Ted Turner has died
cnn.com174 points by pseudolus 7 hours ago
174 points by pseudolus 7 hours ago
I remember around 2000 I read about how Ted Turner started his empire: he bought podunk local TV stations that had loose contracts with media owners that allowed them to broadcast shows as often as they wanted, with no restrictions. In the those days, local TV stations were broadcast just like radio and so the assumption was the contract only concerned the audience the TV station's antenna could reach. But the contract didn't specify this. Recognizing the loophole, he bought multiple stations and combined that content into its own cable channel(s) that played old movies and TV shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Turner This was the basis that allowed him to branch into CNN and more.
When I learned about this, the story was very applicable to me at the time, as my startup had acquired licenses for content that was historically sold directly to libraries by a salesman who would negotiate with each library individually. He used a standard contract. When we contacted the company to license content for display on the internet, they gave us a ridiculous contract with a small one time fee and access to display the content forever. Only after reasoning through their business model and history did we understand how this occurred, which was exactly the same type of gap that Ted Turner had exploited.
Wow. It wasn't until I read your comment that it clicked that the Turner in Turner Classic Movies is Ted Turner.
Also the "T" in TBS, originally WTCG in Atlanta that became "superstation" WTBS (later dropping the leading W).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_TBS_(American_TV_ch...
And WTBS the radio station was also purchased by Ted Turner!
It was originally "Tech Broadcasting Service" and run by an MIT student group.
For the $50k purchase, the newly-named WMBR purchased a new transmitter.
This is like being surprised that the Obama the Obama Presidential Library is about is Barack Obama.
I had a chuckle at your comment and felt it was true. But wonder if the commenter is younger. Ted Turner was much more of a household name and public figure in the 20th century. He became less involved in the cable empire by the mid 90s. Younger millennials and onwards probably heard people talk about him a lot less.
Ps. Another memorable media portrayal of Turner, he was clearly the basis for the boss character in the 1994 cartoon The Critic.
Won’t you be surprised to finally learn about the precursor band to Canadian legends The Guess Who: Barackman Turner Overdrive
I don't think anyone else with the name Obama has been president of anything that confers a library (let alone a presidential library), your answer seems a bit needlessly derisive. I suspect you're just insecure about your personal level of useful knowledge and are trying to lord over someone with your trivia fact.
There was a bit of a furore when he tried colorizing old B&W movies… imagine if he’d had AI to do colorization, upscaling and sharpening back then!
Guess we’ll still have Ted’s Montana Grills for a while…
Those colorized movies were awful, AI would have just made them awful in their own way.
Outside of film restoration, old movies should be enjoyed the way they were made.
Rightfully so if you ask me. Out the gate think about the implications of determining, say, skin color. I’m not saying “under no circumstances should it be done” but I also think people don’t appreciate the importance of the decisions made and the politics/implicit biases under the hood. I’m not even getting in to artistic intent and impact on lighting here either.
Colorizing b&w images is still debated to this day.
Because of the film technology at the time, a lot of the skin tones on set wouldn't match what you'd expect anyway due to makeup designed for the b&w film. Lots of sickly greens, yellows, and blues in place of red tones for instance.
https://www.bustle.com/articles/30501-i-tried-a-vintage-film...
At that point if you've already decided you want to colorize the film, there's a real question of how do you approach it, because being true to what was on set definitely isn't the right choice. So now you're playing with skin tones regardless.
Eh regarding skin color people don’t care about realism these days. You have historical remakes with totally anachronistic ethnicities in them and “no one” cares.
I mean sure, some people do, the same as some people used to complain about overrepresentation of caucasians in some old movies set in what was then called “the orient”. I think the only ones who put up a fight are the Japanese who don’t like their productions ethnically misrepresented as much.
B&W highlights the stories better. With color you get more ambient context and sometimes that’s interesting.
I remember when Ted Turner bought a scrappy Atlanta TV station, Channel 17.
