NEW YORK (AP) — Ted Turner, a brash 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 cable 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.
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 out of the television business, he concentrated on philanthropy.
His garrulous personality sometimes overshadowed a risk-taking business acumen. By the time he sold his Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner Inc. in 1996, 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.”
Turner’s signature achievement was creating the Cable News Network, the first 24-hour, all-news television network in 1980. 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.
He took a chance by starting the operation in the early days of cable television, living in an apartment above its Atlanta office.
CNN’s breakthrough moment came during the Gulf War with Iraq in 1991. Most television journalists had fled Baghdad but CNN stayed, capturing arresting images of a war’s outbreak.
Source: WPLG
