Ted Turner, a media pioneer whose audacious launch of CNN in 1980 changed how the world consumes news, died Wednesday at age 87. Turner Enterprises, the organization overseeing his business and investments, confirmed the death, noting that Turner was surrounded by his family. A cause of death was not immediately released.
Turner had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurological disorder, in 2018. In his later years, the executive known by nicknames like “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South” slowed down, shifting his focus from the boardroom to large-scale conservation and global philanthropy.
“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,” Tom Johnson, CNN’s president from 1990 to 2001, told The Associated Press. “He had so many over the years.”
Turner’s most consequential move came when he launched CNN as the first television network to broadcast news around the clock. Skeptics at the time dismissed it as the “chicken noodle network,” but Turner’s strategy of moving quickly outpaced traditional broadcast networks. The network’s defining moment came a decade later during the 1991 Gulf War, when CNN correspondents remained in Baghdad, broadcasting live images of anti-aircraft fire and bombing campaigns as other journalists evacuated.
By the time Turner sold Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner in a $7.3 billion stock deal in 1996, his company included CNN International, TNT, Turner Classic Movies, and the Cartoon Network. Despite initially being promised a role in CNN post-merger, Turner was gradually pushed out. “I made a mistake,” Turner recalled in later years. “The mistake I made was losing control of the company.”
Before his breakthrough in television, Turner transformed a regional billboard business inherited from his father into a multi-industry conglomerate. The death of his father in 1963 pushed Turner into leadership; he later expanded into broadcasting by acquiring a weak UHF station in 1970. On Dec. 17, 1976, he began transmitting it via satellite as TBS Superstation.
Turner also expanded into professional sports. He owned the Atlanta Braves, turning the team into a World Series champion in 1995, alongside the Atlanta Hawks and Flames. Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said Turner fundamentally transformed how fans experience sports broadcasting.
Turner’s business success funded a sprawling real estate portfolio. He became one of the largest private landowners in the United States, controlling more than 2 million acres dedicated to preserving natural habitats and maintaining the nation’s largest private bison herd. Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.8 billion at the time of his death.
He channeled that wealth into global humanitarian causes. In 1997, he pledged $100 million a year for a decade to United Nations charities. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Turner “a visionary whose conviction, generosity and audacious spirit left a lasting imprint on the United Nations and our world.” Turner also co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative with former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, driven by a fear of nuclear annihilation.
“If I had to predict, the way things are going, I’d say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct in 50 years,” Turner said in 2003. “Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me.”
Tributes poured in from across the political and media spectrum. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav called Turner a “visionary and a trailblazer.” President Donald Trump called him “one of the Greats of All Time.”
Turner was a celebrity in his own right, frequently in the public eye for his romantic pursuits, yachting victories, and outspoken wit. He won the America’s Cup in 1977 and married actress Jane Fonda in 1991, shortly before being named Time magazine’s Man of the Year. The couple divorced in 2001 but remained friends.
“He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I’ve never been the same,” Fonda wrote on Instagram Wednesday.
Born Robert Edward Turner III in Cincinnati on Nov. 19, 1938, Turner grew up in Savannah, Georgia, before attending Brown University. After being expelled and returning to Atlanta, he built his career on risk-taking. He often told people he wanted to become “the world’s greatest sailor, businessman and lover all at the same time.”
“If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect,” Turner once bragged.
He leaves behind a transformed media landscape, a global philanthropic footprint, and a legacy that continues to influence how news, sports, and entertainment reach audiences worldwide.