CNN founder Ted Turner, a brash and outspoken television pioneer, has died at age 87

Ted Turn­er, a brash and out­spo­ken tele­vi­sion pi­o­neer who raced yachts, owned huge chunks of the Amer­i­can West and trans­formed the news busi­ness by launch­ing CNN and in­tro­duc­ing the 24-hour news cy­cle, died Wednes­day. He was 87.

Turn­er died sur­round­ed by his fam­i­ly, ac­cord­ing to Turn­er En­ter­pris­es, the com­pa­ny that over­sees his vast busi­ness in­ter­ests and in­vest­ments.

Turn­er owned pro­fes­sion­al sports teams in At­lanta, de­fend­ed the Amer­i­ca’s Cup in yacht­ing in 1977 and do­nat­ed a stun­ning $1 bil­lion to Unit­ed Na­tions char­i­ties. He mar­ried three women — most fa­mous­ly ac­tor Jane Fon­da — and earned the nick­names “Cap­tain Out­ra­geous” and “The Mouth of the South.”

He once bragged: “If on­ly I had a lit­tle hu­mil­i­ty, I’d be per­fect.”

He was slowed in lat­er years by Lewy body de­men­tia. Long since out of the tele­vi­sion busi­ness, he con­cen­trat­ed on phil­an­thropy and his more than 2 mil­lion acres of prop­er­ty, in­clud­ing the na­tion’s largest bi­son herd.

His gar­ru­lous per­son­al­i­ty some­times over­shad­owed a dri­ven, risk-tak­ing busi­ness acu­men. By the time he sold his Turn­er Broad­cast­ing Sys­tem to Time Warn­er Inc. in a 1996 me­dia megadeal, Turn­er had turned his late fa­ther’s bill­board com­pa­ny in­to a glob­al con­glom­er­ate that in­clud­ed sev­en ma­jor ca­ble net­works, three pro­fes­sion­al sports teams and a pair of hit movie stu­dios.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, re­act­ing to Turn­er’s death, called him “one of the Greats of All Time.”

“When­ev­er I need­ed him, he was there, al­ways will­ing to fight for a good cause!” Trump post­ed on so­cial me­dia.

The cre­ation of CNN

Turn­er’s sig­na­ture achieve­ment was cre­at­ing CNN, the first 24-hour, all-news tele­vi­sion net­work in 1980. At a time news is in­stant­ly avail­able at any­one’s fin­ger­tips, it’s hard to re­call that the idea of let­ting con­sumers de­cide when they choose to learn what’s go­ing on in the world was once rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

In part, Turn­er’s own frus­tra­tion with tele­vi­sion news was the in­sti­ga­tor. He of­ten worked past 8 p.m., af­ter the ABC, CBS and NBC night­ly news­casts had al­ready gone off the air, and was in bed by the time his lo­cal sta­tions did their own news­casts at 11 p.m.

He took a chance by start­ing the op­er­a­tion some­times de­rid­ed as the “chick­en noo­dle net­work” in the ear­ly days of ca­ble tele­vi­sion, liv­ing in an apart­ment above its At­lanta of­fice.

“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,” Turn­er re­called in a 2016 in­ter­view with the Acad­e­my of Achieve­ment. “But they didn’t have the imag­i­na­tion.”

CNN’s break­through mo­ment came dur­ing the Gulf War with Iraq in 1991. Most tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ists had fled Bagh­dad, warned of an im­mi­nent Amer­i­can at­tack. CNN stayed, cap­tur­ing ar­rest­ing im­ages of a war’s out­break, with an­ti-air­craft trac­ers streak­ing across the sky and cor­re­spon­dents flinch­ing from the con­cus­sion of bombs.

Turn­er was promised a con­tin­ued role in CNN af­ter his com­pa­ny’s sale to Time Warn­er for $7.3 bil­lion in stock, but was grad­u­al­ly pushed out, much to his re­gret.

“I made a mis­take,” he lat­er said. “The mis­take I made was los­ing con­trol of the com­pa­ny.”

That same year — 1996 — saw the birth of Fox News Chan­nel and ar­rival of a new dom­i­nant mogul in ca­ble news, Ru­pert Mur­doch. Po­lit­i­cal opin­ion be­came the stock in trade of net­works like Fox News and MSNBC.

