Many are describing Ted Turner, who died Wednesday at 87, as a “visionary.” That’s not really accurate. His vision was limited by the fact that he knew very little about the two areas of media that he helped revolutionize: broadcasting and journalism.
What Turner had was instinct and perseverance — enough to change television and to make him very rich.
What Turner had was instinct and perseverance — enough to change television and to make him very rich.
I was living out my own media dream, having launched On Cable Magazine in 1980, the same year Turner gave the nation CNN. I interviewed him many times at his office in Atlanta, where a plaque quoted Gen. George S. Patton (and summed up Turner’s approach to business and life): “Either Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way.”
Turner’s instincts were first tested in 1976, when he used money earned primarily from his billboard advertising business to purchase satellite time, and began transmitting his humble UHF station, WTCG — later WTBS — to cable TV systems nationwide. This was the first “superstation,” an ingenious means of competing with the conventional broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — at a fraction of their operating costs.
Of course, the networks were not happy. “We were battling them every step of the way,” Turner told me a few years after WTBS went national. “But it was a lot of fun. Changing an established order is always a fight.”
The more daring and costly instinctive move that followed was creating all-news television. But Turner’s real innovation with CNN went beyond round-the-clock TV journalism. It helped invent “narrowcasting.”
The year before CNN’s debut, ESPN became the first all-sports channel; the following year, MTV became the first all-music channel, followed by all-weather on the Weather Channel. This narrow approach to programming, made possible by satellites and cable connections, is seen today not only on cable television, but also through digital streaming outlets.
Turner’s success outside of media was established before he launched CNN. He was a champion sailor, winning the America’s Cup in 1977. That same year, he bought the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. The year before, he had purchased the Atlanta Braves baseball franchise.
Turner never really fit any ideological stereotype. He was fairly far right on matters concerning the economy and domestic affairs, once describing himself as an “archconservative.” But that changed significantly after he married the actress and activist Jane Fonda in 1991. The marriage — the third for both — ended in divorce in 2001. After his death, Fonda described him as “a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate.”
Although he once conceded that he didn’t watch CNN very often, the mantle of responsibility that came with owning the nation’s first all-news channel changed Turner — and made him a better man. He donated $1 billion to United Nations causes and created the U.N. Foundation. He also devoted himself to environmental causes, including pledging to conserve vast swaths of the American west. He campaigned intensively to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Turner never lost his maverick ways or brash style, but he felt the weight that came with distributing news and information to virtually every nation on the globe.
The sense of responsibility was evident at CNN’s launch, on June 1, 1980, as he stood in front of the former country club that would become CNN’s headquarters and presided over its opening ceremony. Flags waved and a band played the national anthem.
Then Turner delivered remarks that included what now amounts to his epitaph: “To act on one’s convictions while others wait,” he said. “To create a positive force in the world where cynics abound. To provide information to people where it wasn’t available before…”
The best thing about Ted Turner was that he only said what he meant, and he almost always did what he said.
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