WASHINGTON, USA – Ted Turner, the sports prodigy and entrepreneur whose passion and instincts led to a media empire that included the CNN news network, has died, CNN reported Wednesday, May 6, in a press release from Turner Enterprises. He was 87 years old.
No cause of death was given.
In September 2018, Turner revealed that he had Lewy body dementia, a degenerative neurological disease.
One nickname wasn’t enough for someone as dirty and brash as Turner. He was known variously as “The Mouth of the South,” “Captain Fierce,” and “Bad Ted.”
He became a billionaire by taking over his father’s billboard business, buying a television station in 1970 and turning it into what would become a major television group.
Turner became one of the leading figures in American media and entertainment, his networks specializing in news, sports, reruns and old movies. But he didn’t stop there. He added the MGM/UA film studio to his portfolio before making an even bigger move – merging his Turner Broadcasting System with Time Warner in 1996.
Turner headed the new company’s cable networks division and was its largest shareholder, but he had trouble breaking into the corporate world after decades of freelancing as his own boss. Eventually he lost control of his networks.
Turner also became one of the world’s most prominent environmentalists, one of the largest landowners in the United States, and a major philanthropist, donating $1 billion to the United Nations.
With a thin mustache, gap-toothed eyes, a dimpled chin, and a mischievous glint in his eyes, Turner pursued many ambitions. In the 1970s, he owned the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks baseball teams of the National Basketball Association and sailed his yacht Courageous to the America’s Cup. Many women in his life include Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda.
In 1986, he started the Goodwill Games, an Olympic-like competition, and two years later bought a wrestling organization that produced more TV content. His concern about nuclear war led him to establish the Nuclear Threat Initiative in 2001.
Forbes estimates Turner’s net worth at $2.8 billion.
“If I had a little humility, I would be perfect,” he once said.
High quality debut on TV
Robert Edward Turner III was born in Cincinnati on November 19, 1938, moving to the South with his family when he was nine years old. He was sent to military schools where he became a debate champion and a sailor.
He enrolled at Brown University in Rhode Island and angered his father by studying classical studies instead of business. Turner got in trouble for having a girlfriend in his room, among other offenses, and did not graduate.
He joined his family’s advertising company in Savannah, Georgia, selling space on billboards. At the age of 24, he was left in power after his father committed suicide.
The business was sold to pay off debt, but after a family dispute in which Turner won, he bought the company back and made it a success. In 1970, against the advice of advisers, he bought the Atlanta UHF television station, now called WTBS, for $2.5 million.
After a rough start, Turner eventually made the station profitable with 24 hours of low-cost programming. The station’s fortunes increased in 1976 after a federal ruling that cable television systems could use satellite signals for programming. As a satellite pioneer, Turner helped WTBS become the first “main station,” with programming picked up by cable systems nationwide.
In 1980, he founded CNN in Atlanta, which he said would counter the “sloppy” broadcasting by the major networks CBS, NBC, and ABC. Offering low pay but compelling events, Turner enlisted reporters and technical staff who endured the taunts that “Chicken Noodle Network” would fail. Instead, as the first 24-hour news outlet, it set the template for worldwide coverage of wars, experiments, revolutions, and man-made natural disasters.
“Barring satellite problems, we’re not going to sign until the end of the world,” Turner said in a 2013 CNN interview. In 2018, in the midst of President Donald Trump’s stormy first term, Turner said in an interview that he rarely watched the network he relaunched, saying it was too focused on politics.
As a “television host,” Turner was named Man of the Year in 1991 by Time for “inducing a change of events and turning viewers in 150 countries into instant witnesses of history.”
In 1996, Time Warner purchased its Turner Broadcasting System for $7.5 billion, creating the world’s largest communications company, with properties such as HBO, the Warner Bros. Time magazine, CNN, Cartoon Network, and Turner Classic Movies.
In 2001, Time Warner merged with Internet service provider AOL, a $99-billion deal that Turner voted to support. But in a subsequent reorganization, he was stripped of his post of overseeing the cable networks he had built and ended up losing billions as the company’s stock value plummeted. In 2003, he resigned as vice chairman and three years later resigned as a director of Time Warner.
He struggled with depression and often talked about suicide, according to his biographer.
A blunt speaker
In his early days, Turner had a reputation as a heavy drinker who spoke openly about whatever was on his mind.
“I don’t know what to say,” he told them once The New Yorker newspaper. “I say what comes to my mind.”
He criticized the Catholic Church when he called some of his employees “Jesus freaks” because of the Ash Wednesday marks on their foreheads and told a group of Germans that after being on the wrong side of two world wars, they could change things like his losing Braves baseball team had done.
Turner had a long-running feud with fellow media mogul Rupert Murdoch that began in 1983 when a yacht sponsored by Murdoch collided with Turner’s boat in an Australian race, which prompted Turner to challenge Murdoch to a fist fight. Their ill will increased in 1996 when Murdoch founded Fox News as a conservative rival to CNN. Turner called him a warrior and likened him to Adolf Hitler.
During his ownership of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Turner appointed himself manager and led the team to one game, a 2-1 loss against Pittsburgh, in 1977. Baseball officials ordered him to resign as manager.
But he was also a great benefactor. In 1997, he made philanthropic history by announcing that he was donating $1 billion to the United Nations. In 2017, after the last round of donations, Turner called it “the best investment I’ve ever made.”
His Turner Foundation also gave millions to environmental groups, while he promoted and invested in clean energy.
Turner became one of the largest private landowners in the United States with more than 1.9 million acres (770,000 hectares) in six states, including Montana, where he spent most of his time. He had a herd of about 50,000 buffalo, which he used to supply the restaurants he started in 2002 called Ted’s Montana Grill. He also owned a ranch in Argentine Patagonia.
Turner was married and divorced three times and had five children. His third marriage, to Fonda, which lasted 10 years, ended in 2001. – Rappler.com