Ac­tress Jane Fon­da and CNN founder Ted Turn­er pose to­geth­er at the Unit­ed Na­tions Foun­da­tion Glob­al Lead­er­ship Din­ner, Nov. 6, 2013, in New York. (AP Pho­to/Ja­son De­Crow, File)

Build­ing TBS Su­per­Sta­tion

Robert Ed­ward Turn­er III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincin­nati. When he was 9, his fam­i­ly moved to Sa­van­nah, Geor­gia, where he grew up. Af­ter be­ing ex­pelled from Brown Uni­ver­si­ty for sneak­ing a co­ed in­to his room, Turn­er came to At­lanta to work as an ac­count ex­ec­u­tive for his dom­i­neer­ing fa­ther’s bill­board com­pa­ny, Turn­er Ad­ver­tis­ing.

Af­ter his fa­ther’s 1963 sui­cide, Turn­er took over the com­pa­ny. In 1970, he bought an in­de­pen­dent UHF sta­tion with a weak sig­nal that didn’t even cov­er At­lanta.

On Dec. 17, 1976, he be­gan trans­mit­ting the sta­tion to ca­ble sys­tems around the coun­try via satel­lite. It be­came the TBS Su­per­Sta­tion. “It was the start of some­thing big­ger than we ever imag­ined,” Turn­er said in 1996.

TBS’ mot­ley col­lec­tion of old movies and “The Andy Grif­fith Show” re­runs was aug­ment­ed by Turn­er’s ac­qui­si­tion of base­ball’s At­lanta Braves. Peren­ni­al door­mats, the Braves slow­ly at­tract­ed fans across the na­tion through their su­per­sta­tion ex­po­sure and in the 1980s be­gan de­clar­ing them­selves “Amer­i­ca’s Team.”

Turn­er, who ear­ly on donned a uni­form and man­aged one game, helped open base­ball’s free-agent price wars by sign­ing pitch­er Andy Messer­smith.

In the 1980s, Turn­er went deeply in­to debt to buy MGM, a move again greet­ed with skep­ti­cism.

But the ac­qui­si­tion gave his com­pa­ny a huge li­brary of vin­tage movies that even­tu­al­ly were par­layed in­to the TNT and Turn­er Clas­sic Movies net­works. His de­vo­tion to old­er movies earned Turn­er a star on the Hol­ly­wood Walk of Fame in 2004. He was al­so crit­i­cized for adding col­or to clas­sic movies like “Casablan­ca,” which he said he did to make them ap­peal­ing to a younger au­di­ence.

TBS al­so ac­quired the Han­na-Bar­bera an­i­ma­tion li­brary, which led to the launch of the Car­toon Net­work.

“He sees the ob­vi­ous be­fore most peo­ple do,” Bob Wright, for­mer pres­i­dent and CEO of NBC, told The New York­er in 2001. “We all look at the same pic­ture, but Ted sees what you don’t see. And af­ter he sees it, it be­comes ob­vi­ous to every­body.”

He re­vealed his am­bi­tions as a younger man: “I used to tell peo­ple I want­ed to be­come the world’s great­est sailor, busi­ness­man and lover all at the same time.”

Asked to share the se­cret to his suc­cess, he said: “Ear­ly to bed, ear­ly to rise, work like hell and ad­ver­tise.”

Ac­tress and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Jane Fon­da and me­dia mogul Ted Turn­er ar­rive at a par­ty in sup­port of Propo­si­tion 128 in Los An­ge­les on Nov. 6, 1990. (AP Pho­to/Reed Sax­on, File)

Ac­quir­ing sports teams and land

For much of his life a par­ty­ing roustabout who wooed beau­ti­ful women with a rogu­ish charm, the lean, mus­ta­chioed sports­man mar­ried three times. He was mar­ried to Fon­da from 1991 to 2001. She quit act­ing while mar­ried to Turn­er, but tired of his phi­lan­der­ing and di­vorced him, al­though they re­mained friends.

“He was sexy. He was bril­liant. He had 2 mil­lion acres by the time I left. It would have been easy to stay,” Fon­da said of her re­la­tion­ship with Turn­er.

Turn­er had an un­ex­pect­ed friend­ship with Cuban leader Fi­del Cas­tro, bond­ing over hunt­ing and ar­gu­ments about pol­i­tics over rum and cig­ars. A once bit­ter ri­val who com­pared Fox’s Mur­doch to Adolf Hitler, they lat­er rec­on­ciled over a mu­tu­al con­cern over the en­vi­ron­ment.

Turn­er built a sports em­pire, at one point own­ing pro­fes­sion­al base­ball, bas­ket­ball and hock­ey teams in At­lanta. He was best re­mem­bered at the helm of the At­lanta Braves, turn­ing the door­mats in­to post­sea­son reg­u­lars by the 1990s. Their sta­di­um, built for the 1996 Olympics, was named Ted Turn­er Field. The Braves re­placed it in 2016 with a new­er sta­di­um north of At­lanta.