The channels refer to specific radio frequency allocations. Anything below Channel 12 is "Very High Frequency", and anything above that is "Ultra High Frequency". The Channel number was basically arbitrary, but went up in frequency in numerical order, so Channel 5 had a higher frequency than Channel 17.
The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength, and in general the smaller the area of coverage. Fewer viewers. The big networks dominated VHF, megawatt transmitters that could reach the entire metro area and beyond. In the Atlanta area, we had all three major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC on Channels 2, 5, and 11.
UHF was the domain of independent operators, who filled airtime with anything they could get. Mostly old TV shows and movies from syndicate distributors. Channel 17 was mostly old movies, while Channel 36 featured old TV shows. "Superman" and "The Lone Ranger". "Star Trek". Later in the evening, 1950s schlock horror or flying saucer films...
With an uneven format and transmission range that limited viewership and advertising revenue, it could be more challenging for the UHF stations to make ends meet. When Channel 17 ran into financial difficulties, Ted Turner pumped it up. UHF stations typically signed off at night, went off the air, but the Turner Superstation was 24 hours a day.
Apparently, Ted Turner was playing a long game.
(Also apparently, I watched a lot of television as a 1970s latchkey kid.)
#4 largest private land owner in the US: https://landreport.com/land-report-100#top-100
Wonder what's going to be done with it now that he's dead.
I was a Boy Scout growing up and the Philmont Ranch is a destination for hiking and backpacking situated on his property. Twi weeks of backpacking through that wilderness was a formative experience for me, and I hope future generations aren't deprived of the opportunity to enjoy it.
Jane Fonda was his last spouse. I hope he left it to her. She's a very cool lady with a great head on her shoulders. A recent interview (The Interview, NYT) is worth listening to. She talked very positive about Ted in this interview, which made me think they had a good relationship still.
>She's a very cool lady with a great head on her shoulders.
Made me spit out my coffee. Hanoi Jane Fonda isn't very cool, and does not have a great head on her shoulders.
it's amazing to me that she can still be derided for that stuff even now years later after we've all had a chance to recollect on what a mistake Vietnam was collectively as humans outside national borders.
throwaway accts used to be for spilling company abuses and having risque opinions , not for holding the line at party propaganda points.
She was early, consistent, vocal, brave, and in the light of history morally right in her opposition to the Vietnam War.
Whoa there. The US being wrong to make war in Vietnam absolutely does not vindicate those who supported the Viet Cong!
Maybe, but her posing in North Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns was pretty despicable, not brave. Nepo baby PR stunt or not.
I'll go down that road with you. I agree with Jane on a great many issues, I'm sure. I certainly don't dislike her for her overall political leanings. And yet, I can't look at her without thinking about what she did in Vietnam.
The idea that she passed POW secrets to their captors has been debunked to my satisfaction. But the other stuff she did, calling our POWs liars and touring to support the army we were fighting, is beyond the pale.
Like, you can say we shouldn't be attacking Iran and I won't argue against you. But if you actually went to Iran in support of their soldiers and armies over ours, except maybe as a journalist who documents bad stuff you discover us doing, then I'm going to invite you to stay there.
I wonder what ever happened with the stream poisoning effort on a creek that ran through his ranch. That was bit of a thing growing-up back in Montana in the 90s, where the billionaire outsider wanted to poison the stream to kill off one species of fish to encourage another species.
https://www.rangemagazine.com/archives/stories/winter00/murk...
Ted Turner owned the largest American Bison herd (~45k animals), supplying meat for his "Ted's Montana Grill" restaurants.
I don't know much else about the man, but as a supporter of Bison I can commend that part of his legacy. An impressive vision and execution.
>as a supporter of Bison...
I'm not sure I've run into a 'supporter' of a particular type of bovine before.
Why?
Bison are surely pretty comparable on a lbs mass to methane released ratio when fed with the same diets that cattle are.
other bovines didn't get to near-extinction and spring back after years of remediation and lobbying efforts, the American bison did.
how do you own a herd
This comment is low-effort, but in the case you are genuinely confused, the herd refers to the animals on a given ranch. As in, you have a ranch of 100 acres and 100 bison on it. The owner of the ranch owns a herd of 100.
