Ted Turner, Atlanta's trailblazing CNN founder, conservationist and philanthropist, dies at 87

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In this Friday, Dec. 6, 2013 file photo, American media mogul Ted Turner is photographed on the red carpet at the Captain Planet Foundation benefit gala in Atlanta.

Credit: AP / David Goldman

Ted Turner, the entrepreneur who founded CNN, America's first 24-hour cable news network in Atlanta in 1980, died Wednesday, May 6, after a brief time in hospice care. He was 87. 

Turner suffered from Lewey Body Dementia, a diagnosis he received in 2018. He is survived by his children Laura, Teddy, Rhett, Jennie, and Beau, his grandchildren and great-grandchild, as well as former wife Jane Fonda. He was preceded in death by former wives Judy Nye and Janie Smith. 

The Atlanta businessman known for bold risks and eccentricities was a larger-than-life personality — a mix of Southern wit and grit — whose legacy includes pioneering cable television with his Turner Broadcasting System and CNN, transforming the Atlanta Braves into “America’s team," supporting environmental efforts through the TV show Captain Planet and funding the United Nations Foundation.

Robert Edward Turner III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio. When he was 9 years old, the family moved to Savannah, Ga., where his father built a successful billboard business. When Turner was just 24 years old, his father’s suicide thrust him into taking over the family company.

Over the course of his decades-long career, Ted Turner oversaw the building and merging of many ventures in media, sports, conservation and philanthropy.

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Ted Turner is pictured at the Atlanta Fulton County Stadium in an undated photo. Turner was the subject of a documentary series, "Call Me Ted," which premiered on Max on Nov. 13, 2024.

Credit: Courtesy of WBD

In addition to founding TBS and CNN, his endeavors included owning the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks, racing boats and winning the America's Cup, broadcasting wrestling, creating the Goodwill Games and the Nuclear Threat Initiative. He hunted, fished, bought ranches and became one of the largest private landowners and conservationists in the country. He also smoked cigars, knew Fidel Castro and Jacques Cousteau and spoke off-the-cuff without a script.

Atlanta loomed large in Turner’s life, Call Me Ted documentary director and writer Keith Clarke told GPB in 2024.

"We have a greater appreciation [of the city], just because I think he opened up the world to what Atlanta is and the history and the potential of the people," Clarke said of CNN's beginnings in 1980 on Techwood Drive in Midtown Atlanta. "Bringing CNN here was a way to put Atlanta on the map."

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In this Oct. 28, 1995, file photo, Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner, left, talks with Braves pitcher Tom Glavine as he holds the series MVP trophy after the Braves won the World Series in Atlanta.

Credit: AP Photo/Tannen Maury, File

On June 1, 1980, CNN's first broadcast went to 1.7 million cable television subscribers across America. At its high point, Turner Broadcasting's more than two-dozen branded networks and services reached 2 billion people in 200 countries.

Tom Johnson, former president of CNN, worked closely with Turner for years. 

"I said, 'Ted, what what are your rules about news?'" Johnson said. "He said, 'Tom, one rule: Be fair.' I said, 'What else?' He said, 'That's it.'" 

CNN broadcast pivotal moments in American history, including the Gulf War in 1991, when the network's reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman, and Peter Arnett reported live from Baghdad, and the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when Turner, who had lost control of his company after a 1996 Time Warner merger and another with AOL in 2000, watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center from his office in Atlanta as reporters rushed by him in the hallway.

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Ted Turner (right) speaks with anchors before a CNN newscast during the 1980s.

Credit: Courtesy of CNN / GPB File

CNN International anchor Christiane Amanpour, who began her career at CNN in 1983 as a desk assistant in Atlanta, recalled Turner's impact.

At one point, Amanpour remembered "delivering coffee and Twinkies" to a boss when she heard rumors that Turner wouldn't make payroll that week. She went on to say how Turner was “ahead of his time on climate change” and how the media universe owes him for many innovations.

In December 2019, Ted Turner was honored at a dedication of what was then called WarnerMedia's Techwood campus in Atlanta on the site where the original TBS stood.

"We raise our glasses to you, Ted," CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said as he led hundreds of employees in a toast. "The original maverick, pioneer of the media industry, champion of the environment. A true legend. To Ted."

Ted Turner spoke briefly at the ceremony.

"Never have I went through something quite exactly like this," he said. "And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Those of you who are with CNN now, carry it on."

 In June 2023, More than 500 current and former CNN employees gathered in front of CNN Center in downtown Atlanta for a photo to pay tribute to Turner and the revolutionary news network he built.

"I'm thrilled so many of you are here today to be memorialized in this landmark photograph that will celebrate CNN employees, past and present, coupled with an opportunity to connect and share stories of how you shaped CNN — and how CNN shaped you," Turner wrote.

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CNN employees gather in front of the iconic red letters at CNN Center on June 1, 2023, to mark the network's 43rd anniversary.

Credit: Matt Sloane / Sky Fire Drone

The alumni event was not officially affiliated with CNN but brought former journalists from around the country as well as South Africa and the United Kingdom to celebrate the network's history as they posed with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Turner and the iconic red letters that stood in front of the entrance to CNN Center.

That building was sold in 2021, and CNN migrated its Atlanta-based divisions to the company's office complex at Techwood Drive adjacent to the Georgia Tech campus. The former CNN Center is now The CTR, an entertainment and dining hub set to debut during the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament's games in Atlanta this summer.

CNN alumni insist the company will always be remembered for its innovations in satellite broadcasting as well as historic reporting in the 1980s and 1990s that included live coverage of the student uprising at Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the war in Iraq, which garnered 1 billion viewers worldwide, the largest audience of a non-sporting or concert event in television history.

"Is there more work to do? Of course," Turner wrote in 2023. "CNN's story is being rewritten, just like the story of the world it covers in real time."

"The doubters said we couldn't pull it off. But with grit, tenacity and perseverance, we endured,” he wrote. “Our experiences and stories can be a spark to usher in innovation and integrity to the future of journalism.”