CNN founder Ted Turner dies

0:00 He broke every mold.

0:01 He changed the world.

0:03 Known as the mouth of the South and Captain Outrageous,

0:06 Ted Turner built a media empire that changed cable news forever.

0:10 I didn't have any upper limits to how far we could go.

0:15 Champion, philanthropist, environmentalist.

0:17 I don't know how to quit.

0:20 It's not in my genes.

0:23 But growing up wasn't easy for Ted.

0:26 Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1938,

0:28 his parents sent him to boarding school when he was just four years old.

0:33 I didn't like boarding school.

0:34 I wanted to be home.

0:36 Ted's little sister, whom he adored, died of lupus at 17.

0:41 About 2 years later, Ted dropped out of Brown University.

0:45 He'd been studying classics until his father cut off the money.

0:49 He thought I was wasting my time.

0:52 So, he went to work for his dad's billboard company.

0:55 But tragedy struck again when his father killed himself.

0:59 He went against uh everything that he that he taught me,

1:04 you know, be courageous and u hang in there.

1:07 Ted took over the family business and coped

1:10 with the loss by working even harder.

1:13 He said, uh, set your goals so high

1:15 that you can't achieve them in your lifetime.

1:18 When Ted wasn't working, he turned to the sport he loved, sailing.

1:22 We got to go fast as we can here.

1:25 And won the sport's top race, the America's Cup.

1:28 I had worked very hard.

1:29 It took me a number of years to become a champion.

1:33 He put that same drive into expanding the business.

1:36 In 1970, Ted bought a struggling TV station.

1:39 It was a broken down UHF television station in Atlanta.

1:44 He was going to transform UHF television

1:46 into uh this new world of satellite television.

1:50 Ted renamed the station WTBS and it became the country's first super station.

1:56 What Ted made happen uh was just as important

2:00 as the internet revolution of the '9s and 2000s.

2:03 But starting out, Ted needed content.

2:06 He bought the Atlanta Braves and broadcast their games nationwide.

2:09 The Atlanta Braves.

2:11 The Braves became America's team.

2:13 When we bought them in 1976, they were terrible.

2:17 By 1995, Ted and his team were World Series champs.

2:21 As he built the Super Station,

2:24 he set his sights even higher on a 24-hour news channel.

2:28 I I worked till 7:00 and when I got home, the the news was uh was over.

2:34 So, I missed television news completely.

2:36 And I figured there were lots of people like me.

2:40 People did look upon that as a foolish uh idea that was uh destined for failure,

2:46 but they underestimated Ted Turner.

2:48 Most of the leaders of the world thought Ted was nuts.

2:52 We signed on on June 1, and barring satellite problems,

2:56 in the future, we won't be signing off until the world ends.

3:01 We'll be on.

3:02 We will cover it live.

3:05 I dedicate the news channel for America, the cable news network.

3:10 Take 11.

3:11 Mike Kum.

3:12 CNN aired its first broadcast on June 1st, 1980.

3:17 Good evening.

3:17 I'm David Walker.

3:18 And I'm Lois Hart.

3:19 Now, here's the news.

3:21 It took 5 years to turn a profit.

3:23 I lived for 20 years in my office.

3:25 He was a one of us.

3:27 I mean, he would be in his house,

3:29 coat down having breakfast in the Hard News Cafe.

3:31 and we'll get better by the end of the week.

3:34 Critics called it chicken noodle news.

3:36 Hello, Baghdad.

3:36 But the Gulf War would give CNN the respect it deserved.

3:39 You're going to hear the bombs now.

3:42 They are hitting the center of this city.

3:44 It was the first time a war was broadcast

3:47 live on television and it was only on CNN.

3:50 I still believe that was the greatest scoop in the history of of journalism.

3:55 You can see her there.

3:56 She's Ted didn't care as much about ratings as he

4:00 did about being the most trusted name in news.

4:04 Ted also cared about the world.

4:06 Over a 10-year period, he donated a billion dollars to the United Nations.

4:11 I'm no poorer than I was 9 months ago, and the world is a lot better off.

4:16 And he expanded his empire,

4:18 launching networks like TNT and Turner Classic Movies.

4:21 In his personal life, Ted was married and divorced twice with five

4:26 children before he finally met his match, Jane Fonda.

4:30 She agreed to have dinner with me.

4:32 For me, it was love at first sight.

4:35 I can't ever forget the reasons that made me fall in love with him.

4:39 I've never met any human being that thinks the way Ted does.

4:43 Ted was a visionary, a titan, even Time magazine's man of the year.

4:49 But in 1996, he sold his networks to Time Warner.

4:53 He got almost $8 billion.

4:55 I said, Ted, if you sell, you will no longer be captain of your own ship.

5:02 Ted Turner.

5:03 Ted.

5:03 5 years later, Time Warner merged with AOL and Ted was out.

5:09 Ted used the description, I've been fired.

5:12 Ted got shafted and it hurt.

5:14 It was more than just a company to me.

5:17 It was u it was a way of life.

5:21 He lost his empire and the love of his life.

5:24 After 10 years of marriage, he and Jane parted ways.

5:28 But you love her still.

5:30 Yeah.

5:30 To this very day.

5:32 To this very day.

5:34 But Ted never gave up.

