#wtbs

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Tim Gray at Variety:

Ted Turner, the charismatic, larger-than-life figure who conquered the world of media, sports and philanthropy, has died, according to a release by Turner Enterprises obtained by CNN. He was 87. Turner disclosed in September 2018 that he was suffering from Lewy body dementia, a brain disorder that affects memory and other cognitive functions. Turner, Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1991, transformed the world of television, inventing 24-hour news with CNN and pioneering national basic cable. To feed his “superstation,” he made deals that rewrote the rules of sports broadcasting. He was also a sports figure himself, winning the America’s Cup and owning the Atlanta Braves when they won the World Series. [...] His first step in media was inheriting his father’s billboard business. He then shifted to television, taking a money-losing UHF television station in Atlanta and transforming it into WTRS, then Turner Broadcasting System. It entered the homes of 2 million cable subscribers as “superstation” TBS via satellite delivery, which led to the blossoming of satellite and cable TV in the mid-’70s. He decided that his channels needed new shows, so he invented TNT and helped pioneer the concept of original programming on basic cable. He also owned MGM for a time, selling the studio and name but retaining the massive library.

[...] He started CNN, as well as other cablers like the Cartoon Network, and invented “Captain Planet and the Planeteers,” a TV toon with an environmental message. Overpopulation and nuclear disarmament were other passionate causes for which he worked and donated tirelessly. He often joked that his formula for success was “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.” When he sold the Turner system to Time Warner, he added $1 billion to his income within nine months. In 1997, after receiving an award from the United Nations, he decided to donate the billion — one-third of his wealth — to the org. He gave the U.N. the money just in time. When Time Warner merged with AOL in 2000, the stock plummeted, and he lost 80% of his wealth within two years.

[...] Then there were his sports achievements: He won the America’s Cup and Fastnet, becoming the first person to be named yachtsman of the year four times, and bought the Atlanta Braves, who won the World Series in 1995. He bought the baseball team in a calculated move to boost the ratings of his local station. [...] He started counterprogramming network fare by showing movies, old series like “The Andy Griffith Show” and Atlanta Braves games. By 1972, the station was breaking even. Looking to expand, he embraced CATV (community antenna TV, as cable television was called). By December 1976, WTCG had a satellite transmission and was renamed the WTBS “superstation.” In the early days, it reached 2 million cable subscribers’ homes. By 1986, 34 million additional viewers had been added, and the network’s annual profits had soared to more than $70 million. [...]

He also began snapping up Atlanta’s sports teams, purchasing the baseball Braves and the basketball Hawks in 1976 and ’77, respectively. Turner even managed the Braves personally for one game during a particularly bad season early in his ownership. Turner’s biggest gamble of all, perhaps, came in 1980, when he launched the first 24-hour all-news cable channel, CNN. Cable carriers declined to help with the startup costs, so Turner was left to go it alone, coming up with $21 million from the sale of one of his independent stations, in Charlotte, N.C., to start the channel. Despite its relatively low-budget startup, CNN caught on quickly. Turner helped the network in its early years by using profits from WTBS. He started up sister channel Headline News in 1982, and by 1985, the two were earning their own keep. CNN would grow in both profits and reputation in later years with its impressive up-to-the-minute coverage of the 1986 Challenger disaster and, more significantly, the 1991 Persian Gulf War. CNN was later challenged by rivals like Fox News and MSNBC. It lost its biggest advocate when Turner was pushed out and it struggled to toe a nonpartisan political line between right and left.

Ted Turner, the man who founded various Turner-owned channels (now WBD-owned) such as TBS, TNT, CNN, and TCM, has died at 87.

Turner also at one time owned NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and MLB’s Atlanta Braves (beamed to viewers across the US and Canada via (W)TBS). He helped make the WCW into a genuine contender to the Vince McMahon-run WWF (now WWE) via the Monday Night Wars (WWF’s Raw v. WCW’s Nitro).