Ted Turner, CNN founder, dies at 87

0:03 Some breaking news into the newsroom.

0:04 CNN is reporting that legendary newsman and business entrepreneur

0:09 Ted Turner has died at the age of 87.

0:12 Ted Turner is largely credited with transforming the television landscape.

0:16 In 1980, he launched CNN as the very first live 24-hour news station,

0:21 but he began his career long before that.

0:27 you worked at CNN for many years and

0:30 as well um look when I joined CNN the legacy as I'm sure

0:34 it still um exists today permeated through almost everything we did at CNN.

0:40 It really did feel I would talk to people who had worked

0:43 with Ted when he was still running CNN who would say things to me.

0:47 They would talk about Ted in almost mythical terms.

0:51 And and you did you you absolutely felt at CNN

0:54 that you were part of something that he had created,

0:57 but that he that in almost everything, the way we were trained,

1:01 the way we learned how to report in the CNN way,

1:04 the kind of breaking news stories that we did,

1:06 how we were launched into big breaking news stories as a unit

1:10 was very much from the mind uh of Ted Turner.

1:14 And remember that when CNN launched in 1980, it was the laughingstock.

1:18 It would be great to talk to some people here at CBS News

1:20 who worked at CBS News at the time of the launch of CNN.

1:24 And I promise you, they will say that they thought it

1:26 was a joke that there was nothing that Ted Turner was going

1:29 to do in the news business that would ever erode what

1:31 the networks ABC uh NBC and uh CBS were doing at the time.

1:38 And they were called Chicken Noodle Network.

1:40 That's how much respect they didn't have in the business.

1:42 His idea back in 90 1980 was so ambitious.

1:46 I didn't join CNN International until 2008.

1:50 But even at that time, Ted was still doing programs to welcome new people.

1:55 There was a mentorship program well into the 2000s.

1:58 And if you rewind back to 1980, people were laughing at Ted Turner who wanted

2:03 this strange concept of a 24-hour news channel.

2:06 And he famously said when they opened Techwood,

2:08 which is where CNN has moved back to in Atlanta now,

2:11 you see a black and white image, he said,

2:13 um, you know, this will be the first, um, footage that we will show,

2:16 and CNN will only go off the air at the end of the world.

2:20 The last thing you'll see on CNN's footage is the end of the world.

2:23 this ambitious effort to give people news,

2:26 not just during a morning show or during the evening news,

2:29 a a thing that CBS News helped to pioneer,

2:32 but he pioneered 24-hour roundthe-clock news

2:36 that people could access on their cable television.

2:38 And he thought it could stand up to the journalism of networks like this one.

2:42 Well, when you how you saw that play out and we're going

2:44 to run an obituary from our Lee Cowan in just a moment,

2:47 but how you saw it play out is I remember very distinctly

2:50 I was a in college when the first Gulf War broke out.

2:53 That's right.

2:53 CNN was the only news network to have

2:58 live footage as the attack on Saddam Hussein began.

3:04 And there's you talk to the old-timers at CNN,

3:07 they have incredible stories about how

3:08 they were actually able to accomplish that.

3:10 But it I remember watching in my uh in my apartment

3:14 in my college apartment all I didn't care about CBS,

3:17 didn't care about NBC, didn't care about ABC.

3:18 I was glued to CNN and so was the entire world.

3:21 And that moment put CNN and some of the people I'm looking over at Wolf Blitzer

3:25 right now in our newsroom who's talking about

3:27 Ted put people like Wolf Blitzer on the map.

3:31 That's right.

3:31 Uh so Lee Cowan, as I said,

3:32 has a look back at Ted Turner's career and his legacy.

3:37 What did we We were 15 and 38 yesterday.

3:40 Ted Turner was never a man to shy away from a challenge on land or sea.

3:47 Whether bringing the America's Cup back to the US, saving the American bison,

3:53 getting the Atlanta Braves to the World Series,

3:56 or changing the way we all consumed news.

4:00 We intend to cover all the news all the time.

4:03 Ted Turn can only be described as an American original.

