WASHINGTON, May 6 — Ted Turner, the brash sportsman and entrepreneur whose ambition and instincts led to a media empire that included groundbreaking news network CNN, has died, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing a press release from Turner Enterprises. He was 87.
No cause of death was given.
In September 2018, Turner revealed that he had Lewy body dementia, a degenerative nerve disease.
One nickname was not enough for a personality as roguish and bold as Turner's. He was known variously as the 'Mouth of the South', 'Captain Outrageous', and 'Terrible Ted'.
He became a billionaire by taking over his father's billboard business, buying a television station in 1970, and parlaying that into what would become a vast, groundbreaking television group.
Turner became one of the most powerful figures in US 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 an even bigger move: merging his Turner Broadcasting System with Time Warner in 1996.
Turner headed the new company's cable networks division and was its leading shareholder, but he had trouble fitting into a corporate system after decades of free-wheeling as his own boss. He eventually lost control of his networks.
Turner also became one of the world's leading environmentalists, one of the largest landowners in the United States, and a major philanthropist, giving US$1 billion (RM3.92 billion) to the United Nations.
With a slender moustache, gap-toothed grin, dimpled chin, and mischievous glint in his eye, he pursued a range of passions. In the 1970s, Turner owned the Atlanta Braves baseball team and the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association, and skippered his yacht, the Courageous, to the America's Cup.
The many women in his life included Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda. In 1986, he started the Goodwill Games, an Olympic-like competition, and two years later bought a wrestling organisation that provided more TV content.
Turner's concerns about nuclear war led him to co-found the Nuclear Threat Initiative in 2001. Forbes estimates his fortune at US$2.8 billion (RM10.99 billion).
"If I only had a little humility, I would be perfect," Turner once said.
Rocky start in TV
Robert Edward Turner III was born in Cincinnati on November 19, 1938, moving to the South with his family when he was nine. He was sent to military schools where he became a champion debater and yachtsman.
Turner enrolled at Brown University in Rhode Island and angered his father by studying the classics rather than business. He got in trouble for having a girlfriend in his room, among other offences, and he never graduated.
Turner joined the family's advertising company in Savannah, Georgia, selling billboard space. At 24, he was left in charge after his father killed himself.
The business was sold to pay off debts, but after a family debate in which Turner prevailed, he repurchased the firm and made it successful. In 1970, against the counsel of advisers, he bought a failing Atlanta UHF television station, now called WTBS, for US$2.5 million (RM9.81 million).
After a rocky start, Turner eventually made the station profitable with low-cost 24-hour programming. The station's fortunes rose in 1976 after a federal ruling allowing cable television systems to carry satellite signals.
By being a satellite pioneer, he helped WTBS become the first "superstation," with programming picked up by local cable systems across the country.
In 1980, he started CNN in Atlanta, which he said would counter "sleazy" coverage by the major networks CBS, NBC, and ABC. Offering low pay but the lure of adventure, Turner signed up journalists and technical crew who endured ridicule that the "Chicken Noodle Network" would fail.
Instead, as the first 24-hour news outlet, it set a template for worldwide news coverage of wars, trials, revolutions and manmade and natural disasters.
"Barring satellite problems, we will not be signing off until the world ends," he said in a 2013 CNN interview. In 2018, in the middle of President Donald Trump's stormy first term, Turner said in an interview that he rarely watched the network he had founded anymore, saying it focused too much on politics.
As a "televisionary," Turner was named Man of the Year in 1991 by Time magazine for "influencing the dynamic of events and turning viewers in 150 countries into instant witnesses of history."
In 1996, Time Warner Inc bought his Turner Broadcasting System for US$7.5 billion (RM29.44 billion), creating the world's largest communications company, with properties such as HBO, the Warner Bros movie studio, Time magazine, CNN, Cartoon Network, and Turner Classic Movies.
In 2001, Time Warner merged with online provider AOL, a US$99 billion (RM388.5 billion) deal that Turner voted in favour of. But in the ensuing reorganisation, he was stripped of his position overseeing the cable networks he had created and ultimately lost billions as the company's stock price fell.
In 2003, Turner resigned as vice chairman, and three years later, stepped down as a Time Warner director. He battled depression and often spoke of suicide, according to his biographer.
Blunt talker
In his early days, Turner had a reputation as a raucous drinker who spoke bluntly about whatever was on his mind.
"I do not have any idea what I am going to say. I say what comes to my mind," he once told the New Yorker magazine.
Turner ticked off the Roman Catholic church when he called some of his employees "Jesus freaks" because of the Ash Wednesday marks on their foreheads and told a group of Germans that after being on the wrong side of two World Wars, they could turn things around just as his losing Braves baseball team had done.
He had a long-running feud with fellow media mogul Rupert Murdoch that began in 1983, when a Murdoch-sponsored yacht collided with Turner's boat in an Australian race, prompting Turner to challenge Murdoch to a fistfight. Their ill will intensified in 1996, when Murdoch launched Fox News as a conservative rival to CNN, to which Turner called Murdoch a warmonger and likened him to Adolf Hitler.
During his ownership of the Atlanta Braves, he appointed himself manager and led the team for one game, a 2-1 loss to Pittsburgh, in 1977. Baseball officials then ordered Turner to relinquish the manager's job.
But he was also a major philanthropist. In 1997, he made philanthropic history by announcing he would donate US$1 billion to fund United Nations operations. In 2017, after the last instalment of the donation, Turner called it "the best investment I have ever made."
His Turner Foundation also gave millions to environmental groups, while he promoted and invested in clean energy.
Turner became one of the largest private landowners in the United States 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 about 50,000 bison, which he used to supply a restaurant chain he founded in 2002, Ted's Montana Grill. He also owned ranches in Argentina's Patagonia.
Turner was married and divorced three times and had five children. His third marriage, to Fonda, which lasted 10 years, ended in 2001.
