Many are describing Ted Turner, who died Wednesday at 87, as a “visionary.” That’s probably not correct. His imaginative and prescient was restricted by the truth that he knew little or no in regards to the two areas of media that he helped revolutionize: broadcasting and journalism.
What Turner had was intuition and perseverance — sufficient to alter tv and to make him very wealthy.
What Turner had was intuition and perseverance — sufficient to alter tv and to make him very wealthy.
I used to be residing out my very own media dream, having launched On Cable Magazine in 1980, the identical yr Turner gave the nation NCS. I interviewed him many instances at his workplace in Atlanta, the place a plaque quoted Gen. George S. Patton (and summed up Turner’s method to enterprise and life): “Either Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way.”
Turner’s instincts had been first examined in 1976, when he used cash earned primarily from his billboard promoting enterprise to buy satellite tv for pc time, and commenced transmitting his humble UHF station, WTCG — later WTBS — to cable TV methods nationwide. This was the primary “superstation,” an ingenious technique of competing with the traditional broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — at a fraction of their working prices.
Of course, the networks weren’t glad. “We were battling them every step of the way,” Turner informed me just a few years after WTBS went nationwide. “But it was a lot of fun. Changing an established order is always a fight.”
The extra daring and dear instinctive transfer that adopted was creating all-news tv. But Turner’s actual innovation with NCS went past round the clock TV journalism. It helped invent “narrowcasting.”
The yr earlier than NCS’s debut, ESPN turned the primary all-sports channel; the next yr, MTV turned the primary all-music channel, adopted by all-weather on the Weather Channel. This slender method to programming, made attainable by satellites and cable connections, is seen as we speak not solely on cable tv, but in addition via digital streaming retailers.
Turner’s success outdoors of media was established earlier than he launched NCS. He was a champion sailor, winning the America’s Cup in 1977. That identical yr, he purchased the Atlanta Hawks basketball workforce. The yr earlier than, he had bought the Atlanta Braves baseball franchise.
Peter Funt is a author and TV host. He is the writer of “Playing POTUS: The Power of America’s ‘Acting Presidents.’”