Ted Turner, a brash television pioneer whose decisions helped define modern cable news, died Wednesday at age 87, according to Turner Enterprises, which manages his businesses and investments. A cause was not released. Turner’s career also extended beyond media, including high-profile ownership in sports and large holdings of land and natural habitats.
Turner made his biggest mark on the news business when he launched CNN nearly a half-century ago, creating the first 24-hour, all-news television network and introducing the 24-hour cable news cycle. The effort began in 1980, when Turner took what he described as a risk by launching cable’s early “chicken noodle network” and working to move quickly ahead of broadcast competitors. In a 2016 interview with The American Academy of Achievement, he said: “I was going to have to hit hard and move incredibly fast and that’s what we did — move so fast that the (broadcast) networks wouldn’t have the time to respond, because they should have done this, not me,” adding that broadcasters “didn’t have the imagination.”
CNN’s breakthrough came during the 1991 Gulf War with Iraq. Most television journalists fled Baghdad, but CNN stayed, broadcasting images of the war’s outbreak as anti-aircraft tracers streaked across the sky and correspondents worked amid bomb concussions. “His first love was family and he had five children. But very close behind, he’s always told me that his greatest achievement was CNN. But he had so many over the years,” Tom Johnson, CNN’s president from 1990 to 2001, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Turner’s media empire grew over time to include CNN International, the Cartoon Network, TNT and Turner Classic Movies. The company’s cable-first approach also reflected Turner’s appetite for speed and scale, traits that contributed to his public persona as much as his business strategy. Turner’s outlook and brash humor helped earn him the nicknames “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South,” and his confidence sometimes came through in quotes that mixed boast with self-awareness, including “If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect,” which he once said.
For much of his career, Turner retained a hands-on interest in shaping what television delivered, but later control shifts changed his relationship to the business he built. After Turner sold Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner in 1996 for $7.3 billion in stock, he said he regretted losing control of the company. “I made a mistake,” he later said. “The mistake I made was losing control of the company.” That period also coincided with the rise of a new dominant cable-news mogul, Rupert Murdoch; Turner once compared Murdoch to Adolf Hitler, and the rivals later reconciled over environmental concerns.
Turner’s life also included sports ownership and entertainment acquisitions that turned his television footprint into a broader media and cultural influence. Born Robert Edward Turner III on Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati and raised in Savannah, Georgia, he later returned to Atlanta after his father’s suicide in 1963 and took over his father’s billboard company. In 1970, Turner bought an independent UHF station with a weak signal and, on Dec. 17, 1976, began transmitting it via satellite to cable systems across the country, building what became TBS Superstation. He later expanded TBS’ library and reach through acquisitions, including the Atlanta Braves, whose rise made them world champions in 1995, and whose ballpark built for the 1996 Olympics was named Ted Turner Field.
His later years were also marked by conservation and charitable giving. Turner died at home, surrounded by his family, according to Turner Enterprises. He had been diagnosed in 2018 with Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurological disorder. Turner concentrated increasingly on philanthropy and environmental work, including donating $1 billion to United Nations charities, along with preserving natural habitats and working to protect endangered species and reduce nuclear weapons. Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, called Turner “a visionary whose conviction, generosity and audacious spirit left a lasting imprint on the United Nations and our world.”
Turner’s visibility also extended into his personal life and celebrity status. He married actor Jane Fonda in 1991, just before he was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year. Fonda wrote Wednesday on Instagram: “He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I’ve never been the same.” Donald Trump, speaking Wednesday, called Turner “one of the Greats of All Time.” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in a note to employees that Turner “changed the media industry forever,” calling him a visionary and trailblazer and pointing to his “entrepreneurial spirit, creative ambition and willingness to take risks.”
Turner’s influence carried a mix of innovation and controversy, as his outspoken style sometimes drew attention away from business decisions. He later apologized for remarks after civil rights leaders demanded one. His public comments could also land sharply beyond the workplace; in one example included in reporting about his remarks, he suggested in a speech that unemployed Black people be used to haul mobile missiles with ropes “like the Egyptians building the pyramids,” and he later said he was joking.
As he built his companies and shaped cable’s evolution, Turner also pushed an expansive definition of what media ownership could accomplish, from sports to old movies to humanitarian causes. He was credited with transforming how fans experience sports, and he later devoted resources to issues that ranged from world peace efforts to environmental preservation. His legacy in news television, however, centers on a decision that began as a gamble: creating CNN nearly five decades ago and forcing the industry to respond to a new expectation that news could fill the clock.