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Ted Turner, the media tycoon who founded CNN and led an empire that also included cable channels TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies as well as the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, has died, CNN reported Wednesday, citing a statement from his company, Turner Enterprises. He was 87.
Details about Turner’s death weren’t immediately available. In 2018, he revealed he was fighting Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.
“Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgement,” CNN Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson said in a statement. “He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN. Ted is the giant on whose shoulders we stand, and we will all take a moment today to recognize him and his impact on our lives and the world.”
Turner was never a man to shy away from a challenge — on land or sea.
He was the skipper who brought the America’s Cup yachting trophy back to the U.S. in 1977. He devoted hundreds of thousands of acres of land to save the American bison. He owned the Atlanta Hawks for 19 years and the Atlanta Braves for 20, during which time the Braves won the 1995 World Series. And in 1980, he changed the way we all consumed news with the launch of CNN, the first 24-hour cable news network.
“I’m a lot of different people, if you don’t know that by now,” Turner told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in 1979. “I’m a multifaceted person. I’ve got a lot of different personalities. You ought to see me at midnight on a full moon.”
Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
He was a hard-drinking, cigar-smoking adventurer — with deep pockets.
“I get thousands, millions and billions mixed up,” Turner said during a 2008 “60 Minutes” interview. He was debating with Morley Safer whether he had lost nearly a million dollars a day or $10 million a day for two and a half years as the largest individual shareholder of AOL Time Warner. (It was the latter.) Then the corporate parent of what had been Turner’s empire, the media giant was hit hard when the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s.
Turner was also known for making off-color remarks, earning him numerous nicknames, including the Mouth From The South and Captain Outrageous. He was, for some, as unlikable as he was invincible.
But in 2018, he disclosed to “CBS Sunday Morning” senior contributor Ted Koppel he was fighting Lewy body dementia.
“It’s a mild case of what people have as Alzheimer’s,” Turner told Koppel. “It’s similar to that, but not nearly as bad.”
Turner married three times, including his decadelong marriage to actor and activist Jane Fonda from 1991 to 2001. In 2012, Turner told CNN that Fonda was probably the great love of his life, he hadn’t gotten over her and he doubted he ever would.
“When you love somebody, and you really love ’em, you never stop loving ’em,” he said.
Turner’s legacy will always be paired with CNN, and yet the gift he seemed most proud of was the natural habitats he saved by buying and protecting more wild acreage than almost anyone in the U.S.
It’s tempting to call him a master of his domain, but he’d prefer caretaker. We don’t own anything, he said, we just borrow it for a while.
