Ted Turner, media tycoon who founded CNN, dies at age 87

Ted Turner, the media mogul 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, died Wednesday, his company Turner Enterprises said in a statement. He was 87 years old.

The company said Turner died peacefully surrounded by his family after a long battle with Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder he revealed that he was fighting in 2018. A spokesperson confirmed to CBS News that Turner died in Lamont, Florida, where he owned a large estate east of the state capital of Tallahassee. CNN first reported Turner’s death.

“Ted was an extremely involved and committed leader, fearless, fearless and always willing to rely on his intuition and trust his own judgment,” Mark Thompson, CNN chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “He has been 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.”

President Trump reacted to Turner’s death on social media, calling him “one of the greats in broadcast history and a friend of mine.” In the same article, Mr. Trump also criticized the management of CNN, a frequent target of the president’s ire, after Turner sold the outlet.

Turner has never been one to shy away from a challenge, on land or sea.

It was the captain who brought the America’s Cup trophy yachting in the United States in 1977. He dedicated hundreds of thousands of acres of land to save the world. American bison. He owned the Atlanta Hawks for 19 years and the Atlanta Braves for 20 years, during which time the Braves won the 1995 World Series. And in 1980, he changed the way we all consume 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 by now,” Turner told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 1979. “I’m a multi-faceted person. I have a lot of different personalities. You should see me at midnight on a full moon.”

He was an adventurer who drank a lot, smoked cigars and had deep pockets.

“I’m confusing thousands and millions and billions,” Turner said at a 2008 press conference. “60 Minutes” interview. He and Morley Safer wondered 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 parent company of what had been Turner’s empire, the media giant, was hit hard when the dotcom bubble burst in the early 2000s.

Turner was also known for his inappropriate remarks, earning him numerous nicknames, including Mouth From The South and Captain Outrageous. He was, for some, as unsympathetic as he was invincible.

But in 2018, he revealed to “CBS Sunday Morning” senior contributor Ted Koppel that he was battling Lewy body dementia.

“It’s a mild case of what people suffer from Alzheimer’s,” Turner told Koppel. “It’s similar to that, but not as bad.”

Turner was married three times, including his ten-year marriage to actor and activist Jeanne Fonda from 1991 to 2001. In 2012, Turner told CNN that Fonda was probably the great love of his life, that he hadn’t gotten over it and that he doubted he ever would.

“When you love someone and you really love them, you never stop loving them,” he said.

In a lengthy Instagram post, Fonda wrote Wednesday that Turner “invaded my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swaggering pirate and I was never the same.”

“Ted Turner helped me believe in myself,” she wrote. “He gave me confidence. I think I did the same for him, but that’s what women are raised to do. Men like Ted aren’t supposed to express their needs and vulnerability. That was Ted’s greatest strength, I think.”

Fonda wrote of Turner that he “had a big life, a brilliant mind and a searing sense of humor”, and said that he “taught me more than any other person or school course”, praising his business acumen as well as his competitive and loving nature.

“I loved Ted with all my heart,” she added. “I see him in heaven now with all the wildlife he helped save from extinction… they are all gathered at the pearly gates to applaud him and thank him for saving their species.”

Turner’s legacy will always be associated with CNN, and yet the gift he seemed most proud of was the natural habitats he saved by purchasing and protecting more wild acreage than almost anyone in the United States.

It is tempting to call him master of his domain, but he prefers to be its guardian. We don’t own anything, he said, we just borrow it for a while.