{"id":472203,"date":"2026-05-07T01:59:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T01:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/472203\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T01:59:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T01:59:12","slug":"ted-turner-cnn-founder-and-pioneer-of-24-hour-news-dies-at-87-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/472203\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Turner, CNN founder and pioneer of 24-hour news, dies at 87 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Turner, the brash sportsman and entrepreneur whose ambition and instincts led to a media empire that included groundbreaking news network CNN<\/a>, has died. He was 87.<\/p>\n

In September 2018 Turner revealed that he had Lewy body dementia, a degenerative nerve disease.<\/p>\n

Turner became a billionaire by taking over his \u200cfather\u2019s billboard business, buying a television station in 1970 and transforming that into what would become a vast, ground-breaking television group.<\/p>\n

One nickname was not enough for a personality as roguish and bold as Turner\u2019s. He was known variously as the \u201cmouth of the south,\u201d \u201ccaptain outrageous,\u201d and \u201cterrible Ted\u201d.<\/p>\n

Turner became one of the most powerful figures in US<\/a> media and entertainment, his networks specialising in news, sports, reruns and old movies. But he did not stop there. He added the MGM\/UA movie studio to his portfolio before making \u200ban even bigger move \u2013 merging his Turner Broadcasting System with Time Warner in 1996.<\/p>\n

Turner headed the new company\u2019s cable networks division and was its leading shareholder, but he had trouble fitting into a corporate system after decades of freewheeling as his own boss. He eventually lost control of his networks.<\/p>\n

Turner also became one of the world\u2019s leading environmentalists, one of the largest landowners in the United States, and a major philanthropist, giving $1 billion (\u20ac850 million) to the United Nations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With a slender moustache, gap-toothed grin, dimpled chin and mischievous glint in his eye, Turner pursued a range of passions. In the 1970s he owned the Atlanta Braves baseball team and the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association and skippered his yacht the \u200bCourageous to the America\u2019s Cup. The many women in his life included Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1986 he started the Goodwill Games, an Olympic-like competition, and two years later bought a wrestling organisation that provided more TV content. His concerns about nuclear war led him to co-found the Nuclear Threat Initiative in 2001.<\/p>\n

Forbes estimates Turner\u2019s fortune at $2.8 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I only had \u2060a little humility, I\u2019d be perfect,\u201d he once said.<\/p>\n

Robert Edward Turner III was born in Cincinnati on November 19th, 1938, moving to the US south with his family when he was nine. He was sent to military schools where he \u200cbecame \u200ca \u200bchampion debater and yachtsman.<\/p>\n

He enrolled at Brown University in Rhode Island and angered his father by studying the classics rather than business. Turner got into trouble for having a girlfriend in his room, among other offences, and he never graduated.<\/p>\n

He joined his family\u2019s advertising company in Savannah, Georgia, selling space on billboards. At 24 he was left in charge after his father died by suicide.<\/p>\n

The business was sold to pay debts but after a \u2060family debate in which Turner was victorious he repurchased the firm and made it successful. In 1970, against the counsel of \u200badvisers, he bought a failing Atlanta UHF television station, now called WTBS, for $2.5 million.<\/p>\n

After a rocky start, Turner eventually made the station profitable with \u200blow-cost 24-hour programming. The station\u2019s fortunes rose in 1976 after a federal ruling that cable television systems could use satellite signals for programming. By being a satellite pioneer, Turner helped WTBS become the first \u201csuperstation,\u201d with programming picked up by local cable systems across the country.<\/p>\n

In 1980 he started CNN in Atlanta, which \u200che said would counter \u201csleazy\u201d coverage by the major networks CBS, NBC and ABC. Offering low pay but the \u200blure of adventure, Turner signed up journalists and technical crew who endured ridicule that the \u201cChicken Noodle Network\u201d would fail. Instead, as the first 24-hour news outlet, it set a template for worldwide news coverage of wars, trials, revolutions and man-made and natural disasters.<\/p>\n

\u201cBarring satellite problems, \u2060we won\u2019t be signing off until the world ends,\u201d Turner said in a 2013 CNN interview. In 2018, in the \u2060middle of US president Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s stormy first term, Turner said in an interview \u200bthat he rarely watched the network he had founded any more, saying that it focused too much on politics.<\/p>\n

As a \u201ctelevisionary,\u201d Turner was named man of the year in 1991 by Time magazine for \u201cinfluencing the dynamic of events and turning viewers in 150 countries into instant witnesses of history\u201d.<\/p>\n

In 1996 Time Warner Inc bought his Turner Broadcasting System for $7.5 billion, creating the world\u2019s largest communications company, with properties such as HBO, Warner Bros movie studio, Time magazine, CNN, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies.<\/p>\n

In 2001, Time Warner merged with online provider AOL, a $99 billion deal that Turner voted in favour of. But in the ensuing reorganisation, he was stripped of his position overseeing the cable networks that he had created and ultimately lost billions as the value of the company\u2019s stock fell. In 2003 he quit as vice-chairman and three years later stepped down as a Time Warner director.<\/p>\n

He battled depression and often spoke of suicide, according to his biographer.<\/p>\n

In his early days Turner had a reputation as a raucous drinker who bluntly spoke whatever was on his mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have any idea what I\u2019m going to say,\u201d he once told the New Yorker magazine. \u201cI say what comes to my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

He ticked off the Catholic Church when he called some of his employees \u201cJesus freaks\u201d because of the Ash Wednesday marks on their \u200cforeheads and told a group of Germans that after being \u2060on the wrong side of two world wars they could turn things around just as his losing Braves baseball team had done.<\/p>\n

Turner had a long-running feud with fellow media mogul Rupert Murdoch that began in 1983 when a Murdoch-sponsored yacht collided with Turner\u2019s boat in an Australian race, which led Turner to challenge Murdoch to a fist fight. Their ill will intensified in 1996 when Murdoch started Fox News as a conservative rival of CNN. Turner called him a warmonger and likened him \u200cto Adolf Hitler.<\/p>\n

During his ownership of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Turner appointed himself manager and directed the team for one game, a 2-1 loss to Pittsburgh, in 1977. Baseball officials then ordered him to relinquish the manager\u2019s job.<\/p>\n

But he was also a major philanthropist. In 1997 he made philanthropic history by announcing that he was donating $1 billion to \u200bfund United Nations operations. In 2017, after the last instalment of the donation, Turner called it \u201cthe best investment I\u2019ve ever made.\u201d<\/p>\n

His Turner Foundation also gave millions to environmental groups, while he promoted and \u200binvested in clean energy.<\/p>\n

Turner became one of the largest private landowners in the US with more than 1.9 million acres (770,000 hectares) in six states, including Montana, where he spent much of his time. He owned a herd of some 50,000 bison, which he used to supply a restaurant chain he founded in 2002 called Ted\u2019s Montana Grill. He also owned ranches in Argentina\u2019s Patagonia.<\/p>\n

Turner was married and divorced three times and had five children. His third marriage, to Fonda, which lasted 10 years, ended in 2001. \u2013 Reuters <\/p>\n

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 202<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ted Turner, the brash sportsman and entrepreneur whose ambition and instincts led to a media empire that included…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,39088,356,13,14,6,47672,11,12,15,16,5,37903,7,8,384,2863,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-472203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-cnn","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-jane-fonda","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-rupert-murdoch","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-united-nations-un","26":"tag-world","27":"tag-world-news","28":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116530824072925574","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}