From 2018: Media mogul Ted Turner

0:00 Any list of the legends of American business

0:03 would have to include the name Ted Turner.

0:07 Bold and frequently controversial,

0:10 Turner was very much a disruptor in his prime.

0:14 But time and age have put him in a reflective mood,

0:17 as senior contributor Ted Cppel found when

0:20 he visited Turner at his Montana ranch.

0:30 You ever ride your whole property here?

0:34 No,

0:34 but I've ridden quite a bit of it.

0:36 You need a wide lens on your camera to capture the many sides of Ted Turner,

0:43 especially out here on his sprawling

0:46 113,000 acre ranch outside Bosezeman, Montana.

0:51 You've always been a bit of a dreamer, haven't you?

0:54 Well, what a lot of my dreams have come true.

0:56 Yes, they have.

0:58 Hey, Taylor, what did we We We were 15 and 38 yesterday.

1:02 60 Minutes has been covering the fulfillment

1:04 of those dreams for almost 40 years.

1:08 He's just convinced he can do almost anything he sets out to do.

1:12 And so far, he's been right.

1:15 Get the bullpen ready, Dodgers.

1:17 When Harry Reisner made that observation, Ted Turner had not yet created CNN,

1:23 but he had bought the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks.

1:31 And by transmitting all those baseball and basketball

1:34 games via satellite to cable stations around the country,

1:39 Turner transformed his not very successful local Atlanta TV station.

1:44 Super family entertainment comes your way on Atlanta's WTBS

1:49 into his own creation which he dubbed a super station

1:54 programming.

1:54 You know, we've got the best of any independent station.

1:59 Around the same time, Turner, a man of many parts,

2:02 had already skippered the yacht courageous to a four

2:05 nothing sweep of Australia in the America's Cup,

2:09 arguably the world's most prestigious yaching race.

2:15 I'm a lot of different people if you don't know that by now.

2:17 I'm a I'm a multifaceted person.

2:20 I've got a lot of different personalities.

2:22 You ought to see me at midnight on the full moon.

2:30 By the time Diane Sawyer got to Turner in 1986, CNN was well up and running.

2:36 We intend to cover all the news all the time.

2:39 And Ted had his sights on acquiring CBS.

2:44 What happened to the man who said that CBS

2:46 was a cheap wh house taken over by sleas artists?

2:51 I said that years ago.

2:53 I was more of a crusader then than I am uh than I am now.

2:57 But uh I really felt that way at the time.

3:01 Ted Turner was a loud practitioner of political incorrectness years

3:06 before Donald Trump rode that pony into the White House.

3:10 Italians.

3:10 Italians.

3:11 Imagine the Italians at war.

3:13 I mean, what a joke.

3:14 They didn't belong in the last war.

3:16 They were sorry they were in it.

3:17 They were glad to get out of it.

3:19 You know, they'd rather be involved in crime

3:21 and just making some wine and having a good time.

3:25 They called him the mouth from the south, captain outrageous.

3:30 But when Turner sat down with Mike Wallace in 2003,

3:34 CNN was already an international powerhouse,

3:38 and Ted Turner had begun putting his money where his mouth had been.

3:43 I got a letter saying that I was going to be

3:44 honored by the United Nations Association as their man of the year.

3:48 And I thought, well, what am I going to say?

3:50 Cuz I had to make a little speech.

3:52 What am I going to say?

3:53 Since money talks, money.

3:55 Give him a lot of money.

3:56 I said, "How much you going to give him?" I said,

3:58 "He's got to, you know, he's got to get in the newspapers.

4:01 It's got to be a big figure.

4:02 How about a how about a billion?" You know, I mean, and he did.

4:06 Turner fulfilled his pledge of $1 billion to the United Nations.

4:12 He also contributed somewhere north of $250 million toward limiting

4:18 the spread of nuclear weapons out of the former Soviet Union.

4:23 Oh, mama mia.

4:25 That's a real nice fish.

4:27 As Morley Safford discovered in 2008 though,

4:30 Turner sometimes got his numbers a little confused as in this conversation

4:36 about the disastrous merger between Time Warner CNN and AOL.

4:43 You were losing nearly $10 million a day for 2 and 1/2 years.

4:47 A million a day.

4:48 A million a day for two and a half years.

4:50 Wait a minute.

4:50 That'd be 700 million.

4:52 You're right.

4:52 10 million a day.

4:53 I listen I it didn't I get thousands, millions and billions mixed up.

4:58 The confusion, the episodes of outrageous behavior,

5:02 the euphoric highs and dark lows were

5:05 initially diagnosed as symptoms of manic depression.

5:10 Turner says that was a misdiagnosis, but he openly acknowledges having

5:16 a progressive brain disorder called Louisbody dementia.

5:22 Can you tell us what that is?

5:24 It's a um mild case of what people have as Alzheimer's.

5:32 It's it's similar to that, but not nearly as bad.

5:36 Alzheimer's is fatal.

5:39 Thank goodness that I don't have that.

5:44 But I also got um what's I can't remember the name of it.

5:53 That's all right.

5:54 Tell me what the It's dementia.

5:56 I can't remember what my what my disease is.

6:00 It's an unpleasant thing to remember.

