Ted Turner, founder of CNN
He was one of the most important figures in media history and oversaw a vast empire of cable channels featuring news, sports and entertainment.
The founder of CNN, Ted Turnerpassed away this Wednesday at the age of 87. He had been a victim of dementia since 2018.
Born on November 19, 1938, in Ohio, nicknamed “The Mouth of the South” for your frankness, Ted Turner built the first major cable television station and popular movie and cartoon channels.
Turner got into business through his father’s company, which he took over after his father committed suicide in 1963. As one of the most important figures in media history, he oversaw a vast empire of cable channels featuring news, sports and entertainment, notes the .
It arrived in the world of media in 1970 when it acquired channel 17 from the independent broadcaster UHF, in Atlanta. Six years later, he bought the Atlanta Bravesa Major League Baseball team, and launched TBS Superstation.
In 1980, he revolutionized television journalism by creating CNN, a television channel with news 24 hours a day. He was also an internationally renowned sailor, a philanthropist who founded the United Nations Foundation, an activist who fought for the global elimination of nuclear weapons, and an environmentalist who became one of the largest landowners in the United States.
Turner created, as spinoffs CNN, CNN Headline News and CNN International. He also founded the TBSa cable and satellite sports and entertainment “superstation,” and a sister channel, TNT — channels that reached millions of North American homes.
He was also vice-president of the media conglomerate Time Warnerresponsible for the area of subscription television channels, leaving the position in 2003. He married and divorced three times, with Judy Nye (1960–1964), Jane Shirley Smith (1965–1988) and with actress Jane Fonda (1991–2001).
In 2018, Turner revealed that he suffered from , a neurodegenerative disease, in an interview with CBS. In early 2025, he had been hospitalized with a mild case of pneumonia.
Throughout his life he received several awards, including those for Man of the Year 1991 by the magazine Time for “having influenced the course of events and transforming viewers from 150 countries into instant witnesses of history”, that of Man of the Century 1999 by Broadcasting and Cable and that of one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World for the Time em 2009.
