Ted Turner, the media entrepreneur who founded CNN and helped turn cable television into a global news force, died Wednesday, Turner Enterprises said. He was 87.
Turner’s career reshaped how audiences watched breaking news. His businesses grew to include CNN, TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies, and his interests extended well beyond television to professional sports, yachting, land conservation and philanthropy.
Turner Enterprises said he died peacefully surrounded by family after a long battle with Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder he publicly disclosed in 2018. Some reports on his death said no cause had been disclosed, reflecting a difference in how the initial accounts described the company’s statement.
A cable bet that changed news
Born Robert Edward Turner III in Cincinnati in 1938, Turner moved south as a child and later took over his family’s billboard business after his father’s death. He bought a struggling Atlanta television station in 1970 and built it into the foundation of Turner Broadcasting System.
In 1980, he launched Cable News Network as the first 24-hour cable news channel. The idea drew skepticism at the start, with critics deriding CNN as the “Chicken Noodle Network,” but the channel became a fixture of the media landscape by providing continuous coverage of major events including the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, the 1986 Challenger disaster and the 1990-91 Gulf War.
CNN’s live coverage from Iraq during the Gulf War became a defining moment for the network and for cable news. Its success helped spur a wave of competitors, including Fox News and MSNBC, and made rolling coverage a standard expectation for major news events.
Mark Thompson, CNN’s chairman and CEO, called Turner “an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgement.” Thompson said Turner would remain “the presiding spirit of CNN.”
A wider empire in media and sports
Turner’s television holdings expanded into entertainment, sports and film. His empire included TBS, TNT, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network. He also acquired MGM/UA in the 1980s, later retaining rights to large parts of its film catalogue, and bought Castle Rock Entertainment and New Line Cinema in the 1990s before Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner in 1996.
The Time Warner deal made Turner a leading shareholder and gave him a role overseeing cable networks, but it also marked the beginning of his loss of control over the company he had built. He later described that loss of control as a major mistake.
Turner was also a prominent figure in sports. He won the America’s Cup as a yachtsman in 1977 and owned Atlanta teams including the Braves, Hawks and Thrashers. During his 20 years as owner of the Braves, the team won the 1995 World Series and became closely associated with national cable broadcasts.
His public image was as outsized as his business ambitions. He was known for blunt remarks and earned nicknames including “the Mouth of the South” and “Captain Outrageous.” He was married three times, including to actor and activist Jane Fonda from 1991 to 2001, and had five children.
Philanthropy and conservation
In later years, Turner became one of the country’s best-known philanthropists and private landholders. He donated $1 billion to support United Nations operations, backed environmental causes and clean energy, and helped found the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit focused on reducing nuclear, biological and chemical threats.
He also bought and protected vast stretches of land and became closely associated with efforts to preserve American bison. His environmental work and media legacy made him a figure whose influence stretched from television newsrooms to conservation policy and global philanthropy.
President Donald Trump called Turner “one of the Greats of Broadcast History” in a social media tribute. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp described him as a bold entrepreneur and philanthropist. For the industry Turner disrupted, his most enduring legacy remains the news model he launched in Atlanta: always on, global in ambition and built around the idea that audiences would no longer wait for the evening broadcast to learn what had happened.
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