NEW YORK (AP) — Ted Turner, the brash and outspoken tv pioneer who created a media empire and remodeled the information enterprise by creating NCS and introducing the 24-hour cable information cycle, died Wednesday. He was 87.
He died surrounded by his household, in accordance with Turner Enterprises, the corporate that oversees his huge companies and investments.
Turner was the drive behind Cartoon Network, TNT and Turner Classic Movies. But his pursuits expanded far past media — proudly owning skilled sports activities groups in Atlanta and enormous chunks of the American West, fueling conservation efforts by habitat restoration and endangered species work.
He donated a gorgeous $1 billion to United Nations charities and raced yachts too, profitable the America’s Cup in 1977.
Turner married actor Jane Fonda in 1991, when he was named Time journal’s Man of the Year. By then, he was a celeb in his personal proper, incomes the nicknames “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South.”
He as soon as bragged: “If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect.”
He was slowed in later years by Lewy physique dementia. Long since out of the tv enterprise, he focused on philanthropy and his greater than 2 million acres (800,000 hectares) of property, together with the nation’s largest bison herd.
His garrulous persona generally overshadowed a pushed, risk-taking enterprise acumen. By the time he bought his Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner Inc. in a 1996 media megadeal, Turner had turned his late father’s billboard firm into a international conglomerate that included seven main cable networks, three skilled sports teams and a pair of hit film studios.
President Donald Trump, reacting to Turner’s loss of life, referred to as 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.
Turner’s signature achievement was creating NCS, the primary 24-hour, all-news tv community in 1980. At a time when information is immediately accessible, it’s exhausting to recall that the concept of letting shoppers resolve once they select to be taught what’s occurring on the planet was as soon as revolutionary.
In half, Turner’s personal frustration with tv information was the instigator. He typically labored late after the community newscasts had gone off the air, and was in mattress by the point his native stations did their very own information.
He took a probability by beginning the operation generally derided because the “chicken noodle network” within the early days of cable tv, dwelling in an condo above its Atlanta workplace.
“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.”
NCS’s breakthrough got here throughout the Gulf War with Iraq in 1991. Most tv journalists had fled Baghdad. NCS stayed, capturing photographs of a battle’s outbreak, with anti-aircraft tracers streaking throughout the sky and correspondents flinching from the concussion of bombs.
“His first love was family and he had five children. But very close behind, he’s always told me that his greatest achievement was NCS, but he had so many over the years,” Tom Johnson, NCS’s president from 1990 to 2001, informed The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Turner was promised a continued function in NCS after his firm’s sale to Time Warner for $7.3 billion in inventory however was progressively pushed out, a lot to his remorse.
“I made a mistake,” he later stated. “The mistake I made was losing control of the company.”
That similar yr — 1996 — noticed the start of Fox News Channel and arrival of a new dominant mogul in cable information, Rupert Murdoch. Turner as soon as in contrast Murdoch to Adolf Hitler, however the bitter rivals later reconciled over their concern for the surroundings.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav referred to as Turner a visionary and a trailblazer.
“Ted’s entrepreneurial spirit, creative ambition and willingness to take risks changed the media industry forever,” Zaslav stated in a be aware to staff Wednesday.
Building TBS SuperStation
Robert Edward Turner III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati. When he was 9, his household moved to Savannah, Georgia. After being expelled from Brown University for sneaking a feminine scholar into his room, Turner got here to Atlanta to work for his father’s billboard firm.
After his father’s 1963 suicide, Turner took over the corporate. In 1970, he purchased an unbiased UHF station with a weak sign that didn’t even cowl Atlanta.
On Dec. 17, 1976, he started transmitting the station to cable programs throughout the nation through satellite tv for pc. It grew to become the TBS SuperStation. “It was the start of something bigger than we ever imagined,” Turner stated in 1996.
