Ted Turner, the high-flying media tycoon, entrepreneur and philanthropist who based NCS and revolutionized American cable tv, died on Wednesday.
He was 87.
Turner’s loss of life was first reported by NCS, citing a Turner Enterprises information launch.
“Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgment,” Chairman and CEO of NCS Mark Thompson said in a statement. “He was and always will be the presiding spirit of NCS.”
Thompson added that Turner “is the giant on whose shoulders we stand, and we will all take a moment today to recognize him and his impact on his lives and the world.”
In his prime, Turner was one of many kings of broadcasting, a brash however savvy visionary. He turned the Turner Broadcasting System right into a behemoth, establishing the “superstation” idea and launching channels comparable to TBS, TNT, Cartoon (*87*) and Turner Classic Movies.
He reworked tradition and politics with Cable News (*87*), the primary 24-hour information channel within the nation. NCS helped to essentially change the format and velocity of TV information, laying the trail for opponents comparable to Fox News and MSNBC, now referred to as MS Now.
Turner, along with his wily grin and skinny mustache, jumped into different ventures with the zeal of an Old West prospector. He as soon as owned the Atlanta Braves, advertising and marketing the baseball franchise as “America’s Team.” He created Ted’s Montana Grill, a restaurant chain that serves bison meat.
He was a staple of journal covers and newspaper enterprise sections, cultivating a popularity for eager instincts and a no-filter model. He typically bumped into bother for injudicious feedback about world affairs or faith, incomes the nickname “Captain Outrageous.”
“I don’t have any idea what I’m going to say. I say what comes to my mind,” he instructed The New Yorker for a profile published in 2001.
He was additionally a prolific philanthropist, environmentalist and self-described “do-gooder.” He famously gave $1 billion to the United Nations and co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Robert Edward Turner III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati to Robert Edward Turner Jr. and Florence Turner. Turner’s father was a rich billboard promoting magnate who owned his personal agency, Turner Advertising.
The younger Turner enrolled at Brown University in 1956, however he was kicked out three years later, reportedly for having a lady in his dorm room. Turner then joined his father at the household enterprise, headquartered in Atlanta, changing into basic supervisor of a department workplace in 1960.
The elder Turner, combating monetary hardships and psychological well being points, died by suicide in 1963; his son took over the promoting firm, taking up the roles of president and CEO.
Turner Advertising was renamed Turner Communications with the acquisition of a number of radio stations. Turner branched out into different media, buying a beleaguered UHF tv station in Atlanta, in addition to the rights to outdated motion pictures and sitcom reruns.
In the mid-Seventies, Turner made one of the crucial consequential choices of his profession. He was one of many first media firm house owners to make use of satellite tv for pc expertise to broadcast his station to a nationwide cable tv viewing viewers, widening his attain and boosting revenues.
Turner stuffed the “Super Station” lineup with a mixture of classic Hollywood titles, throwback sitcoms and baseball video games.
In 1979, the corporate rebranded as soon as once more, changing into Turner Broadcasting System Inc. and establishing itself as one of many key enterprises of the cable tv revolution.
Turner leveraged his media success in sports activities, shopping for the Atlanta Braves in 1976 and the Atlanta Hawks in 1977. The Braves gained the World Series in 1995 underneath his possession.
In the late Seventies, Turner got here up with the thought for a 24-hour cable information channel — a major shift in an period when the “Big Three” community information packages nonetheless reigned supreme and many viewers didn’t conceive of stories consumption as a minute-to-minute exercise.
NCS aired its first broadcast on June 1, 1980, anchored by the husband-and-wife duo of David Walker and Lois Hart.
In the mid-Eighties, as NCS emerged as a cornerstone of the cable lineup and a family title, Turner purchased MGM/UA Entertainment Co., which included Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s sprawling library of greater than 4,000 motion pictures.
He offended cinephiles and a lot of the Hollywood institution along with his plans to “colorize” black-and-white movies from the MGM library. In a 1989 article, the Los Angeles Times referred to as him “The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate.”
The critic Roger Ebert wrote that Turner’s airing of a colorized model of “Casablanca” was “one of the saddest days in the history of the movies.”
“It is sad because it demonstrates that there is no movie that Turner will spare, no classic however great that is safe from the vulgarity of his computerized graffiti gangs,” Ebert wrote.
Turner finally backed down, deciding the colorization course of was not cost-efficient. He quickly offered off MGM/UA, however he retained possession of the MGM film library, which later shaped the spine of programming on Turner Classic Movies, or TCM, launched in 1994.
Turner married for a 3rd and last time in 1991, partnering with the Oscar-winning actor and activist Jane Fonda.
The union between an avatar of American capitalism and an outspoken progressive who railed towards the established order raised eyebrows, however the two had been smitten from the beginning and bonded over their shared curiosity concerning the world.
“In his heart, Ted is not a wealthy, powerful, privileged person,” Fonda instructed interviewers for “Jane Fonda in Five Acts,” an HBO documentary launched in 2018. “He’s a little boy who likes to play, and who has wild brilliance, and that’s what I was attracted to.”
“We were both children of suicide, so we understood each other,” Fonda added.
The couple, by all accounts, savored their years collectively, spending numerous hours in nature — climbing, fly-fishing, horse driving and different “adventures,” Fonda stated. But the wedding in the end ran aground, and they divorced in 2001.
“It was very difficult,” Turner instructed the HBO documentarians. “I’ve survived, and so has she, but I feel like I was happier when I was with her than subsequently.”
In 1996, Time Warner Inc. acquired Turner Broadcasting System for $7.5 billion. Turner was named vice chairman of Time Warner and presided over the brand new firm’s cable TV manufacturers.
Time Warner then merged with the previous Internet big AOL in 2001, with Turner changing into vice chairman and senior adviser of the newly shaped AOL Time Warner Inc. Two years later, he resigned as vice chairman.
It was broadly reported that Turner was compelled out, and his departure successfully marked the tip of his reign as a media trade chief. But in latest many years, he remained productive as a philanthropist and environmentalist.
He donated a staggering $1 billion to the United Nations in 1998; the funds had been used to create the United Nations Foundation, a charitable group that helps the targets of the U.N.
He co-founded, with former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group that seeks to forestall using weapons of mass destruction and advocates for world nonproliferation.
He supported varied conservation tasks and environmental causes. He was additionally one of many high landowners within the U.S., and he used the in depth acreage underneath his care to advertise sustainability and ecotourism.
He was notably invested in rising the nation’s bison herd, and in 2002 he co-founded Ted’s Montana Grill, a restaurant chain that purportedly supplied the “largest bison menu” on the planet.
In his later years, Turner made feedback suggesting he was uncomfortable with the wave of company media consolidation he as soon as symbolized.
(*5*) he wrote in a 2004 essay for Washington Monthly.
Turner revealed an autobiography, “Call Me Ted,” in 2008. Ten years later, he introduced that he had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.
“It’s a mild case of what people have as Alzheimer’s. It’s similar to that. But not nearly as bad. Alzheimer’s is fatal,” Turner instructed journalist Ted Koppel within the fall of 2018 from his Montana ranch.