One of the most prominent media figures of the 20th century has passed away. Ted Turner, the media mogul who created CNN and channels like Turner Classic Movies, died of natural causes at the age of 87. Appropriately enough, we learned the news via CNN. Although in these times it’s hard to celebrate any billionaire, as far as billionaires go, Turner was one of the better ones. He was a philanthropist who favored environmental causes, pushing preservation as early as the 1980s. Turner gave $1 billion to create the United Nations Foundation, a public charity to further American support for the United Nations. A lifelong sports fan, Turner also owned the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, propelling them into national champions.
Born Robert Edward Turner on November 19, 1938, in Ohio, Turner moved to Georgia at the age of 9. He inherited his father’s billboard business at the age of 24, and with the money he accumulated from that, bought his first television station, Atlanta’s WTBS. That local station became one of basic cable’s earliest channels, known to ’80s and ’90s kids as one of those cable channels that everyone had. But his greatest cable TV accomplishment came in 1980, when he launched the Cable News Network, a.k.a. CNN, the world’s first 24-hour news network. That changed our media landscape, in both good and bad ways, forever.
By 1991, CNN was an American staple and its coverage of things like the space shuttle Challenger tragedy and the first Gulf War made it an indispensable part of how we cover major events. In 1991, Ted Turner became Time Magazine’s Man of the Year, and the rest of the decade saw his business portfolio grow and grow. He launched the charitable Goodwill Games in 1986, created as an alternative to the Olympics, where countries with political rivalries could put it aside for the sake of sportsmanship.
After creating the environmental cartoon Captain Planet, he launched Cartoon Network and then Turner Classic Movies. He followed that up by launching Turner Network Television, or TNT. The latter persevered and showed thousands of classic films, introducing them to a whole new audience. Famously, during this time, he married Hollywood royalty Jane Fonda. The marriage lasted ten years and ended amicably. Turner was also married two other times. She’d later call him “her favorite ex-husband.”
Ted Turner ultimately sold his media empire to Time Warner in 1996. And his media assets have constantly traded hands several times since. But they persevere against the odds. He had a long-standing rivalry with fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch. With Murdoch’s ownership of entities like Fox News and Twentieth Century Fox, he became like his ultra-right-wing doppelganger. The two men disliked each other so much, that Turner publicly challenged him to a fistfight twice. The fight never happened. Although, since Turner owned WCW, maybe if it had, they could have made it part of the show.
One of Ted Turner’s most controversial decisions came in the ’80s. In this era, he took it upon himself to colorize old black-and-white movies, including classics like Casablanca. This caused such a stir that the National Film Registry was formed to preserve classic films as originally made. So his worst action in terms of media ultimately led to a great thing, if only inadvertently. In 2018, Turner revealed that he was struggling with Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder that affects memory and cognitive functions. He more or less retired from public life at that point. Ted Turner is survived by his five children and fourteen grandchildren.