Media mogul Ted Turner, who pioneered the modern 24-hour news culture when he launched the CNN channel, has died at the age of 87, the network has announced.
In 1980, Turner launched Cable News Network as the first dedicated rolling news channel, which soon became a central part of the media landscape.
US President Donald Trump paid tribute to him as “one of the greats of broadcast history and a friend of mine.”
Current CNN CEO and chairman Mark Thompson described Turner as “the giant on whose shoulders we stand, and we will all take a moment today to recognise him and his impact on our lives and the world.”
In a statement, Thompson said: “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 CNN.”
President Trump has been a fierce critic of the current CNN but said of Turner: “Whenever I needed him, he was there, always willing to fight for a good cause!”
CNN initially faced scepticism and struggles – being mocked as the “Chicken Noodle Network” in its early years by those who thought it would not succeed.
But the channel proved its worth by providing speedy and continuous updates of stories like the assassination attempt on US President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986.
The network truly came of age with its live rolling coverage from Iraq during the 1990-1991 Gulf War.
President George Bush once said he learned more from CNN than he did from the CIA.
CNN founding team member Mary Alice Williams told the BBC on Wednesday that Turner was “a wild man” and “a go-for-broke idea guy”.
She credited him with creating a network “that could connect the whole world so we could all see each other, so we could see that we shared common struggles and we could share practical solutions in the whole in the hope that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance at peace in this troubled world.”
“I know it sounds naive, maybe even far-fetched, but CNN was founded on that belief, and we all bought into it,” Williams said.
CNN’s success led other news channels to follow, such as Fox News, launched in 1996 by Turner’s long-time rival Rupert Murdoch.
But CNN was far from Turner’s only outlet. He began his career by taking over the successful family billboard company when his father took his own life, then bought a radio station in Atlanta, Georgia.
Within a decade, that station had become the foundation of the Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) and its boss was one of the biggest media moguls in the US.
He was also known for his brash personality, which earned him the nicknames “the Mouth of the South” and “Captain Outrageous”.
He even lived in CNN’s headquarters for a number of years, often walking around the newsroom in his bath robe, “eager to debate the day’s news”, Thompson said.
Beyond the media, Turner was a world-class yachtsman, winning the America’s Cup in 1977. In 1983, a Murdoch-sponsored yacht collided with Turner’s boat in an Australian race, which led Turner to challenge Murdoch to a fist fight.
Turner also owned sports properties, including the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Atlanta Hawks basketball team and Atlanta Thrashers ice hockey team.
He also became a major philanthropist, donating $1bn to the United Nations and millions more to environmental causes, and promoted and invested in clean energy.
He was married to actress Jane Fonda from 1991 until 2001.
In 2018, Turner revealed he had Lewy body dementia, a degenerative nerve disease.
‘Unstoppable media revolution’
Long-serving CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour was among those paying tribute, writing on X: “Just remember when giants strode the world.
“Ted Turner created an unstoppable media revolution for the benefit of all humankind.
“Throughout nearly 43 years at CNN, working for Ted and his vision has been the proudest achievement of my lifetime. RIP.”
Piers Morgan, who hosted a flagship show on CNN from 2011-14, wrote: “An incredible man who created CNN, won the World Series, and the America’s Cup, was a bison rancher, huge philanthropist, and extraordinarily bold buccaneer.
“Loved lunching with him, and interviewing him, when I worked at CNN. He was such a great character.”
Turner’s television empire also included the TBS and TNT channels, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network.
He made a short-lived, ill-fated $1.5bn (£1.1bn) acquisition of the MGM film studios in 1985. He went on to buy film and TV companies Castle Rock Entertainment and New Line Cinema in the 1990s, before his company merged with Time Warner.
‘Swashbuckling’ businessman
Speaking at the Sir Harry Evans Investigative Journalism Summit in London on Wednesday, former CNN boss Walter Isaacson called Turner “the most fearless journalist I’ve ever seen”.
“He was fearless when it came to his corporate overlords, when Time Warner bought him; he was fearless when it came to political leaders who tried to push back on him,” Isaacson said.
Claire Atkinson, founder of The Media Mix and contributing editor at The Ankler, told BBC Radio 4’s Media Show that Turner was “a swashbuckling founder of CNN” as well as other companies.
“He dubbed himself the Mouth of the South. He based the company in Atlanta, not in LA or New York, and he had a vision to bring 24-hour news to the world.”
CNN was initially “shunned by the broadcast networks” in the US, she said.
“Nobody really thought it could make inroads here, but it did, and Ted Turner became a kind of godfather of the cable industry.
“He launched Turner Classic Movies, he launched a sports channel, he bought the Atlanta Braves, and then eventually sold his company to Time Warner in a fateful deal that wiped out a lot of his fortune and was seen as something that took his power away in the media.
“So he turned to philanthropy. He said he invested $1bn (£740m) in the United Nations, he created the Goodwill Games in Moscow after the world shunned Moscow for political reasons.
“So his legacy is not just CNN, it’s a lot of other companies.”
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