6:02 So Matt

6:03 Yeah.

6:03 So just tell me what the what the symptoms are.

6:06 I mean one of the symptoms we're seeing right now.

6:08 You can't remember what it was you wanted to tell me.

6:12 But frankly, Ted, at at our age, you know, not being able to remember things

6:18 is pretty common.

6:19 Is pretty common.

6:20 I I know.

6:21 I know.

6:22 I know that.

6:23 But it's more extreme with you.

6:27 Tired, exhausted.

6:29 That's main symptoms.

6:31 And and forgetfulness.

6:34 Lift six.

6:35 Down and hold.

6:36 Ted Turner begins most mornings these days with some yoga.

6:41 He has never been a quitter.

6:43 His willingness to be shown on network television in what is certainly

6:47 a diminished state is a testament to courage and a surprising absence of vanity.

6:55 What do you think?

6:56 Looks pretty good.

6:58 Turner has been and remains to this day a passionate environmentalist.

7:04 Oh, give me land.

7:06 Lots of land under starry skies above.

7:10 Don't fence me in.

7:12 I'm not buying any more land.

7:14 I've got enough.

7:17 Yes.

7:17 Over the years, Turner has acquired roughly 2 million acres of land.

7:22 Most, but not all of it in the United States.

7:25 Much of it devoted to restoring the American bison.

7:31 Once there were literally tens of millions of bison in the American West.

7:36 By the early 1900s, they'd been slaughtered almost to the point of extinction.

7:42 Only a few hundred left.

7:46 So, how many bison do we have now in the United States?

7:49 Roughly, I think it's about 300,000.

7:53 Really?

7:52 And there's 200,000 in Canada.

7:54 So, there's about a half a million.

7:58 So, you saved the bison race.

8:00 Well, I don't know.

8:01 I We did it together.

8:04 Turner has a national chain of 45

8:07 restaurants under the name Ted's Montana Grill.

8:12 They serve bison.

8:15 If we make money raising bison,

8:17 and we make more money raising bison than we

8:20 do raising cattle on the same amount of acreage,

8:24 then uh the bison will be protected.

8:29 Turner has more than 50,000 bison grazing on his various ranches.

8:35 Hello.

8:37 Early one evening, we drove to a remote section of the ranch

8:41 in the hope of seeing or at least hearing some wolves.

8:46 It's hit or miss.

8:47 It's hit or it's a patient man's game.

8:51 Right now, we're a couple of old geysers looking into the sun.

8:55 We can't see a damn thing.

8:58 We were just killing time, chewing the fat.

9:01 I wondered if Turner had ever considered politics.

9:06 What about you?

9:07 Were you ever tempted to get into the ring?

9:11 Not really.

9:12 A little bit.

9:14 Closest I came to running for for office was when I was married to Jane Fonda.

9:21 And when I discussed it with her, she was married to one politician, Tom Hayden.

9:28 Yeah.

9:28 And she said, you know, if if you run for office, you run alone.

9:36 Were you thinking about going for the brass ring for the for the big job?

9:40 I was thinking I didn't think very much about it,

9:44 but I didn't see any point in doing anything else but that.

9:49 So, you were thinking about the White House?

9:50 Sure.

9:53 Drive and ambition were qualities his father instilled in Ted Turner.

10:00 I think your father may have had the greatest impact on your life.

10:04 Would you agree with that?

10:05 Of any individual?

10:07 Of any individual?

10:08 Probably.

10:11 Yeah.

10:11 And he took his own life at a young age.

10:15 53.

10:15 Yeah.

10:15 Well, that's young.

10:17 You told me yesterday that he he'd left you a note.

10:21 Do you mind telling me what was in the note?

10:23 Well, he just said he was sorry that he got in.

10:29 He felt like he was in over his head, but he wasn't.

10:33 He just apologized.

10:38 Sad.

10:40 I loved him very much.

10:41 and he was a hero of mine.

10:48 As you get older now, as you go into the last few chapters of your life,

10:58 do you ever think about suicide?

11:01 No.

11:02 I've got five children and 14 grandchildren,

11:06 and I wouldn't put them through that.

11:08 That was painful.

11:10 I it was painful for me.

11:12 I know when my father did it and I'm not going to uh

11:19 even think about doing anything like that for my children and grandchildren.

11:25 Even as he struggles with the symptoms of Louisbody dementia,

11:29 Ted Turner continues to engage great challenges.

11:34 Threats to the environment, nuclear war,

11:37 echoes perhaps of a poem he memorized as a classics major at Brown University,

11:44 recalling an ancient hero confronting insurmountable odds.

11:50 Then stepped forward Horatius, the captain of the gate.

11:55 He said, "To every man of woman born, death cometh soon or late,

11:59 and how can man die better than facing fearful odds for the ashes

12:05 of his fathers and the temples of his gods?" He down the bridge,

12:10 Sir Counsel, with all the speed you may.

12:14 I, with but two beside me, will hold the foe in play.

12:19 On Yandara span a thousand, might well be stopped by three.

12:24 Now, who will stand on either hand and guard the bridge with me?

12:30 How was Horatius at the bridge?

12:32 And that on the eve of his 80th birthday is Ted Turner.