5:36 His final act saving the planet.

5:38 He created the UN Foundation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

5:43 On his Montana ranch, he made it his mission to save the bison.

5:48 Hi.

5:49 Well, you never go home, do you?

5:51 I know.

5:52 And he opened restaurants to ensure their survival.

5:54 Ted's love of the outdoors has made him

5:58 perhaps the number one environmentalist that I've ever known.

6:02 Before his 80th birthday,

6:04 Ted revealed he had Louisbody dementia, a progressive disease.

6:09 He spent his final years treasuring private moments, his ranch, and his family.

6:14 He wants to know that when he goes out,

6:18 it will be with the love of his children and grandchildren.

6:21 You can never take away what he created and what he did.

6:25 We have never seen a man quite like Ted Turner before on this planet,

6:30 and I don't think we'll ever see another one like him again.

6:36 There's the amazing American success story, the businessman,

6:40 the visionary, the revolutionary who created really a media revolution.

6:43 And you know, every single thing that followed him,

6:46 anything in the 247 genre started with Ted Turner.

6:49 Everything was a copy, if I dare say so myself, and not the best copies.

6:54 He was the original.

6:55 And he made us all proud and he made us all hopeful

6:59 and he made us all strive for his vision of a better world.

7:03 whether it was in news or whether it was in the philanthropy.

7:06 He was the first of the modern-day

7:08 philanthropists after the Carnegies and the Melons

7:10 and the Rockefellers of their generation as Wolf

7:13 just pointed out when he gave a billion dollars

7:15 to the UN Foundation and then Bill Gates

7:17 and then Warren Buffett and then Michael Bloomberg

7:19 and all the others joined in uh

7:22 to to to follow in that incredibly noble pursuit.

7:25 Uh he was big huge on climate and that's a global issue.

7:29 Obviously, he was way ahead of the uh

7:32 curve on on climate and climate mitigation.

7:34 And I remember asking him in one of my last interviews with him,

7:38 what would you say to the young people who look up

7:40 to you and who want to make their own first billion dollars?

7:43 How would you suggest they do that now?

7:45 And he said, climate, green technology, the green economy.

7:48 He was so sure and he was always so absolutely right.

7:52 And as as Wolf was saying, you know,

7:55 he was somebody who believed in breaking down

7:58 the barriers between peoples and and between nations.

8:01 I remember when I was still, you know,

8:03 in 1980s in New York and I was climbing up the ranks.

8:06 I started in September 1983 in Atlanta and I remember

8:09 when he banned the word foreign and I was absolutely devastated.

8:13 I wanted to be a foreign correspondent like Edward Arrow and all those people

8:17 and he brought the word international and it wasn't just a little thing.

8:21 It was because he didn't want to drive,

8:23 you know, a wedge into people by calling them foreign.

8:26 And he didn't want to have separation.

8:29 Imagine that kind of leader uh and what

8:31 we're left with right now when everything's about,

8:34 you know, weaponization of identities and beliefs and all the rest of it.

8:39 He was exactly the opposite.

8:40 When he took CNN in international in 1985,

8:43 what he did was not just be the first ever global TV 247 uh behemoth network,

8:51 but he also chipped down the walls

8:55 of state and authoritarian uh regulated media.

8:58 So all these nations where the people could only

9:02 see what they were fed by their authoritarian leaders,

9:04 and I'm now talking about that part of the world.

9:07 um you know he gave them something else.

9:09 He opened their eyes to the rest of the world.

9:11 And I thought that was absolutely fundamental.

9:13 And he said to us when we were in the Gulf War, he said, "Look,

9:18 I'm not going to force anybody to be in Baghdad,

9:21 which of course was the enemy capital for the United States.

9:24 We had been reporting in Saudi Arabia and around.

9:27 And we also had distinguished ourselves as CNN, the reporters there in Baghdad.

9:32 But when it came to the war, you had the president, you had the, you know,

9:36 chairman of the joint chiefs,

9:38 you had all these people call Tom Johnson, our president,

9:40 and say, "You better get your people out

9:42 of Baghdad because it's going to be real

9:44 and they might get killed." And Tom basically

9:47 went to Ted and said what he had heard.

9:49 And Ted said, "Look, I'm not going to force anybody.

9:53 It'll be volunteer, but we must be in Baghdad." In other words,

9:57 we must um tell all sides of the story.

10:02 And how incredibly important is that in today's world

10:06 when when we tell all sides of the story, we can be accused of taking sides.

10:10 No, we're telling all sides of the story without fear nor favor,

10:13 whether it's in the Middle East,

10:15 whether it's, you know, on climate, whatever it might be,

10:17 whether it's in the United States and elsewhere.

10:20 So, look, um, remember when giants stroed the world?

10:22 Ted Turner was a giant and he risked his life in many occasions

10:27 including in his you know swashbuckling sailor

10:29 days winning the America's Cup but also

10:32 the fastnet race one of the most dangerous ever around the aisle of white

10:35 the one the race he won that year there was more than a dozen

10:39 people killed in a massive storm there so he was brave he was

10:43 I was going to say ballsy but he was really um he said it

10:47 like it was and like it is and we were his willing foot

10:51 soldiers and I He changed not just the world but all of our lives