4:07 I'm I'm a multiaceted person.

4:09 I've got a lot of different personalities.

4:12 He was a hardrinking cigar smoking adventurer.

4:15 He had kind of a Earnest Hemingway vibe just with deeper pockets.

4:19 I get thousands, millions, and billions mixed up.

4:22 Turner had all kinds of nicknames.

4:24 The mouth from the South and Captain Outrageous.

4:27 He was for some as unlikable as he was invincible.

4:31 But in 2018, he disclosed to CBS Sunday

4:34 Morning's Ted Cppel he was fighting Louisbody dementia.

4:38 Can you tell us what that is?

4:40 It's a um mild case of what people have as Alzheimer's.

4:48 His memory back then hadn't forgotten his three marriages,

4:52 especially the one to Jane Fonda.

4:55 Have you ever quite got over her?

4:58 No.

4:58 Do you think you ever will?

5:00 No.

5:00 When you love somebody and you really love them, you never stop loving them.

5:05 Ted Turner's legacy will always be paired with CNN.

5:08 And yet, the gift he seemed most proud of was the natural habitats he

5:14 saved by buying and protecting more wild acreage than almost anyone in the US.

5:20 Did you ever ride your whole property here?

5:25 No, but I've ridden quite a bit of it.

5:26 It's tempting to call him a master of his domain, but he prefer caretaker.

5:32 We don't own anything.

5:34 He said we just borrow it for a while.

5:38 Lee Cowan, CBS News.

5:42 I mean, Lee puts it so beautifully beautifully and eloquently

5:46 that Ted Turner was and we as we were talking about CNN,

5:50 we obviously failed to mention the Atlanta Braves series,

5:54 his superstation TBS, TNT, uh, his marriage.

5:58 Exactly.

5:59 Restaurants.

6:00 Yes.

6:00 um he was an entrepreneur.

6:03 He famously had a feud with Rupert Murdoch uh which lasted um

6:06 for many many years although I think subsequently they they made amends.

6:10 One of the things that I was reminded of as I was watching

6:12 that obituary is um CNN at the time when I joined about the same

6:17 time that Errol did back in '08 uh had a program where they would

6:21 pay you um to they would pay your tuition if you were in school.

6:24 Not the entire tuition but there was

6:26 tuition reimbursement because Ted believed in that.

6:28 Ted believed in mentoring.

6:30 Errol pointed out the mentoring program.

6:31 When I joined CNN, they had a very extensive mentorship program.

6:35 Um, and also I remember being astounded

6:38 that everybody who joined CNN at the time,

6:41 whether you were a production assistant or an anchor, um,

6:44 everybody started out with like a very significant number of vacation days.

6:48 Not like your typical twoe.

6:50 It reflected his values.

6:51 It reflected his values.

6:52 And, and people would say, and I would say, why?

6:54 Why do we do this?

6:55 and they would say because Ted that's what Ted wanted you know

6:58 and that is actually something that has become more rare over time

7:02 that the original founders of media companies stay they keep an imprint

7:07 they stay present he wasn't as much involved in the daily

7:10 operations once you got into the 2000s and as Vlad mentioned he

7:14 was mocked for his ideas back in the 1980s the idea

7:17 of a 24-hour news channel but it was the Iraq war in the early

7:21 90s that really allowed CNN to gain legit legitimacy in the eyes

7:26 of people not just in the US but around the world.

7:29 I remember when I was in England as a young child,

7:32 my stepfather was uh in the US Air

7:34 Force and stationed in the Gulf during the first

7:37 Iraq war and we were glued to the television

7:40 worried about what was happening with our families.

