{"id":148991,"date":"2026-05-06T21:10:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/?p=148991"},"modified":"2026-05-06T21:10:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:10:53","slug":"cnn-founder-ted-turner-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/06\/cnn-founder-ted-turner-has-died\/","title":{"rendered":"CNN founder Ted Turner has died!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, an unconventional media mogul, visionary, and great philanthropist, has died at the age of 87.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American 24-hour news network CNN announced today that its founder, Ted Turner, has passed away at the age of 87.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, the media magnate, who was born in Cincinnati, revealed that he suffered from Lewy body dementia (DLB), a neurodegenerative disease with symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An eccentric and unconventional personality, the multi-faceted Turner, who was once married to actress Jane Fonda, founded CNN in 1980.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cause of his death was not disclosed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One nickname was not enough for such a rebellious and daring personality: Turner was known by various monikers, such as “Mouth of the South,” “Captain Outrageous,” and “Ted the Terrible.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turner became a billionaire after taking over his father’s billboard company following the latter’s death, buying a television station in the 1970s, and turning it into a media and entertainment empire. His networks specialized in news, sports, and reruns of old films. But he didn’t stop there. He added the MGM\/UA film studio to his holdings and then proceeded to merge Turner Broadcasting System with Time Warner in 1996. He became head of the cable networks division at the new company and was its major shareholder, but he struggled to adapt to the corporate system after decades of absolute freedom as the sole “boss.” Eventually, he lost control of his networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, Turner emerged as one of the most significant environmental activists globally. He was one of the largest landowners in the US and donated large sums to charities \u2013 among other things, he gave $1 billion to the United Nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interests of the man with the thin mustache and sparkling gaze seemed endless. During the 1970s, he owned the Atlanta Braves baseball team and the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA. As skipper of the yacht Courageous<\/em>, he won the America’s Cup. In 1986, he founded the Goodwill Games, a competition similar to the Olympics, and two years later, he bought a professional wrestling organization to enrich the television content of his networks. Worried about nuclear war, he co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative in 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forbes<\/em> magazine estimates his fortune at $2.8 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If I were even a little humble, I would be perfect,” he once said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Difficult start in television<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert Edward Turner III was born in Cincinnati on November 19, 1938. His family moved to the South when he was nine. He was sent to military academies, where he became a champion in debating and sailing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He enrolled at Brown University in Rhode Island and infuriated his father because he preferred classical studies over economics. He never graduated, due, among other “offenses,” to being caught with a girl in his dorm room. He then started working for the family’s advertising company in Savannah, Georgia, selling billboard space. At 24, he took over the business alone when his father committed suicide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company was sold to pay off debts, but after discussing it with his family, Turner bought it back and led it to success. In 1970, ignoring his advisors, he bought a failing Atlanta television station, the current WTBS, for $2.5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a difficult start, he eventually managed to make the station profitable by broadcasting low-cost programs 24 hours a day. The station’s fortunes took off in 1976, following a federal decision allowing cable television systems to use satellite signals in their programming. Operating as a pioneer of satellite transmissions, Turner helped WTBS become the first “superstation,” and its program was rebroadcast by local cable networks across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1980, he founded CNN in Atlanta to compete with the major networks CBS, NBC, and ABC. Offering low wages but the allure of “adventure,” he hired journalists and technicians who endured the mockery of others, who called the news channel the “Chicken Noodle Network,” predicting its failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite dire predictions, the first 24-hour news medium set global standards for covering wars, trials, revolutions, and natural disasters. “If we don’t have some kind of satellite problem, we’ll just keep broadcasting until the end of the world,” Turner himself said in a 2013 interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, halfway through President Donald Trump’s first term, Turner said he rarely watched the network he founded anymore because it focused excessively on politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a “television visionary,” Turner was named Time<\/em> magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1991 for having “influenced the dynamics of events and turned viewers in 150 countries into witnesses of history.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1996, Time Warner Inc. bought Turner Broadcasting System for\u00a07.5 billion, creating the TURNER EMPIRE owned HBO,CNN,CartoonNetwork,TurnerClassicMovies,theWarnerBros.filmstudio,and\u2217Time\u2217magazine.In2001,TimeWarnermergedwithAOL,a99 billion deal that Turner approved. But in the subsequent reorganization, he lost his position as head of the cable networks he had created. Eventually, he lost billions when the company’s stock fell. He resigned as vice chairman in 2003 and as a director of Time Warner three years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turner had a long-running feud with another media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. Their rivalry began in 1983 when a yacht sponsored by Murdoch collided with Turner’s during a race in Australia. Turner challenged him to a boxing match between them. The enmity intensified in 1996 when Murdoch founded Fox News as the “conservative rival” to CNN. Turner called him a warmonger and compared him to Adolf Hitler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turner was also a great philanthropist: in 1997, he made history by donating $1 billion to the UN to fund the United Nations Foundation, which deals with climate, sustainable development, technology, and health. In 2017, after making the final installment of the donation, he said it “was the best investment I ever made.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Turner Foundation also gave many millions to environmental organizations, while he promoted and invested in clean energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turner was one of the largest landowners in the US, owning more than 7,700,000 acres across six states, including Montana, where he spent much of his life. He owned a herd of 50,000 bison, which supplied the restaurant chain Ted’s Montana Grill, which he founded in 2002. He also had ranches in Patagonia, Argentina, and in 2015, he founded Ted Turner Reserves, an ecotourism program allowing participants to visit his properties in New Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was married three times and had five children. His last marriage, to Jane Fonda, lasted ten years, and the couple divorced in 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Tomas Ramirez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, an unconventional media mogul, visionary, and great philanthropist, has died at the age of 87. The American 24-hour news network CNN announced today that its founder, Ted Turner, has passed away at the age of 87. In 2018, the media magnate, who was born in Cincinnati, revealed that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2170,13172,2255],"class_list":{"0":"post-148991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-cnn","9":"tag-ted-turner","10":"tag-time"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148993,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148991\/revisions\/148993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}