The brash media mogul who transformed television
Ted Turner, who has died aged 87, was the media mogul who revolutionised television in 1980 by launching CNN – America’s first rolling, 24-hour news channel. Known as the “mouth from the south”, for his brash, self-aggrandising ways, Turner presided over a sprawling empire that included Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network and Castle Rock Entertainment, said The New York Times. But he had other interests beyond business. A skilled yachtsman, and intensely competitive, he won the America’s Cup in 1977. He gave $1 billion to the UN for its humanitarian work; he acquired two million acres of land – much of which he dedicated to conserving native species including the American bison; and he married a film star. He also became embroiled in a feud with Rupert Murdoch, whose New York Post once ran the headline “Is Turner insane?”
In 1998, Turner, a hard-drinking womaniser, explained his restless energy to a journalist. “I’m trying to set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime,” he said. “And that puts you in pretty big company: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed…” Others put it down to his difficult relationship with his depressive, alcoholic father.
Robert Edward Turner III was born in Ohio in 1938, but was brought up in the south. His father, a strict disciplinarian who ran a billboard business, sent him to boarding schools and military academies. Later, he won a place at Brown, but he was expelled after being caught with a woman in his dorm. When he was 24, his father shot himself. He had suffered from terrifying mood swings; similarly afflicted, Ted Turner was prescribed lithium in the 1980s.
His father had fallen into debt, but Turner managed to claw his business back from investors. Ruthless and driven, he made it a success, and in 1968 he was able to use the profits to buy a radio station. Then he took an even bigger gamble, on a TV station. He bought local baseball and basketball teams, so that he could broadcast their matches; he acquired old TV shows that he could run on repeat without paying fees; he bought Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon library, as well as film back catalogues, including MGM’s, to add to his huge vault of what would come to be known as “content”. The Cable News Network, which he launched partly because he cared passionately about news and saw information as a tool for peace, was slow to take off. It was beset by technical glitches and production gaffes (once, a cleaner was seen emptying a bin on air). Its detractors dismissed it as the Chicken Noodle Network. But its breathless rolling coverage of events – including the 1981 shooting of Ronald Reagan – won it viewers, said The Telegraph, and over time it became clear that this was the future of news TV. In 1996, Murdoch set up Fox News as a right-wing, opinion-driven rival to CNN.
That year, the Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner, and in 2001 it was acquired by America Online (AOL), to create the US’s then fourth-largest company. The deal, which came just before the dotcom crash, proved a disaster. As AOL’s share value slumped, Turner lost $8 billion. Around the same time, he split up with his third wife, Jane Fonda. It had been viewed as an odd match, said The Times – between the macho capitalist billionaire and the aerobics-pioneering Hollywood liberal. But they’d shared a passion for conservation, and the marriage had lasted 10 years. During that time, she’d steered his philanthropic efforts, and was credited with encouraging him to form a closer relationship with the five children he’d had with his first two wives. In 2018, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.