TBS’ assortment of previous motion pictures and “The Andy Griffith Show” reruns was augmented by Turner’s acquisition of baseball’s Atlanta Braves, which slowly attracted followers throughout the nation and declared themselves “America’s team.”
In the Nineteen Eighties, Turner went deeply into debt to purchase MGM, a transfer once more greeted with skepticism.
But the acquisition gave his firm a enormous library of classic motion pictures that finally launched the TNT and Turner Classic Movies networks. His devotion to older motion pictures earned Turner a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004. He was additionally criticized for including shade to basic motion pictures like “Casablanca,” which he stated he did to attraction to a youthful viewers.
TBS additionally acquired the Hanna-Barbera animation library, which led to the Cartoon Network.
“He sees the obvious before most people do,” Bob Wright, former president and CEO of NBC, informed 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 youthful 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 key to his success, he stated: “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.”
Acquiring sports activities groups and land
Married thrice, the mustachioed Turner wooed lovely ladies with a roguish allure. He was married to Fonda from 1991 to 2001. She stop performing whereas married to Turner, however uninterested in his philandering and divorced him, though they remained mates.
“He was sexy. He was brilliant. He had 2 million acres by the time I left. It would have been easy to stay,” Fonda as soon as stated of her relationship with Turner.
He struck up friendships with world leaders, bonding with Cuban chief Fidel Castro over looking and arguments about politics.
Turner constructed a sports activities empire, at one level proudly owning skilled baseball, basketball and hockey groups in Atlanta. He was greatest remembered at the helm of the Atlanta Braves, turning the perennial doormats into champions within the Nineteen Nineties. Their former stadium, constructed for the 1996 Olympics, was named Ted Turner Field.
He acquired millions of acres in ranches full with roaming buffalo. He spoke typically of reviving the West’s bison herds, and in 2002 began a restaurant chain serving bison burgers, Ted’s Montana Grill.
Forbes estimated his internet value at $2.8 billion at the time of his loss of life.
He had sufficient time, and cash, to commit to such lofty targets as selling world peace and defending the surroundings.
“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 as soon as stated. “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 sometimes overshadowed his enterprise actions.
Fresh from skippering his boat “Courageous” to the 1977 America’s Cup title, a very inebriated Turner was captured by TV cameras stretched out on the ground at the victory celebration.
Turner managed to insult many together with his shoot-from-the-lip model. An atheist since his solely sister died of lupus at age 17, he referred to as Christians “losers” and “Jesus freaks,” later apologizing.
He as soon as urged in a speech that unemployed Black individuals be used to haul cell missiles with ropes “like the Egyptians building the pyramids.” He stated he was joking after civil rights leaders demanded an apology.
Other instances, his humor saved him from doubtlessly awkward conditions, like when he talked to an viewers in Berlin in 1999. “You know, you Germans had a bad century,” Turner stated, in accordance with 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.”
Dedication to humanitarian causes
Turner grabbed a management function in American philanthropy together with his 1997 pledge to present $1 billion, or $100 million a yr for 10 years, to United Nations charities. Even as Turner’s fortune shrank after the AOL Time Warner merger, he continued giving cash to the U.N., calling it one of the best hope for peace.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday referred to as Turner “a visionary whose conviction, generosity and audacious spirit left a lasting imprint on the United Nations and our world.”
Turner promoted a vary of humanitarian causes. He joined former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn to start out the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a U.S.-based nonprofit devoted to lowering the specter of nuclear, organic and chemical weapons.
“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 stated in 2003. “Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me.”
As he poured tens of millions into nonprofits, Turner was additionally keen on spreading his wealth in small methods. He as soon as gave $500 to a volunteer fireplace division that helped extinguish a blaze on one in every of his ranches. Another time he lent private work for an exhibit at a Bozeman, Montana, museum.
Bauder, a longtime media author, retired from The Associated Press in 2026. Former Associated Press correspondent Ryan Nakashima and AP writers John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, R.J. Rico in Atlanta, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This materials might not be revealed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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