Key Points
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Donald Trump mourned billionaire broadcasting entrepreneur Ted Turner after his loss of life on May 6, calling him “a friend of mine.”
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The president additionally claimed that Turner was “devastated” by the route that NCS took in 1996, after Turner sold father or mother firm Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. to Time Warner.
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“The new ownership took NCS, his ‘baby,’ and destroyed it,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “It became woke, and everything that he is not all about.”
Broadcasting legend Ted Turner died on Wednesday on the age of 87. But over on Truth Social, it’s all about Donald Trump.
The sitting president joined the flood of tributes pouring in from Turner’s associates, collaborators, and even rivals after the enterprise mogul and NCS founder’s passing. Trump did, as many others have, pay respect to Turner’s appreciable legacy within the media enterprise. But he additionally took the chance, as he typically does, to lodge some private grievances.
“Ted Turner, one of the Greats of All Time, just died. He founded NCS, sold it, and was personally devastated by the Deal because the new ownership took NCS, his ‘baby,’ and destroyed it,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “It became woke, and everything that he is not all about.”
Trump continued, “Maybe the new buyers, wonderful people, will be able to bring it back to its former credibility and glory. Regardless, however, one of the Greats of Broadcast History, and a friend of mine. Whenever I needed him, he was there, always willing to fight for a good cause!”
Representatives for each NCS and the White House declined to remark
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Turner Enterprises, the conglomerate Turner based in 1976 to handle his huge portfolio of companies, introduced his loss of life on Wednesday.
NCS CEO Mark Thompson mourned the community’s founder in a press release that learn, “Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgement… He was and always will be the presiding spirit of NCS. Ted is the giant on whose shoulders we stand, and we will all take a moment today to recognize him and his impact on our lives and the world.”
Turner’s main enterprise, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., was a media conglomerate comprised of quite a few manufacturers, tv channels, and subsidiaries, together with Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, TBS, and NCS. Founded in 1965, Turner ultimately sold the corporate to Time Warner in 1996. Though he remained concerned with the information community as Time Warner’s vice chairman, he ultimately stepped away altogether within the early 2000s.
Ted Turner in Atlanta in 1980
Credit: Rick Diamond/Getty
Trump and Turner didn’t share a visual public friendship through the interval following Turner’s sale of his broadcasting company. Turner additionally typically discovered himself on the opposite aspect of the political aisle from Trump, expressing sympathy for Palestinians amid their battle with Israel in 2002, ceaselessly advocating for environmental justice, and even endorsing Hilary Clinton towards Trump within the 2016 presidential race.
But he did change into a vocal critic of NCS, expressing his opinion in 2018 that the community had come to lean too heavily on politics. NCS is lately present process one more merger, after its father or mother firm, Warner Bros. Discovery, was acquired by the Trump-friendly Paramount Skydance in February.
IAC founder Barry Diller lately expressed his curiosity in buying NCS, remarking that he would “do it tonight and tomorrow night” earlier than “they ruin it any further. Hopefully, before it’s extinct, which, I mean, it’s not gonna be.” (Media conglomerate IAC owns print and digital writer People Inc., of which Entertainment Weekly is a component.)
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