Per­haps Turn­er’s great­est love was for the land. He ac­quired mil­lions of acres in ranch­es com­plete with roam­ing buf­fa­lo and was Ne­bras­ka’s largest pri­vate land­hold­er. He spoke of­ten of re­viv­ing the West’s bi­son herds, and in 2002 start­ed a restau­rant chain serv­ing bi­son burg­ers, Ted’s Mon­tana Grill. Re­searchers at Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty cred­it­ed his do­na­tion of a few bulls in 2005 with help­ing in­crease the ge­net­ic di­ver­si­ty of the last herd of south­ern Plains bi­son.

He had a net worth of $2.5 bil­lion in 2023, but had dropped off Forbes mag­a­zine’s rank­ing of the 400 rich­est Amer­i­cans in 2021.

Dur­ing a stock mar­ket bust, Turn­er’s net worth went from near­ly $10 bil­lion to about $2 bil­lion in two-and-a-half years.

“To put this in per­spec­tive, I lost near­ly $8 bil­lion in 30 months,” he wrote in his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, “Call Me Ted,” in 2008. “That means that, on av­er­age, my net worth dropped by about $67 mil­lion “per week,” or near­ly $10 mil­lion “per day, every day, for two and a half years.”

He had enough time, and mon­ey, to de­vote to such lofty goals as pro­mot­ing world peace and pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment.

“See, my life is more an ad­ven­ture than a quest to make mon­ey. Ad­ven­ture is go­ing out and do­ing some­thing for the pure hell of it,” Turn­er once said. “You just want to see if you can do it, pe­ri­od. There’s no thought of gain oth­er than your own sat­is­fac­tion.”

‘The Mouth of the South’

Through the years, Turn­er’s an­tics oc­ca­sion­al­ly over­shad­owed his busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties.

Fresh from skip­per­ing his boat “Coura­geous” to the Amer­i­ca’s Cup ti­tle in 1977, a very ine­bri­at­ed Turn­er was cap­tured by TV cam­eras stretched out on the floor at the vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion.

Turn­er man­aged to in­sult many with his shoot-from-the-lip style. An athe­ist since his on­ly sis­ter died of lu­pus at age 17, he called Chris­tians “losers” and “Je­sus-freaks,” lat­er apol­o­giz­ing for both re­marks.

He once sug­gest­ed in a speech that un­em­ployed Black peo­ple be used to haul mo­bile mis­siles with ropes “like the Egyp­tians build­ing the pyra­mids.” Af­ter civ­il rights lead­ers de­mand­ed an apol­o­gy, he said he was just jok­ing.

Oth­er times, his hu­mor saved him from po­ten­tial­ly awk­ward sit­u­a­tions, like when he talked to an au­di­ence in Berlin in 1999. “You know, you Ger­mans had a bad cen­tu­ry,” Turn­er said, ac­cord­ing to The New York­er. “You were on the wrong side of two wars. You were the losers. I know what that’s like. When I bought the At­lanta Braves, we couldn’t win, ei­ther. You guys can turn it around. You can start mak­ing the right choic­es. If the At­lanta Braves could do it, then Ger­many can do it.”

Turn­er, fa­ther of five chil­dren, grabbed a lead­er­ship role in Amer­i­can phil­an­thropy with his Sept. 18, 1997, pledge to give $1 bil­lion, or $100 mil­lion a year for 10 years, to Unit­ed Na­tions char­i­ties. Even as Turn­er’s for­tune shrank af­ter the AOL Time Warn­er merg­er, he con­tin­ued giv­ing mon­ey to the U.N., call­ing it the best hope for peace.

Ded­i­ca­tion to var­i­ous caus­es

He pro­mot­ed a range of hu­man­i­tar­i­an caus­es. Turn­er joined for­mer U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn to start the Nu­clear Threat Ini­tia­tive, a U.S.-based non­prof­it ded­i­cat­ed to re­duc­ing the threat of nu­clear, bi­o­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons. Turn­er fret­ted pub­licly about the world’s prob­lems.

“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.”

As he poured mil­lions in­to non­prof­its on a glob­al scale, Turn­er was al­so fond of spread­ing his wealth in small ways. He once gave $500 to a vol­un­teer fire de­part­ment that helped ex­tin­guish a blaze on one of his ranch­es. An­oth­er time he lent per­son­al paint­ings for an ex­hib­it at a Boze­man, Mon­tana, mu­se­um.

Baud­er, a long­time me­dia writer, re­tired from The As­so­ci­at­ed Press in 2026. For­mer As­so­ci­at­ed Press cor­re­spon­dent Ryan Nakashima con­tributed to this re­port.

By DAVID BAUD­ER

NEW YORK (AP)