7:44 and you watch those green nighttime vision uh goggles and footage

7:48 of the the missiles and the munitions flying through the air

7:51 and it really transported people for the first time to the location

7:56 of where a war was taking place and you know you

7:59 had Bernard Shaw and others Wolf Blitzer back then who were

8:02 um cornerstones of that coverage and throughout the '9s and so

8:05 to hear of Ted Turner's passing now you see him there um

8:09 with the former head of the United Nations um way back when

8:14 um he really was a man who was with yeah Kofian

8:17 he was with all sorts of world leaders and continued to have

8:20 an imprint um and in many ways CNN was his child

8:23 he also had these interesting edicts at one point I believe

8:26 he didn't like the word foreign and he banned the use

8:30 of the word foreign at CNN and instead you were supposed

8:33 to call things international which is a big reason so we were

8:36 international correspondent correspondents we were not

8:40 foreign correspondents he didn't like that

8:42 I mean there a slight change in kind of the

8:45 he also had this thing where he would say you would say I work

8:48 for Ted Turner and he would correct you and say no you work with Ted Turner

8:52 that's and I I don't know Errol are you a part of I I just

8:54 logged on to Facebook because I'm a member

8:56 of the CNN alumni uh Facebook groups yeah

9:00 and so I immediately turned to that because

9:02 you're now starting to see the number

9:04 of people who work specifically and directly with TED

9:08 who are commenting now on uh the news

9:10 if you're just joining us here on CBS News 247 Morning ings that uh uh

9:14 CNN uh founder and entrepreneur and pioneer Ted

9:18 Turner has died at the age of 87.

9:20 And I'm just starting to see even from people that I know,

9:22 Steve Stall, heartbroken.

9:24 This is a quote, heartbroken even though I

9:26 knew for a long time this day was coming.

9:28 It is an honor.

9:29 It wasn't my honor to work with him.

9:30 He would always correct you if you said work for him.

9:33 Paul Karen like I posted earlier this week.

9:35 Thank you so much, Ted, for creating an opportunity of a lifetime for this punk

9:39 from Detroit who had never gone farther than Windsor, Canada, travel-wise,

9:44 and experienced the biggest international and national

9:46 stories from the front row of history.

9:48 People like Ted, Een, Tom, these are people, the execs of CNN at the time,

9:53 and many others helped create a pretty darn good life for me.

9:56 We'll be saluting him in a newscast in Savannah tonight.

9:59 So, you're going to see, I think, over the course because so many people who

10:02 are in this business now at some point

10:04 or another work with Ted Turner and you're

10:07 going to start to see those tributes pouring out.

10:10 And in many ways, he helped put Atlanta on the TV.

10:14 That's another point.

10:15 Ted Turner was very particular in launching this ambitious effort

10:19 to have a 24-hour news channel that the headquarters stay in Atlanta.

10:23 and he wanted to make sure that the company and the network didn't

10:27 lose sight of quote unquote regular Americans in places outside of big cities.

10:32 And it's a big reason why to this day Atlanta really has transformed.

10:36 The CNN Center where the company was previously based because

10:39 it grew so big was the home of CNN what we

10:41 would call domestic CNN International CNN and Espanol uh some

10:45 of the other stations and you could go on tours in Atlanta.

10:48 I went on tour and you took me around the the newsroom CNN news.

10:52 This was like before I worked in news really.

10:55 Um but what you guys described is

10:57 this is not just a businessman or an entrepreneur.

10:59 This is someone who created a culture really

11:01 and that culture permeates throughout the news industry.

11:04 You know, I know all of us at CBS um who've been affected by this culture,

11:09 who've grown from this culture.

11:10 And so, thank you guys both for sharing these wonderful

11:12 read one last quote before we go to break

11:14 from Stephanie Cook who was a CNN alumni.

11:16 she posted on the CNN alumni page.

11:18 I think it really sums up what we've been talking about.

11:20 The balls of this man to blaze the trails he did.

11:23 I will be forever grateful I got to work at CNN while he still owned it.

11:27 And I had a say in the hand that steered

11:29 and had a say in the hand that steered the ship.

11:31 I talked to my journalism students about his innovation and his drive.

11:35 And I hope against hope that his lessons passed on will

11:37 possibly allow journalism to find a way through these times.

11:40 Thank you, Ted.

11:42 Yeah, perfect tribute, Vlad.

11:43 Thank you for writing that.