Media mogul, team owner, restaurateur, philanthropist and a lover of the wide-open spaces. Those are just a few of the titles that Robert “Ted” Turner III held throughout his lifetime.
Turner died Wednesday at the age of 87.
His creation of CNN helped break the lock that broadcast networks had on TV news. CNN pioneered global 24-hour coverage, blazing the way for an era of information on demand.
“I’m like the bear that went over the mountain to see what he could see,” he said in a 1994 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “One thing opened up, then another, and I kept moving on.”
As CNN prepared to launch in 1980, a Washington Post reporter wrote that “the premiere will be greeted with almost universal skepticism both by the TV and financial communities alike.”
CNN fostered TV’s global news coverage. And Turner himself began embracing a broader, world view. He banned the word “foreign” from CNN’s on-air vocabulary.
“We try to present the facts as they are, not from a U.S. perspective but from a human perspective,” he said in 1991. “I believe that our humanity supersedes our nationalism.”
Turner spent much of his early career taking on major network executives. Later, he used his wealth and notoriety by tackling global issues.
In the late ’70s, Turner bought the then-floundering Atlanta Braves – using his “Super Station” to make the team a household name nationwide. That happened before the team ran division titles throughout the ’90s.
In 1995, Turner’s Braves won their first World Series. That win and the Braves run of successful teams earned him an induction into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame
In 1997, Turner grabbed national headlines with his announcement that he would donate $1 billion to the United Nations, with the donation being spread out over 10 years.
Later, Turner announced a plan to spend $250 million on the Nuclear Threat Initiative to help curb the growing spread of weapons of mass destruction.
But Turner was a deep, complex man who wanted to give. He eventually became the second-largest landowner in North America, at one point owning more than 2 million acres of land.
He used a lot of that property to reintroduce wild animals into their natural habitats, and he became the biggest bison rancher in the world.
Convinced that economics could help the survival of bison, Turner, along with restaurateur George McKerrow Jr. launched a new chain of restaurants – Ted’s Montana Grill.
Turner also gained a ton of publicity through his relationship with actress Jane Fonda, whom he married in 1991.
The pair became Atlanta’s glamour couple, sweeping into charity events, attracting double-takes across Georgia and joining cheering fans at Braves games.