Ted Turner: Cable news pioneer was outrageous, innovative

Ted Turner once described himself as a “very good thinker.”

“But I sometimes grab the wrong word,” he once said. “You know, I wing it.”

The media mogul, who founded CNN, owned the Atlanta Braves and invented the Superstation cable concept that linked millions of fans to major league baseball and even professional wrestling, died on Tuesday at the age of 87.

Turner was never afraid to wade into controversy, take a chance on a business venture or speak his mind.

“If Alexander the Great could conquer the known world, why couldn’t I start CNN?” Turner once told Oprah Winfrey, according to NPR.

Turner changed the face of reporting and the news cycle by introducing CNN on June 1, 1980, the first 24-hour cable news network. Two years later he founded “CNN Headline News,” which packaged the day’s news into 30-minute cycles.

“To him it was just the most logical thing in the world and he couldn’t understand why nobody else was doing it,” former CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan told NPR. “So he was going to do it.”

Turner’s gamble paid off. CNN’s “you-are-there,” breaking news reporting came to the fore during the first Iraq war in 1991, Deadline reported.

The network placed correspondents on the ground in Baghdad, with Bernard Shaw memorably dangling a microphone out of his hotel window so viewers could hear U.S. bombers attacking the Iraqi capital.

In 1981, CNN kept viewers riveted with its coverage of the royal wedding between Prince Charles of the United Kingdom and Diana Spencer.

Nicknamed the “Mouth of the South” and “Captain Outrageous,” Turner once compared media mogul rival Rupert Murdoch to Adolf Hitler, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He also challenged his rival to a pay-per-view boxing match.

They eventually buried the hatchet.

“Rupert and I have long since made amends,” Turner told Variety in 2019. “Years ago (I was out of the media industry at that point), I invited him to lunch at Ted’s Montana Grill in New York, and we had a great time catching up.”

In 1970, Turner went into debt to buy a small, failing Atlanta television station, which he renamed WTCG, for Turner Communications Group, The New York Times reported. Another nickname for the acronym, according to The Hollywood Reporter, was “Watch This Channel Grow.”

Turner’s business advisers counseled him not to buy the station. He ignored them.

“Turner didn’t listen,” Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The New Yorker in 2010. “He was Captain Courageous, the man with nerves of steel who went on to win the America’s Cup, take on the networks, marry a movie star, and become a billionaire. He dressed like a cowboy. He gave the impression of signing contracts without looking at them.

”He was a drinker, a yeller, a man of unstoppable urges and impulses, the embodiment of the entrepreneur as risk-taker. He bought the station, and so began one of the great broadcasting empires of the 20th century.”

Turner bought the Atlanta Braves in January 1976 following a 67-94 season by the club, ESPN reported. He said during his news conference that “I don’t want to see any more headlines calling Atlanta ‘Loserville U.S.A.’ I want to see Winnersville U.S.A.’”

Turner once managed the club for a day – on May 11, 1977 -- and the Braves won a World Series under his ownership in 1995.

Turner also dabbled in the NBA, buying a majority stake of the Atlanta Hawks in 1977, ESPN reported. At the time, he said he bought the franchise to keep it in Atlanta. The Hawks would reach the playoffs 15 times during his ownership; the team retired a jersey to honor him in 2004, the cable sports network reported.

Turner was also an accomplished yachtsman. As skipper of the yacht Courageous, he defended the America’s Cup in 1977 by beating an Australian crew 4-0.

In 1986, Turner created the Goodwill Games, an international sports competition held every four years; the event ran until 2000.

In 1987, Turner’s TNT channel shared the first cable NFL game package with ESPN, The Athletic reported.

And the TBS show “Georgia Championship Wrestling” was a perfect lead-in for Braves games.

Turner’s building of World Championship Wrestling was the biggest competitor of Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation (now WWE), The Athletic reported. WCW once featured pro basketball stars Karl Malone and Dennis Rodman competing in the wrestling ring a month after the two clashed in the NBA Finals between the Utah Jazz and Chicago Bulls, according to the sports news website.

Turner was Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1991

When it came to news, Turner always insisted on professionalism.

“Ted always used to tell us, ‘It’s my name that’s attached to this,’ ” Brad Siegel, the cable veteran who worked for Turner Broadcasting from 1993 to 2003, told Variety in a 2019 interview. “Whatever we did, he wanted to make sure it was something he would be proud of because it was his name at the top.”

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