The bison aren't roaming free on the land. It would be nice if they were, and there are efforts to restore wild bison herds, but these are commercial herds. Far better than cows and CAFOs.
I don't know, but I wonder if your parent commenter is making a philosophical point about the potentially illusory nature of owning a group of semi-wild animals. Like, if the only way you have of asserting your ownership is to use them as a food source, then do you really "own" them? Or do they exist outside and apart from human ideas of property?
Or like owning a mountain or a centuries-old tree. Does that even mean anything?
Owning is, like, a human construct man. If you can slaughter a herd of animals without facing any human imposed consequences, it's probably fair within the bounds of language and meaning to say that you own them.
Owning might be a human construct; but, arguably, a herd or a mountain or a tree is not. Which I guess was the point I was trying to suggest.
See also: Is it possible to own a cat?
Pierson v. Post 3 Cai. R. 175 (1805) is instructive. Your post is a great starting point for exploration of basic property law. TLDR ownership consists of a varied bundle of many different kinds of rights which can arise in many different and possibly conflicting ways.
Here's some good slice of life for you: https://www.youtube.com/@CrossTimbersBison
…
Our illustrious president doesn't want any bison.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/us/politics/trump-buffalo...
> but as a supporter of Bison
If you support Bison, why commend someone who killed them for a profit?
I support them as wildlife, a food source, and ecological resource. If people in the US ate bison instead of cows, it would be a huge benefit for the climate, ecosystem, and our health.
If he had not created a profitable enterprise, there would not be 45k wild bison roaming free with the same amount of dollars.
It's not like I want bison to die, but if an American is going to eat a bovid, it's much better for it to be a bison. The American great plains are big enough to support vast wild herds and sustainable, profitable enterprises, but in order for that to happen, Americans need to eat bison, not cows.
Because the person who killed then for a profit also paid to have them exist, gave them a home and food. In wanting to eat bison meat, he paid to have more bison exist, so there are more bison than if he hadn't killed some of them for eating.
I 100% agree. However, I do think there is room for discussion for someone to ask is that a good thing? It is good if there is more of them if they only exist to be killed? I don't think things like this are black and white. If they only existed in the worst conditions in factory farms my answer would be no. If they can live a good life and be slaughtered humanely my answer would be yes. I think it's easy to dismiss comments like the one you responded to, but I would argue it's always good to think about these things.
it's hard to argue that decreased genetic diversity will help humans. Maybe we don't need hundreds of thousands of new exotic huge bovines to shit methane into the air all day every day, but it should be seen as fairly vital that we try to keep genetic diversity as high as we can in order to maximize future opportunities that may arise from research and development for the sake of humanity.
> it's hard to argue that decreased genetic diversity will help humans.
Nobody was arguing about what is best for humans.
If the choice of existence for all pigs (randomly selected as an animal commonly used for food) was to live in factory farming conditions or for pigs to go entirely extinct, I'd rather they go extinct. Not for the benefit of humanity, but because never existing is a better outcome for those would-be pigs than living lives full of nothing but suffering.
As someone who lives near one of the herds, this isn't a factory farming situation. They live pretty good lives on open space with a bit of population management that ends up with meat and hides that help offset the cost of managing the herd.
That's good to know (genuinely).
I wasn't specifically talking about the bison here which is why I randomly selected some other animal to talk about and made the choice more binary than it is in the real world.
I was just making a point that what is best for humans is hardly the only criteria to use to make these sorts of decisions for some people (myself included).
>If you support Bison, why commend someone who killed them for a profit?
Because they wouldn't exist otherwise.
“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise!” - Ted Turner
Side note, for those of you that enjoy biographies, his autobiography “Call Me Ted” is a real page-turner (pun intended).
A highly inspirational story of entrepreneurship, which includes a raw and authentic account of his flaws.
A true legend.
Rest in peace Ted.
There is 4 part series on HBO with same name ( I think). I watched it last year. Learned a lot from business to personal life.
Ted personally funded the 1986 Goodwill Games in Seattle as a direct response to the US/USSR mutual Olympic boycotts of '80 and '84, losing ~$26M out of pocket. CNN also hosted the famous US-Soviet "space bridge" TV linkups around the same time. RIP.
Ted Turner won the America's cup there in 1977. His team named Courageous was legendary. Robbie Doyle was a team member, and got a degree from Harvard in applied physics. In the middle of the trials to see which team would defend the cup for the US, he remade the sails to be more competitive. Doyle went on to found a racing sailmaking company.
I used to live in Newport, RI. I love sailing and introducing people to the world of sailing. When I had guests I asked them to watch this NBC video about Ted's 77 campaign [1]. It really captures the history of Newport, sailing, and Ted
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr7-BwzceYI&list=PLXEMPXZ3PY...
There was recently another good film on Netflix about the Australian victory at the 1983 America's Cup[1].
He’s been pretty quiet in the news for a while so he sort of fell into the category of those famous people who when they died, half your response is a bit of surprise that they were still alive (which is neither a good nor bad thing, just a thing¹).
⸻
1. I once had an idea for a party game which involved people trying to guess whether a formerly prominent person was alive or dead.
The MTV show Remote Control had a round called "Dead or Canadian", which has morphed into pub quizzes as "Dead or Canadian, Both or Neither?", which is shockingly tricky at times.
Definitely have mixed feelings about whats become of CNN and how the 24 hour news cycle has affected the world, but I'm very grateful that Turner financed the movie Gettysburg [0]. One of my favorite movies, based on one of my favorite books. I've probably seen it at least 50 times.
> In 2010, Turner joined Warren Buffett's and Bill Gates's The Giving Pledge, vowing to donate the majority of his fortune to charity upon his death.
Does The Giving Pledge still exist? Will this happen?
The NYTimes did a nice write-up about how The Giving Pledge is dropping out of vogue.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/business/the-billionaire-...
I suppose that only works if most of them join the pledge. Otherwise, you will be "disarming" unilaterally.
Will they still transfer all of their money to a (perhaps charitable) trust that their people control?
Yes.
The Giving Pledge still exists, but like most philanthropy it has always been more about PR and reputation washing rather than real public good.
The majority of people who have died since making the pledge did not meet the terms they agreed to and the vast majority of people still alive who made the pledge are on track to fail to meet the terms as their wealth is growing significantly faster than their charitable donations.
This is not to say everyone who has made the Giving Pledge is bad, there are some people on the list who have legitimately done a lot of good, but being on the list has overall been a meaningless indicator of actual outcomes.
>more about PR and reputation washing rather than real public good.
there is a parable i cant quite remember, but something along the lines of "the starving kid does not care where the food comes from".
that doesn't quite capture it... but in this context: the people receiving the money/help do not care if they got it because of "reputation washing" or "real public good". they get the help in both scenarios, and that's what matters.
as long as the money is going to actual, real charities/non-profits/good causes... who cares whether the billionaire did it because they are truly generous or because they thought "this will look good in the news"?
I'd even argue that we should encourage _more_ of this behavior, if it leads to more charity.
The idea that you have to do good deeds without expecting any kind of reward or recognition seems distinctly Christian to me. For Christians, the intent of this requirement is to ensure people remain humble (pride is a sin, of course) but this clearly contradicts the (imo much more relevant) principle of self interest. You can't really expect people to do something for other people without some kind of reward -- be it the promise of eternal salvation, some kind of social credit, or simply an internal sense of satisfaction.
As long as people aren't merely simulating charity to receive it, I don't see any downside to allowing people a bit of social reward for their giving.
Altruism predates humans, but we are the best at it, and this behavior long predates Christianity. That you associate altruism distinctly with Christianity just discloses massive gaps in your experience and/or education.
Not only have you misinterpreted my comment to attack claims I never made, you've also used this misinterpretation as license to insult me. Lovely.
The corollary is also true: the starving kid does not care that you are seen as generous. They are hungry.
We can argue all day about motives, but what really matters is action.
Who cares whether the people who control the majority of the planet’s capital actually care about other people or just the preservation of their image?
I do. I will accept the donation either way, but in terms of so much else, I fucking do.
the point of my comment is very specifically about not caring about motivation behind charitable actions, because regardless of motivation, the charitable action still occurs.
if you want to be mad about other things, like how wasteful super yachts are or whatever, by all means go for it. but that is outside the scope of my comment.
I think that the problem would be if the reputation washing prevents their victims from getting justice or if they leverage their reputation to victimize more people.
> there is a parable i cant quite remember, but something along the lines of "the starving kid does not care where the food comes from".
A lot of the money never goes to the starving kid, it goes into foundations that act more as tax shelters than they do actual charitable organizations.
> who cares whether the billionaire did it because they are truly generous or because they thought "this will look good in the news"?
It matters when the scope of their giving doesn't match the PR-generating pledges they make, which is the real point of my post.
If someone gives their money away to a good cause, I don't care what their real motivation is, but if they say they are going to give >50% of their wealth to charity to generate PR and then they never do that (true for the majority of Giving Pledge pledgers) that is behavior I think it contemptable and worthy of being called out.
>A lot of the money never goes to the starving kid, it goes into foundations that act more as tax shelters than they do actual charitable organizations.
this is covered by the "actual, real charities/non-profits/good causes" caveat in my comment.
I remember CNN bursting onto the scene. It was revolutionary. Although there was never (even today) enough news to fill a 24hr period. Just endless repeats of the same block of news.
> Although there was never (even today) enough news to fill a 24hr period.
Of course there's enough news; they simply choose not to report on it. This is true both domestically and certainly around the world. Presumably this is a mixture of highly dubious editorial decision and some reasoning that this doesn't make money.
The original "Situation Room" concept with Wolf was pulling in all these live feeds from all over the place and reporting on them. Car chase in LA! Train crash in India! Protest in Paris! Let's go live!
They had a web subscription product around 2006 that gave you access to just watch all these raw feeds from CNN Affiliates all over the world. It was like Periscope but all "professional" feeds.
Now instead of so many repeats, we get panels of 5 talking heads "analyzing" 15 seconds of news for 15 minutes.
News isn't watched, it's read. There's extraordinary convincing power in having a talking head say things to you. You're way more likely to believe it regardless of truth. It's why they all do it.
Of all the fascinating things that I’ve seen, there was a Moscow TV station rebroadcasting CNN during the Gulf War.
My memory is hazy, and I accepted it as-is at the time, but the idea that American news could be watched live shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union seems entirely wild.
I think there absolutely would be enough if they also covered international stories as well as happier news. There's a whole lot more good going on in the world right now than bad, but for some reason we do not highlight it.
"For some reason" is that people do not watch it.
Once you get a taste of "bad" it dominates.
It's important to remember that actually reporting news is a tertiary purpose of the news business. The primary purpose is to sell advertising. The secondary purpose is to get eyeballs onto their product, in order to facilitate the primary purpose. Reporting news is only done because it's how they've chosen to get those eyeballs.
Maybe for some people, but I see no reason we shouldn't seek out and show good news... I think it makes people happier.
> There's a whole lot more good going on in the world right now than bad,
I have no clue how you could ever even estimate this sort of ratio. How do you even quantify the "number of things going on", let alone confidently split them into good and bad?
I think that a lot of the issue might be that the "good" is often irrelevant to the user. E.g. Great news! Scientists discover new drug for treating cancer (in mice).
'Good going on', rarely affects my wallet.
And most of the "bad going on" is completely out of your control. People could do with consuming a lot less national/international news.
I also remember when CNN first appeared. I was a kid, but I recall people (adults, Boomers) sort of rejected it at first. I think there was a trust issue, not just with CNN, but cable-TV in general. But yeah, I recall people thinking CNN was a passing fad, like it would fail in a year or so because people liked/trusted the local broadcasters and network anchors they'd known for most of their lives.
I just remember it as a channel you could bring up that always had the top headlines right now. Yes they would repeat a lot of it every 15-30 minutes but if you didn't want to wait for the national TV news at 6:00pm you could just turn on CNN and feel informed. It was also the start of people getting addicted to the need to know everything all the time, later amplified 100x by the rise of the internet and mobile phones/media. I remember some people getting addicted to CNN, just had it on all the time.
There was CNN and HNN (CNN2 at one point). CNN had more variety of coverage, interviews, etc. HNN was the one that repeated itself every 30 minutes or so (if nothing new came in), it was more like watching the national evening news at essentially any time of day. Then in the '00s they switched over to do more talking head junk.
Before starting CNN, Ted Turner captained the sailing Yacht Courageous to an America's Cup victor 4-0 over the Australians in Newport, RI during what was arguably sailings hay day.
Oh my god I finally get a very specific Harvey Birdman joke as a result of this factoid. Fuck me, Phil Ken Sebben as a parody of Ted Turner kinda works.
The Onion headline should be: Ted Turner dies at 87:05
Ah, that took a second to get. If anyone is stumped, it's a reference to Turner Time [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TBS_(American_TV_channel)#Turn...
They are planning a 6-minute funeral and a 30-second commitment, while the left side teases a documentary on the birth of Mark Thompson's children
Met him at the Black Pearl in Newport, RI during his America's Cup days. Gruff guy but took the time for this fan girl.
Greatest Contribution to the world is Turner Movie Classics and restoring all that old Hollywood film.
As a film fan I remember all of the outrage over his plan to colorize classic films. He was also a critic of the film "Taxi Driver" and complained about the film's values.
He was everywhere in the late 70s and early 80s. WTCG -- The Super Station.
Can't find the source but the quote I heard attributed to Orson Welles to Turner wanting to colorize the purposefully black-and-white Citizen Kane was "Tell Ted Turner to keep his goddamn crayolas off my movies"
There is a good case to be made that he (rather impulsively) caused more impactful charitable giving than any other person.
He essentially created the modern “billionaire giving to global causes” movement by deciding to donate a billion dollars during a speech.
Someone needs to update the simpsons wiki : ( https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Ted_Turner
Whatever one thinks of cable news now, CNN was a huge shift in how people experienced world events. The medium changed the emotional cadence of news.
I'd say it changed it extremely negatively. Before CNN, the news was reported when it happened. AFTER CNN, creating "news" to fill the gaps between news actually worth reporting happened. This was the start of the slippery slope to the news being little more than entertainment.
When CNN was sold to Time Warner, we lost the last voice in cable news from outside of New York.
It seems like a powerful lesson in good intentions and their unintended consequences.
He died at 8:05 EST.
If you’re intrigued by the comments here, I highly recommend his memoir Call Me Ted.
RIP legend
Ahmad
smaia
somaia
The same man that supposedly wanted to "serve" Bill Clinton (possibly play Minitrue)? (cf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRs46IfC2ls&t=89s)
Now we can make a "Captain Planet" movie to honor Ted.
Captain Planet and the Planeteers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planete...
TIL Turner was a creator of Captain Planet.
I think I heard somewhere (can't find reliable source right now) that he created Captain Planet as a revenge. He had some renewable energy initiative/deal that he was trying to get pushed through that got clobbered by big oil lobbyists. So he created Captain Planet as some revenge scheme.
cnn email alert was how I learned that 9/11 was happening. love or hate the man and the news outlet, but you have to admit that they ushered in the news era of the internet.
CNN was how we watched Desert Storm in '91
Nowadays, almost any news org can have journalists reporting from across the planet in real-time. But back before internet connectivity was ubuquitous, StarLink satellites, smartphones and streaming video everywhere, CNN had a few reporters who had the then-very-rare satellite phones (I think they were almost small-backpack sized) who could report from Iraq on-site during Desert Storm, and it was revolutionary. CNN's ratings went through the roof during that war, and after the war was over, it was reported they raised their ad rates over 1000%, because they had this new giant audience. It really felt like a transformation of public news media.
It wasn't just the sat phones, but they had cameras with satellite links as well. Plus, CNN was the only team that stuck around in Baghdad when everyone else left town. From their hotel room, we watched with them the unedited footage as all of the tracers from the AA lit up the night sky in a way few outside of military service had ever seen. The DoD provided additional footage of missiles through windows, but CNN was the place where everyone watched the live views.
This was a pivotal time for news coverage. The only thing that is at the same level was the JFK assassination. Until then, newspapers were the main source of news. The JFK coverage is where TV took over with live coverage instead of reading yesterday's news. Throw in the live coverage of Oswald being shot, and it was pretty much a standing 8 count with the internet being the final TKO for newspapers. PBS did a special on this called "JFK: Breaking the News"[0]
I remember waking up in the middle of the night for some reason, turning on CNN, and finding out we had invaded Panama.
Growing up, TV stations shut off around midnight. Quite the sea change.
And then you couldn't get to their home page because they got hammered by traffic. They eventually slimmed the page down to just the main story and you could get it to load eventually.
I was just talking about Ted Turner. I was at the in-laws' the other day and I said to my father-in-law, "Ted Turner—you probably already know this because you probably met Ted Turner, but he used to run an evening cartoon block for adults on TNT with old Looney Tunes and all the racist jokes and sexual innuendos preserved." And he was like "Yep, I met him several times." Because he was a big-deal media lawyer in the 80s and 90s.
Here's to you, Mr. Turner. Captain Planet was blatant propaganda, but you were largely responsible for my nerdy interest in animation.
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It's funny to me that, whenever these uber-rich old ghouls that were widely despised like 40 years ago die, they're remembered fondly, simply because we have much, much worse rich old ghouls now.
Although Ted Turner’s net worth at the time of his death in May 2026 was estimated between $2.2 billion and $2.8 billion, his politics were very progressive.
> In 1996, Turner admitted, "For the 10 years I ran [the team], it was a disaster. ... As I relinquished control of the Braves and gave somebody else the responsibility, it did well."
When's the last time you heard a billionaire say something like that?
> "We're the only first-world country that doesn't have universal healthcare and it's a disgrace."
> Iran's nuclear position: "They're a sovereign state. We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10? We don't say anything about Israel — they've got 100 of them approximately — or India or Pakistan or Russia."
> dubbed opponents of abortion "bozos"
> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror
> in 2008, Turner asserted on PBS's Charlie Rose that if steps are not taken to address global warming, most people would die and "the rest of us will be cannibals".
There's more than wikipedia covers, but you get the idea.
>> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror
That's a funny thing to mark as "progressive" as I don't think that'd have been considered progressive until fairly recently. Plus, he walked it back.
> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror: "The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism." He apologized for that and the remarks in 2011 about the 9/11 hijackers, but also defended himself: "Look, I'm a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word ... I mean, I don't type my speeches, then sit up there and read them off the teleprompter, you know. I wing it.
He was also uncomfortably concerned with population growth.
> Turner also said in the interview that he advocated Americans having no more than two children. In 2010, he stated that the People's Republic of China's one-child policy should be implemented.
I'm not sure I'd call him progressive. Thinking Iran should have nuclear weapons doesn't seem to make sense from any perspective unless you want them to use them.
Frankly, he seems like pretty standard anti-natalist environmentalist to me.
Besides the questionable ethics of billionaires in general, I'd say Turner's biggest blunder was inventing the 24 hour news cycle, which has since been used to push a lot awful stuff that Ted himself probably found pretty distasteful.
Ted Turner seemed like a solid guy, not just relatively better.
Agreed. I'm generally super cynical (it's something I'm working on!) but Turner seems like a decent person.