{"id":18124,"date":"2026-05-07T04:13:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T11:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=18124"},"modified":"2026-05-09T04:34:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T11:34:32","slug":"ted-turner-creator-of-cnn-and-the-24-hour-news-cycle-dies-at-87-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=18124","title":{"rendered":"“Ted Turner, Creator of CNN and the 24-Hour News Cycle, Dies at 87”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back to News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As one of the most important figures in media history, he oversaw a vast cable empire of news, sports and entertainment channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Jonathan Kandell, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 7, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ted Turner, the visionary founder of CNN, introduced the 24-hour news cycle.CreditCredit…Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ted Turner, the media mogul who cut a brash and vivid figure on the American scene of the late 20th century by dominating the cable television industry, creating the 24-hour news cycle with CNN, and extending his restless reach into professional sports, environmentalism and philanthropy, died on Wednesday at his home near Tallahassee, Fla. He was 87.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillip Evans, a spokesman for the family, confirmed the death. Mr. Turner announced in 2018 that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Turner\u2019s signature creation was CNN \u2014 the Cable News Network \u2014 which revolutionized television news in 1980 by presenting it all hours of the day and eventually inspiring other media operations to follow suit. But his portfolio of business ventures bulged with much more, and their impact on American culture was considerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a spinoff of CNN, Mr. Turner created the channel CNN Headline News and CNN International. He founded the cable and satellite sports and entertainment \u201csuperstation\u201d that became known as TBS and spawned a sister channel, TNT, both of which continue to reach millions of homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1985, he bought for $1.5 billion the MGM studio\u2019s library of films and nine years later created the cable franchise Turner Classic Movies, or TCM. He made a similar purchase of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and, relying on them, created the Cartoon Network in 1992. And in 1996, he merged<\/a> his conglomerate, Turner Broadcasting System, with Time Warner to create one of the world\u2019s largest media companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along the way, he found the time and energy to captain the winning yacht in the America\u2019s Cup race in 1977 and to take an active role as owner of the Atlanta Braves, giving the team extended national exposure on Turner-owned television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime,\u201d he told the journalist Dale Van Atta in a Reader\u2019s Digest article in 1998. \u201cAnd that puts you in pretty big company: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not even his staunchest admirers placed Mr. Turner on that high a pedestal. But even a bitter rival like the media magnate Rupert Murdoch \u2014 who once had his New York Post run the headline \u201cIs Turner Insane?\u201d \u2014 had to concede that he was one of the most influential figures in the history of mass media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mr. Turner on the deck of his boat, Courageous, in 1977. He learned to sail at his hometown Savannah Yacht Club, and it became a lifelong passion.Credit…Robert Child\/Associated Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An Atlanta-based entrepreneur, Mr. Turner took astounding risks in business, often teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and then roaring back to multiply his fortune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against the advice of colleagues and the conventional wisdom of his industry peers, he poured millions of dollars into pioneering ventures that combined cable and satellite broadcasts. He warred against the big television networks. He almost lost his shirt in Hollywood but emerged from these gambles and brawls as a billionaire astride a vast cable empire of news, sports and entertainment channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His personal life, too, was turbulent. His three marriages \u2014 his last, ending in 2001, was to the Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda \u2014 were often rocked by his open displays of infidelity, heavy drinking and otherwise boorish behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicknamed \u201cthe Mouth of the South\u201d for his self-aggrandizing claims and a reputation for dispensing gratuitous insults, Mr. Turner \u2014 tall and slim with a craggy, mustachioed face \u2014 could nonetheless be a man of great charm, whose gaffes were repeatedly forgiven by an indulgent public, which in large part considered him a living American legend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Turner\u2019s politics were contradictory and controversial. While claiming to be an archconservative Republican with warm ties to Christian evangelicals and far-right John Birch Society members, he also befriended the Cuban leader Fidel Castro and defended the repressive conduct of the Communist Chinese government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an extraordinary act of philanthropy, he donated a billion dollars<\/a>to the United Nations, an organization loathed by American conservatives. He adored hunting, yet he became a darling of environmentalists by buying more than a million acres of wilderness and ranch land and then setting them aside as nature preserves. He became the fourth-largest private landowner<\/a> in the United States, with two million acres, in addition to vast tracts he owned in Argentina and other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Turner\u2019s influence was most apparent in the way his CNN transformed television news by presenting it around the clock with constant updates, conveying a sense of immediacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday, news is available when it actually happens, not when it\u2019s convenient for the three broadcast networks to carry it,\u201d the father-and-son authors Robert Goldberg and Gerald Jay Goldberg wrote in their 1995 biography, \u201cCitizen Turner: The Wild Rise of an American Tycoon.\u201d Whether covering the fall of the Berlin Wall, the crushing of the Chinese student movement in Tiananmen Square or the Persian Gulf war of 1991, Mr. Turner\u2019s CNN was the vehicle to view history in the making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI learn more from CNN than I do from the C.I.A.,\u201d President George H.W. Bush was widely quoted as saying at the time of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Turner himself professed not to be terribly interested in news or any other kind of business. It was the thrill of the hunt that drove him, not the quarry. As he told The New York Times, \u201cI\u2019ve always been more of an adventurer than a businessman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n