The man who dared to bet on a 24-hour news channel when everyone said it would fail has left the stage. Ted Turner, the visionary who launched CNN in 1980 and changed how the world consumes information, died peacefully at 87, surrounded by family.
This was no ordinary media mogul. Turner built an empire that included TNT, TBS, and Cartoon Network, then plunged headfirst into the sports arena, owning the Atlanta Braves, Hawks, Thrashers, and World Championship Wrestling. He was the kind of man who earned nicknames like "The Mouth of the South" and "Captain Outrageous" for his unfiltered, often controversial remarks.
But his legacy goes far beyond cable channels and sports teams. Turner founded the United Nations Foundation, proving that his wild ambition had a philanthropic soul. Eventually, he sold his networks to Time Warner and walked away from the business he had revolutionized.
"Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgment," said Mark Thompson, CEO of CNN Worldwide. "He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN. Ted is the giant on whose shoulders we stand."
Veteran anchor Wolf Blitzer remembered the day Turner hired him in 1990. The message was unmistakable: the news comes first—everything else, including vacations, is a distant second. "He was so determined to make sure the news was strong, reliable, fair," Blitzer said. "He inspired me and so many others to report the news accurately and, if possible, break those stories first."
Blitzer shared a painful memory: lunch with Turner just a few months ago. "It was hard to see how much his health had declined," he admitted. "We're going to miss him. I'm going to miss him a lot personally, because of all the wonderful things he did."
Turner's personal life was as dramatic as his career. He married three times, most famously to actress and activist Jane Fonda in 1991. Their marriage lasted a decade, and after their divorce, Fonda called him her "favourite ex-husband."
She recalled that Turner called her right after her divorce from Tom Hayden. "He wanted to know if I was available to date," Fonda said. "I think I said I wasn't feeling so hot, that he was an interesting guy, too, but I wasn't feeling peppy." Despite their political clashes—she a Hollywood liberal, he a brash conservative—they connected. "Ted can keep up with me," she said. "He's a very, very funny, lovable, complicated person."
Turner was born in Cincinnati in 1938, moved to Savannah at age nine, and attended Brown University until he was expelled for having a female student in his dorm room. Decades later, Brown awarded him an honorary degree when he returned to campus in 1989 to deliver a keynote address.
Time magazine named him Man of the Year in 1991, Broadcasting & Cable called him Man of the Century in 1999, and in 2009 he made Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2018, just before his 80th birthday, he revealed his diagnosis: Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.
He leaves behind five children, fourteen grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. The man who bet everything on a radical idea—and won—is gone. But his legacy? That 24-hour news channel he launched against all odds? It's still changing the world, one headline at a time.
