Time Warner merger, he continued giving cash to the U.N., calling it one of the best hope for peace.

He promoted a spread of humanitarian causes. Turner joined former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn to begin the Nuclear Risk Initiative, a U.S.-based nonprofit devoted to lowering the specter of nuclear, organic and chemical weapons.

“If I needed to predict, the way in which issues are going, I’d say the possibilities are about 50-50 that humanity shall be extinct in 50 years,” Turner mentioned in 2003. “Weapons of mass destruction, illness, I imply this international warming is scaring the dwelling daylights out of me.”

As he poured tens of millions into nonprofits, Turner was additionally keen on spreading his wealth in small methods. He as soon as gave $500 to a volunteer fireplace division that helped extinguish a blaze on certainly one of his ranches. One other time he lent private work for an exhibit at a Bozeman, Montana, museum.

Bauder, a longtime media author, retired from The Related Press in 2026. Former Related Press correspondent Ryan Nakashima and AP writers John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, R.J. Rico in Atlanta and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed.