Ted Turner

Source

• Born: 19 November 1938
• Birthplace: Cincinnati, Ohio
• Best Known As: That loud-mouthed rich guy who founded CNN

Name at birth: Robert Edward Turner III

Ted Turner took over his father's billboard business and in 1970 bought a TV station in Atlanta, Georgia. Among the channels to emerge from Turner Broadcasting are the Cable News Network (CNN), Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Turner Network Television (TNT). In 1995 Turner Broadcasting merged with media giant Time Warner, and in 2000 Time Warner merged with America Online. Turner also owns the Atlanta Hawks basketball team and the Atlanta Braves baseball team, raises bison in Montana and has pledged a billion dollars of his money to the United Nations. Known as "The Mouth From The South," the flamboyant billionaire has been married three times, most recently to actress Jane Fonda.

In 1977 Turner and his yacht Courageous won the America's Cup race.

Chairman, Nuclear Threat Initiative; former president and chairman of the board, Turner Broadcasting System; former president, Atlanta Braves; former chairman of the board, Atlanta Hawks

Nationality: American.

Born: November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Education: Attended Brown University, 1956–1959.

Family: Son of Robert Edward Turner Jr. and Florence (Rooney) Turner; married Judy Gale Nye, 1960 (divorced, 1962); married Jane Shirley Smith, 1964 (divorced, 1988); married Jane Fonda, 1991 (divorced, 2001); children: five (first marriage, two; second marriage, three).

Career: Turner Advertising Company, 1960–1962, branch manager; 1962–1963, assistant general manager; 1963–1970, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board; Turner Broadcasting System, 1970–1996, president and chairman of the board; Atlanta Braves, 1976–2003, president; Atlanta Hawks, 1977–2003, chairman of the board; Time Warner, 1996–2001, vice chairman of the board; AOL Time Warner, 2001–2003, vice chairman of the board.

Awards: Regional Employer of the Year, Atlanta Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1976; President's Award, National Cable Television Association, 1979; Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year, Sales Marketing and Management magazine, 1979; Hall of Fame inductee, Promotion and Marketing Association, 1980; Salesman of the Year, Sales and Marketing Executives, 1980; Private Enterprise Exemplar Medal, Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, 1980; Ace Special Recognition Award, National Cable Television Association, 1980; Communicator of the Year, Public Relations Society of America, 1981; Communicator of the Year, New York Broadcasters, 1981; International Communicator of the Year, Sales and Marketing Executives, 1981; National News Media Award, Veterans of Foreign Wars, 1981; Distinguished Service in Telecommunications Award, Ohio University College of Communications, 1982; Carr Van Anda Award, Ohio

University School of Journalism, 1982; Special Award, Edinburgh International Television Festival, 1982; Media Awareness Award, United Vietnam Veterans, 1983; Special Olympics Award, Special Olympics Committee, 1983; World Telecommunications Pioneer Award, New York State Broadcasters Association, 1984; Golden Plate Award, American Academy of Achievement, 1984; Outstanding Supporter Award, National Boy Scout Council, 1984; Distinguished Achievement Award, University of Georgia, 1985; Lifetime Achievement Award, New York International Film and Television Festival, 1984; Tree of Life Award, Jewish National Fund, 1985; Hall of Fame inductee, National Association for Sport and Physical Education, 1986; Life Achievement Award, Popular Culture Association, 1986; Golden Ace Award, National Cable Television Academy, 1987; Sol Taishoff Award, National Press Foundation, 1988; Citizen Diplomat Award, Center for Soviet-American Dialogue, 1988; President's Award, National Cable Television Association, 1989; Paul White Award, Radio and Television News Directors Association, 1989; Business Marketer of the Year, American Marketing Association, 1989; Distinguished Service Award, Simon Wiesenthal Center, 1990; Man of the Year, Time magazine, 1991.

Publications: The Racing Edge (with Gary L. Jobson), 1979; Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way (with Christian Williams), 1981; Ted Turner Speaks: Insights from the World's Greatest Maverick (with Janet Lowe), 1999.

Address: Nuclear Threat Initiative, 1747 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, 7th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20006; http://www.nti.org.

Few business leaders have been as eccentric and unpredictable as Robert Edward (Ted) Turner III. He took pleasure in choosing goals that seemed impossible to achieve. He created the first "superstation" television station, WTBS, which broadcast nationwide through a network of local cable television operators. He invented live television broadcasting of news events as they happened. In addition to making himself one of the world's foremost businessmen, he became the dominant figure in sailboat racing, winning an unprecedented number of ocean sailing events. He did this despite a severe mental handicap and a tendency to be tactless on any occasion, which earned him the enduring nickname of the "Mouth of the South."

Rejection and Abuse

Turner's father, Robert Edward (Ed) Turner Jr. made a fortune in billboard advertising. He may have suffered from bipolar disorder, sometimes called manic depression, a disease of mood swings from mania to depression that makes it difficult for sufferers to form close personal relationships. Ed abused his son with severe, often unmotivated beatings using coat hangers and straps.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Ed enlisted in the navy and was posted to bases along the Gulf Coast. He took his wife and daughter with him but left his son, Ted, behind in a Cincinnati boarding school. Isolating his son from his family would become a pattern for Ed. In 1947 Ed moved his family to Savannah, Georgia, where he purchased a billboard advertising company. Ted was placed in the Georgia Military Academy near Atlanta.

In a rare moment of generosity, Ed gave his son a Penguin sailing dinghy in 1949. One of the family's African American domestics, Jimmy Brown, taught Ted how to sail and would become the man Ted regarded throughout his life as his true father. In September 1950 Ted was sent to McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Considered an elite boarding school, McCallie included military training and discipline in its curriculum. Ted immediately set about breaking rules. For every demerit a student earned, he was to walk a quarter mile on a weekend, but Ted racked up so many demerits—1,000—that he could not have possibly walked the required miles, and the school had to find new ways to punish students. Eventually, Ted advanced from troublemaker to student leader at McCallie.

Ted wanted to attend the United States Naval Academy, but his father demanded that he attend Harvard. A "C" student, Turner was rejected by Harvard, but Brown University accepted him in 1956. Ed's pleasure in his son's attending an Ivy League school turned to rage when he learned that Ted, who loved reading, planned to major in the classics. In 1959 Ted's parents divorced, and Ted was expelled from Brown for having a woman visit him in his room.

On June 23, 1960, Ted married Judy Gale Nye, a young woman he had met while pursuing his passion for sailing. She proved to be his match as a sailor and was tough and outspoken, but the marriage became a rivalry so intense that Ted once rammed her boat during a race to prevent her from beating him. The couple divorced in 1962.

In 1960 Ed made his son branch manager at Turner Advertising's office in Macon, Georgia. Ted's skills in sales more than doubled the office's revenue in a year, and in 1962 he became assistant manager of the Atlanta branch. As Ted proceeded to increase the company's customer base in Atlanta, Ed continually expanded Turner Advertising, eventually buying out a competitor. However, the buyout generated a significant amount of debt, making Ed fearful of going bankrupt. On March 5, 1963, seemingly in good spirits, he had a pleasant breakfast and then went into the bathroom and shot himself in the head.

Young Tycoon

After his father's death, Ted Turner became president and chief executive officer of Turner Advertising. The suicide also left him without the person he most wanted to impress with his success and a feeling that he might someday emulate his father's death. Turner immediately fought to retain his father's company intact, fighting efforts to buy pieces of it. With brilliant salesmanship he expanded Turner Advertising's clientele, thereby bringing in enough money to pay debts and stabilize the company's finances. On June 2, 1964, Turner married Jane Shirley Smith. Almost from the start, the marriage was unhappy, with Turner's compulsive womanizing a torment to his wife. He plunged himself into work and sailboat racing, winning many tournaments.

By 1970 Turner owned the largest advertising company in the southeast, but he worried about inroads into the billboard business made by radio and television. That year he made one of his typical leaps of faith by buying the Atlanta UHF television station WJRJ, which had lost $800,000 in 1969. Turner renamed his company Turner Communications Group and the station to WTCG. Six months later he bought the Charlotte, North Carolina, UHF station WRET, which was also losing money.

In 1971 WTCG lost $500,000, but Turner started buying old black-and-white motion pictures, adding them to the station's programming and increasing its viewership. Because Turner bought the movies outright, he could show them endlessly without paying royalties. In 1972 WTCG broke even. That year the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) changed its regulations to allow cable television services to import signals from distant stations, and WTCG began using microwave transmissions and relays to send its signal to cable television operators. WTCG became a moneymaker, netting $1 million in 1973.

On December 2, 1975, RCA's SATCOM II communications satellite was launched, and Turner immediately rented a channel on it. He had a huge broadcasting dish erected in a small hollow in Georgia to send WTCG's signal to the satellite, from which it was beamed to cable television stations throughout the United States, mostly in isolated, rural areas. On January 6, 1976, Turner made a surprise bid for and bought the Atlanta Braves major league baseball team, which was losing money and was probably headed for another city. At the same time, Turner hired satellite expert Ed Taylor, a vice president at Western Union, to oversee his satellite operations. When FCC rules forbade Turner to own a station and the service that sent its signal to cable operators, he created Southern Satellite, which he then sold to Taylor for one dollar (eventually making Taylor very rich), and on December 27, 1976, the FCC approved Southern Satellite as a common carrier. Turner renamed WTCG to WTBS (for Turner Broadcasting System) and began broadcasting motion pictures and, in 1977, Atlanta Braves games all over the United States. This made WTBS the first superstation—a station that reached a large audience outside its home region. By 1978 WTBS reached more than 2 million homes.

Late in 1976 Turner bought 95 percent of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team, and he created Turner Enterprises to look after his land holdings. In addition, he announced he was going to sign the left fielder Gary Matthews to the Atlanta Braves, taking the player from the San Francisco Giants in violation of a rule against tampering with another team's personnel. Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn threatened to suspend Turner, and he spent much of baseball's winter meetings seemingly drunk out of his mind and threatening to kill Kuhn. Eventually, two of Turner's company officers had to drag Turner out of harm's way, and Kuhn suspended him for the entire 1977 season.

He took advantage of the time away from his baseball team by entering the 1977 America's Cup race. In a dramatic series of contests in mild weather, his outdated yacht Courageous defeated its competition with clever, bold tacking to win the right to defend the America's Cup against the world's challenger. In somewhat less calm weather, Turner and a crew comprising veterans in their fifties and young men won the America's Cup. Turner was too drunk to stand up during the victory celebration and was remembered for falling from his seat to the floor during presentations of the competition's awards.

Turner's greatest feat of sailing was probably in the August 1979 Fastnet race. This venerable competition required boats to sail 605 nautical miles from Plymouth, England, around Fastnet Rock near the coast of Ireland, and back to Plymouth. In 1979 a terrible storm hit; only 92 of the 302 boats that started finished the race. Twenty-two lives were lost, and many more were injured. Turner's attitude was one of win or die, and he kept his boat Tenacious at full sail even as other boats were flipped over by the gale-force winds. Tenacious itself seemed swamped at one time, but Turner refused to abandon ship. The Tenacious won one of the deadliest sailboat races in history.

Media Giant

In June 1980 Turner sold WRET for $20 million to help finance his latest idea, an all-news cable network. He launched the Cable News Network (CNN) to mostly negative press. Most journalists believed that no one wanted to watch news all day, a view with which the major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, agreed. Further, the prevailing view was that covering news for television required spending a huge amount of money that only the major networks could afford to spend. CNN originally included many long feature stories into its mix of news coverage, and it received some criticism for covering too much soft news—that is, news without much presentation of data. On January 1, 1982, Turner responded to this with CNN II, also called Headline News, which repeated the top stories of the day every half hour.

CNN did not make a profit until 1985, but by then it was evident that the bottom line did not motivate Turner as much as his unrelenting desire to be the first to do something. Nonetheless, wealth seemed to flow to him. In 1985 he launched CNN International, offering his broadcast services to cable and satellite television services around the world, and he founded a companion network, CNNRadio. In an effort to put some of his social ideas to work, he founded and funded the Better World Society, through which he advocated disarmament of nuclear weapons, environmental protection, and peaceful international relations. In that year his wife persuaded him to see psychiatrist Dr. Frank Pittman, who diagnosed Turner as having bipolar disorder and put Turner on heavy doses of lithium to try to control the disease. After several months Turner's colleagues noted improvement in his behavior, although Turner never completely let go of some of his wild impulses.

In 1986 CNN introduced flyaway dishes—satellite dishes that could be folded up for transport in aircraft or trucks and then set up anywhere—allowing CNN reporters to broadcast from anywhere in the world in real time, with no delays between when events occurred and when television viewers could see them. Turner tried to buy CBS, but CBS's management successfully fought him off with a harsh negative publicity campaign. On March 25, 1986, Turner gave up his effort to buy CBS and instead purchased MGM Entertainment Company, including United Artists (MGM/UA), from Kirk Kerkorian for $1.6 billion, acquiring 3,650 motion pictures, including popular classics such as Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane (Turner's favorite), and Casablanca. Lacking the financing to hold MGM/UA together, he retained all the rights to the motion pictures while selling everything else back to Kerkorian, losing $100 million on the deal and generating much negative press about the bad deal he had made. However, that year alone, he made $125 million in revenue from the old MGM motion pictures.

Next, hoping to buy the broadcasting rights to the 1988 Olympics, he approached the Soviet Union to become partners with WTBS in purchasing the world broadcasting rights. The Soviet Union turned down that offer but joined Turner in creating the Goodwill Games, an opportunity for the world's athletes to measure themselves against each other in a non-Olympic year. The first Goodwill Games were held in Moscow in 1986, and Turner lost $26 million on the venture.

In 1987 Turner began colorizing MGM black-and-white motion pictures, generating protests from film critics and filmmakers. Eventually, Turner made millions of dollars from colorizing old favorites such as Miracle on 34th Street, and he applied the technology to Gone with the Wind to bring back the vibrant colors that had faded on the original print. In 1988 he expanded his cable network empire by creating Turner Network Television, which quickly became a staple of cable offerings. That year he and his second wife divorced.

In 1989, as Communism waned, more than a million young Chinese filled Beijing's Tiananmen Square, calling for a democratic government. On May 20 that year the Chinese army, led by tanks, plowed into the square, killing thousands of young people. CNN covered the event live, showing everything exactly as it happened. It marked a revolutionary moment in broadcasting that not only made people immediately aware of faraway events but also made CNN indispensable for governments everywhere. Direct feeds were installed in government buildings and embassies. The CNN crew was even able to broadcast Chinese officials shutting down CNN's broadcasting site, up to the moment of ending transmission.

In 1990 the Goodwill Games were staged in Seattle, and Turner lost $44 million on them. In 1991 he was named Time magazine's Man of the Year for his influence on broadcast communications. He purchased the cartoon collection of Hanna-Barbera, consisting of more than 8,500 cartoons, and used them to help launch his Cartoon Network in 1992. In addition, he closed the Better World Society and created the Turner Family Foundation, which gave away $10 million in 1992. Amidst this flurry of activity, he started dating Jane Fonda in 1991 and married her on December 21, 1991.

Ted and Jane

Few relationships elicited more press coverage than the marriage of Turner and Fonda, two wounded but domineering personalities. Fonda found in Turner a man who paid attention to her, who gave her respect and romance. Turner thought Fonda cute and found in her an intelligence equal to his own—an irresistibly challenging woman. They attended Atlanta Braves games, giving photographers indelible images such as Turner asleep, head on Fonda's shoulder as his team rallied in the World Series, and Fonda doing the tomahawk chop during Braves rallies.

In 1993 Turner Broadcasting System bought Castle Rock Entertainment and New Line Cinema, expanding the company's motion picture holdings and its production capacity with new studios. In 1994 Turner founded the cable channel Turner Classic Movies, taking advantage of his huge film library. The Goodwill Games were held in St. Petersburg, Russia; Turner lost $40 million on them. By this time his attention was turning away from business toward social causes, particularly environmentalism.

By 1996 he owned more than one million acres of land in the United States and Argentina, becoming America's second largest landowner. In Montana he bought thousands of acres and started returning the land to the state it was in 200 years earlier, including introducing a herd of bison. In 1996 Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner, with Turner becoming vice chairman of the board of Time Warner, running all of the company's cable and production operations. He was the company's largest shareholder with 11 percent of its stock. He had long wished to found an all-sports network, and in late 1996 began CNNSI (combining CNN and Time Warner's publication, Sports Illustrated).

His fortune grew by $1 billion in nine months, and in accordance with his impulsive style, he pledged it to humanitarian services of the United Nations, at the rate of $100 million per year for ten years. On March 17, 1997, he launched CNN en Español, an all-Spanish cable channel. In 1999 Time Warner paid Turner $700,000 in salary and a $6.9 million bonus, as well as stock options.

Crash

Turner detested Christianity and often made fun of it, a result of witnessing the horribly agonizing death of one of his sisters when he was young. When Fonda became a born-again Christian in the late 1990s, Turner was outraged because they had never discussed her conversion before it happened; she had worried that the brilliantly persuasive Turner would talk her out of it. The couple divorced in 2001. On January 8, 2001, Turner and former United States Senator Sam Nunn launched the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization dedicated to lessening the dangers of nuclear and other weapons. That year Time Warner merged with AOL to become AOL Time Warner. AOL was in dire financial straits, costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Even after dropping AOL from the company's name, Turner saw his stock value drop $7 billion. In 2002 Turner helped organize the firing of the company's chairman, Steve Case, but he was not named to replace Case as he had hoped. In late January 2003 he resigned his vice chairmanship.

Sources for Further Information

Bibb, Porter, It Ain't as Easy as It Looks: Ted Turner's Amazing Story, New York: Crown, 1993.

Brands, H. W., Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J. P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, New York: Free Press, 1999.

Landrum, Gene N., Profiles of Genius: Thirteen Creative Men Who Changed the World, Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993.

—Kirk H. Beetz

For more information on Ted Turner, visit Britannica.com.

Ted Turner (born 1938), American television entrepreneur, was a pioneer in the field of cable television, establishing the first satellite superstation and the first all-news network. He already was worth more than $2 billion by 1996, when he merged his Turner Broadcasting Network with Time Warner to create the world's largest media company.

Born November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Robert Edward (Ted) Turner III was the oldest child of Ed and Florence Turner. When Turner was nine years old, his father, a native Southerner, moved the family to Savannah, Georgia, where he had bought an outdoor advertising company that was renamed the Turner Advertising Company. This business later launched the younger Turner's successful career as an innovative and risk-taking communications entrepreneur.

Raised by a harsh and domineering father, Turner was sent to military schools in Georgia and Tennessee. He wanted to go to the Naval Academy but he enrolled at Brown University where his father wanted him to study business. The rebellious Turner majored in classics, though he later switched to economics. Although excelling in debating and sailing, he was expelled from the college for entertaining a woman in his dormitory room, which was against college regulations.

In 1960, after a stint with the Coast Guard, Turner began working for his father as a general manager for the advertising company's branch in Macon, Georgia. The senior Turner, unable to face possible financial collapse after developing a successful business, committed suicide on March 5, 1963. At age 24, Turner inherited a struggling company, and with some bold financial maneuvers he aggressively reversed its sagging fortunes, developing the confidence and resources for his growing ambition.

Cable Television Pioneer

In 1970 Turner took his first step into the television industry. He acquired an independent Atlanta UHF station, Channel 17, that was losing about half a million dollars a year. Relying on a combination of programming, local sports, old movies, and such popular network re-runs as Star Trek, Turner achieved a significant 16 percent share of the television market while the station became profitable.

In 1975 the launching of an RCA satellite opened the way for rapid changes in the burgeoning cable television industry. Following the lead of Home Box Office, Turner quickly capitalized on the new potential. He built a $750, 000 transmission antenna and on December 27, 1976, began beaming a signal which could be received and re-broadcast by cable operators across the nation. He had created the country's first "superstation, " WTBS. The super-station audience grew as more and more homes were wired to receive cable. From 1978 to 1986 the number of families watching WTBS jumped from two million to 36 million, and the station was earning Turner Broadcasting $70 million a year, which provided the foundation for Turner's other investment ventures.

Turner maintained his successful UHF formula for programming on the new superstation. Again, popular network re-runs, movies, and sports provided the major viewing fare. As a way of ensuring a steady diet of sports programming, Turner, in 1976, became owner of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, whose games were seen nationally. He dubbed the Braves "America's Team" despite a losing record. (The team finally were World Champions in 1995). Turner in 1996 also purchased the Atlanta Hawks professional basketball team.

Not satisfied with a profitable superstation, Turner in June 1980 created at enormous cost the Cable News Network (CNN), the country's first 24-hour all-news station. An experiment that was expected to fail by most media experts, CNN was both entrenched and showing a profit by 1986. In 1982 Turner inaugurated a second news channel, Headline News Network, which provided continuous half-hour summaries of events.

Buys MGM's Movie Library

A calculating and visionary entrepreneur who regarded himself as an underdog battling the media giants, Turner desired a foothold among the networks. In 1985 he made an unsuccessful effort to seize control of the CBS corporation. In the wake of that failure, he set his sights on acquiring the Metro-Golden-Mayer/United Artists company in order to obtain direct access to its vast film library, a necessary and increasingly expensive component of his superstation programming.

The $1.6 billion deal was completed in March 1986, with Turner getting control of MGM's film library. Insiders speculated that the purchase price was inflated. Moreover, Turner had to be bailed out by a cable television consortium to avoid bankruptcy after the MGM purchase - thus risking the loss of his personal control of Turner Broadcasting. Having ignored the advice of his financial advisers and industry analysts in the past, Turner expected to survive the gamble. By the time of the merger with Time Warner in 1995, the acquisition looked like a stroke of genius.

Merges Turner Broadcasting with Time Warner

In 1995, Turner agreed to sell Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner for $7.5 billion. The merger went into effect in October 1996 following approval by the Federal Trade Commission and the shareholders of the two companies. As vice chairman of Time Warner, Turner reported to that company's CEO, Gerald Levin. Turner assumed responsibility for running the merged company's cable networks, including Time Warner's Home Box Office (HBO) and TBS's Cable New Network (CNN), Cartoon Network, and Turner Classic Movies.

When the deal was announced, many asked how Tuner, who had been his own boss for 35 years could go and work for somebody else. His salary reportedly was $25 million over five years. Perhaps more important, he also became the largest shareholder in Time-Warner, then the world's largest media company, with more than $20 billion in annual revenues from cable television, films, books, magazines, music, and the Internet.

The merger set up a titanic brawl between Turner and another media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. The fireworks began in the fall of 1996 when Turner convinced Levin not to carry Murdoch's fledgling Fox News Service. In approving its merger with TBS, the FTC had ordered Time Warner to offer its millions of subscribers another 24 hour news service in addition to CNN. Instead of Fox News, Time Warner aired MSNBC, a joint venture between Microsoft and General Electric's NBC, whose softer format posed less of a competitive threat to CNN.

The refusal to carry Fox News meant that it would not be seen in New York City, where Time Warner enjoyed a near-monopoly with 1.1 million cable subscribers. Murdoch's news station thus would be invisible to the Madison Avenue advertising agencies and media chieftains whose decisions are worth millions to a cable network. To get around Time-Warner's lock on cable systems, Murdoch announced plans to invest $1 billion in a satellite TV service called Sky, which would offer both cable TV and local broadcast programming.

Time-Warner's decision was followed by a war of words and dirty tricks not seen since the days of William Randolph Hearst. When Murdoch retaliated by canceling plans to carry a Time Warner-owned entertainment channel, Turner immediately likened Murdoch to Nazi leader Adolph Hitler. Later he called Murdoch a "scumbag." Murdoch's New York Post yanked Turner's CNN from its television listings. The Post also dredged up the radical-chic past of "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, Turner's third wife. And it speculated publicly about whether Turner, reportedly a manic-depressive, was neglecting to take his lithium. Perhaps not entirely factitiously, Turner in September 1997 suggested that he and Murdoch settle their highly publicized feud with a boxing match. "It would be like Rocky, only for old guys, " said Turner.

Sports Influence Multiplied Dramatically

In his earlier years, Turner personally participated in international sports competition. Having received the Yachtsman of the Year award an unprecedented three times, he was the winning skipper of the America's Cup race in 1977. Within a few years of purchasing the Atlanta Braves, Turner and TBN were involved in practically every major professional sport. In July 1986 Turner's superstation carried the Goodwill Games, held in Moscow, which featured athletic competition between U.S. and Soviet athletes. In a joint effort with the Soviet Union, Turner he organized and promoted the Olympics-like event. A second competition was held in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. Although the two events lost $66 million, Turner hoped they would foster better relations between the two countries. For his contributions to international broadcasting, Time magazine named him "Man of the Year" in 1991.

By the late 1990s, Ted Turner was worth more than $2 billion; the largest private landowner in the U.S., he divided his days between luxurious homes in six states. A flamboyant and shrewd businessman, he was also a celebrity who worked and lived in the fast lane. In December 1991, Turner married Jane Fonda, movie star and liberal activist. Two previous marriages had produced five children, who sit with Turner and Fonda on the board of the charitable Turner Foundation.

In the highly publicized relationship with Fonda, Turner apparently abandoned the philandering that had plagued his earlier marriages and sought to remake himself as a devoted, loving husband. Fonda, for her part, retired from the screen and folded Fonda Films, her independent production company. While both remained workaholics, they seemed to take genuine pleasure in their times together.

In September 1997, Turner literally stunned the world when he pledged $1 billion to the good-works program of the United Nations. Established programs such as feeding children, helping refugees and the poor, and removing land mines would benefit from his donation. (He has promised to give $100 million a year for a decade to U.N. programs.) After making the largest single pledge in philanthropic history, Turner challenged other wealthy citizens by declaring, "I'm putting every rich person in the world on notice."

Further Reading

Ted Turner is the subject of a biography, Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way: The Story of Ted Turner, by Christian Williams (1981). He was the subject of several long magazine profiles, including Newsweek (June 16, 1980), Time (August 9, 1982), and Fortune (July 7, 1986). Turner collaborated with Gary Jobson on a book about sailing, The Racing Edge (1979). He also signed a contract with Simon and Schuster for an autobiography.

See also Bibb, Porter, It Ain't As Easy As It Looks: The Story of Ted Turner & CNN (1993). Goldberg, Robert and Gerald J. Goldberg, Citizen Turner (1995). Painton, Priscilla, "The Taming of Ted Turner, " Time (January 6, 1992). Andrews, Suzanna, "Ted Turner among the Suits, " New York (December 9, 1996). Conant, Jennet, "Married … With Buffalo, " Vanity Fair (April 1997) [discusses marriage and relationship between Turner and Jane Fonda]. Masters, Kim and Bryan Burrough, "Cable Guys, " Vanity Fair (January 1997). See also Newsweek, September 29, 1997.

Quotes:

"I've never run into a guy who could win at the top level in anything today and didn't have the right attitude, didn't give it everything he had, at least while he was doing it; wasn't prepared and didn't have the whole program worked out."

"If only I had a little humility, I'd be perfect."

"Lead, follow, or get out of the way."

"All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it."

For other persons named Ted Turner, see Ted Turner (disambiguation).

Ted Turner
Turner in 2007.
Born	Robert Edward Turner III November 19, 1938 (1938-11-19) (age 71) Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Media tycoon
Net worth	▬ $2.3 billion[1]
Known for	Television, Ted's Montana Grill, former owner of the Atlanta Braves, philanthropy
Spouse(s)	Julia Gale Nye (1960–1964) Jane Shirley Smith (1965–1988) Jane Fonda (1991–2001)
Children	Laura Lee, Robert Edward IV, Rhett, Beauregard, Jennie

Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III (born November 19, 1938)^[2] is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable television network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television. As a philanthropist, he is known for his $1 billion gift to support UN causes, which created the United Nations Foundation, a public charity to broaden support for the UN. Turner serves as Chairman of the United Nations Foundation board of directors.^[3]

Turner's media empire began with his father's billboard business, which he took over at 24 after his father's suicide.^[4] The business, Turner Outdoor Advertising, was worth $1 million when Turner took it over in 1963. Purchase of an Atlanta UHF station in 1970 began the Turner Broadcasting System. Cable News Network revolutionized news media, covering the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 and the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Turner turned the Atlanta Braves baseball team into a nationally popular franchise and launched the charitable Goodwill Games.

Turner's penchant for controversial statements earned him the nickname "The Mouth of the South".^[5]

In addition to donations, Turner has devoted his assets to environmentalism and capitalism. He owns more land than any other American^[6] and uses much of it for ranches to re-popularize bison meat (for his Ted's Montana Grill chain), amassing the largest herd in the world. He also created the environmental animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Turner was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame on April 26, 2007.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Sailing 3 Recent Controversies 4 Business activities 4.1 WTBS 4.2 CNN 4.3 MGM/UA 4.4 TNT 4.5 Turner Entertainment 4.6 Turner Foundation 4.7 MIBC 4.8 Time Warner merger 5 Achievements 6 Politics 7 Views on the shifting media landscape 8 Books 9 Personal life 10 See also 11 References 11.1 Further reading 11.2 External links

Early life

Turner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Florence (née Rooney) and Robert Edward Turner II, a billboard magnate.^[7] When he was nine, his family moved to Savannah, Georgia. He attended The McCallie School, a private, boys' preparatory school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Turner attended Brown University and was vice-president of the Brown Debating Union. He became a member of Kappa Sigma. Turner initially majored in Classics. Turner's father wrote saying that his choice made him "appalled, even horrified," and that he "almost puked."^[8] Turner later changed his major to Economics, but he was expelled before receiving a diploma for having a female student in his dormitory room.^[9]

Sailing

Turner entered sailing competitions when he was 11, at the Savannah Yacht Club, and competed in Olympic trials in 1964. In 1977, he successfully defended the America's Cup for the United States as skipper of the yacht Courageous. In the 1979 Fastnet race, in a storm that killed participants, he skippered Tenacious to a corrected-time victory. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated on 4 July 1977 after winning the qualifying to lead the 1977 America's Cup defense and he was inducted into the America's Cup Hall of Fame in 1993.

Recent Controversies

Turner once called observers of Ash Wednesday "Jesus freaks", though he apologized,^[10] and dubbed pro-choice opponents "bozos."^[10]

In 2008, Turner explained he not only regretted these statements but said he had made peace with organized religion and had joined with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and the United Methodist Church to fight malaria.^[11]

Turner caused a stir in Montana in 2003 by funding a project to restore westslope cutthroat trout to Cherry Creek and Cherry Lake. The controversy stemmed from the poison antimycin used to kill fish in the stream.^[12]

In 2008, Turner also received attention when he asserted on PBS's Charlie Rose television program that if steps aren't taken to address global warming, "Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals." Turner also said he advocated drastically cutting the U.S. military budget and Americans having no more than 2 children in the interview.^[13]

Business activities

WTBS

After leaving Brown University, Turner returned to the South in late 1960 to become general manager of the Macon, Georgia branch of his father's business. Following his father's March 1963 suicide, Turner became president and chief executive of Turner Advertising Company when he was 24^[4] and turned the firm into a global enterprise. He joined the Young Republicans but said "he felt at ease among these budding conservatives and was merely following in Ed Turner's far-right footsteps," according to "It Ain't As Easy As It Looks."

During the Vietnam War Era, Turner’s business, which “had virtual monopolies in Savannah, Macon, Columbus, and Charleston” and was “the largest outdoor advertising company in the Southeast,” according to "It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks", prospered. The book observed that Turner “discovered his father had sheltered a substantial amount of taxable income over the years by personally lending it back to the company” and “discovered that the billboard business could be a gold mine, a tax-depreciable revenue stream that threw off enormous amounts of cash with almost no capital investment.” In the late 1960s, Turner used the profits to buy Southern radio and TV stations.

In 1975, after the FCC allowed Turner’s WTCG-TV-Channel 17 in Atlanta to use a satellite on December 27, 1976 to broadcast old movies, situation comedy reruns, cartoons, and sport nationwide to cable-TV subscribers, WTCG-TV Super-Station (later WTBS) was reaching two million subscribers and Turner was worth $100 million. He bought a 5,000-acre (20 km²) plantation in Jacksonboro, South Carolina for $2 million.

As cable systems developed, many carried his stations to free their schedules. This increased his viewers and advertising. He bought the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks in 1976 partially to provide programming for WTBS. For most of his first decade as owner of the Braves, Turner was a very hands-on owner. In 1977, he sent manager Dave Bristol on a "scouting trip" so he could manage the team himself. However, he only ran the team for one game (a loss) before National League president Chub Feeney told him that managers are not allowed to own financial interest in their club. He said, "Managing isn't that difficult; you just have to score more runs than the other guy". However, in the mid-1980s Turner began leaving day-to-day operations in the hands of the baseball operations staff.

Turner made the Braves a household name even before their run of success in the 1990s and early 2000s. He used WTBS' superstation status to beam Braves games into nearly every home in North America. At one point, he suggested to pitcher Andy Messersmith who wore number 17, that he change his surname to "Channel" to promote the television station. However, that didn't last long, as Feeney ordered him to scrap the promotion.

Turner Field, first used for the 1996 Summer Olympics as Centennial Olympic Stadium and then converted into a baseball-only facility for the Braves, is named after him.

Turner founded the Goodwill Games in 1986.

CNN

Turner created CNN in 1980. He said: "We won't be signing off until the world ends. We'll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event... and when the end of the world comes, we'll play 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' before we sign off."

After five years, CNN outgrew its home, a former country club on the outskirts of Midtown, Atlanta. Turner purchased the Omni International from developer Tom Cousins and moved CNN there. The complex was rechristened the CNN Center. As Omni International, the complex had never succeeded. Cousins sold it to Turner along with the Atlanta Hawks. CNN moved into the end of the tower that once housed The World of Sid and Marty Krofft. Turner was instrumental in the revival of Atlanta's downtown.

In 1984, Turner launched Cable Music Channel, competition to MTV. The channel was short-lived, but helped mold and launch the original but now changed format of VH1.

MGM/UA

After a failed attempt to acquire CBS, Turner purchased the film studio MGM/UA Entertainment Co. from Kirk Kerkorian in 1986 for $1.5 billion. Following the acquisition, Turner had an enormous debt and sold parts of the acquisition. MGM/UA Entertainment was sold back to Kirk Kerkorian. The MGM/UA Studio lot in Culver City was sold to Lorimar/Telepictures. Turner kept MGM/UA's pre-1986 and pre-merger film and TV library, which included nearly all of MGM/UA's material made before the merger, and a small portion of United Artists' film and TV properties (which included few UA pictures, the TV series Gilligan's Island, the RKO Radio Pictures library, and the pre-1950^[14][15] Warner Bros. library that was once the property of Associated Artists Productions, which merged with UA Television in 1958).

TNT

Turner used these to add cable channels. In 1988, he introduced Turner Network Television (TNT) with Gone with the Wind. TNT, initially older movies and television shows, added original programs and newer reruns. Since launch in 1994, Turner Classic Movies broadcast the older Warner Bros, RKO, and MGM libraries. TNT used World Championship Wrestling (WCW) to attract a broader audience.

In 1992, the MGM library, which included Warner Brothers properties including the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies libraries, became the core of Cartoon Network. Turner's companies purchased Hanna-Barbera Productions, adding additional content. With the 1996 Time Warner merger, the channel's archives gained the post-1948 Warner Bros. cartoon library.

In the mid-1980s, Turner became a force for the colorization of black and white films. In 1985, the film Yankee Doodle Dandy became the first black and white movie redistributed in color after computer coloring. Despite opposition by film aficionados, stars, and directors, the movie won over a section of the public,^[16] and Turner colorized a majority of films that he had owned. However, in the mid-1990s, the cost led Turner to abandon the idea. In contrast with TNT, TCM has shown the unaltered versions of films.

Turner Entertainment

Turner Entertainment Co. was established in August 1986 to oversee film properties owned by Ted Turner. In 1988, Turner purchased Jim Crockett Promotions which he renamed World Championship Wrestling (WCW) which became the main competitor to Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (WWF). In 2001, under AOL Time Warner, it was sold to the World Wrestling Federation. Turner has always been fond of professional wrestling.

In 1989, Turner created the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for fiction offering positive solutions to global problems. The winner, from 2500 entries worldwide, was Daniel Quinn's Ishmael.

Turner Foundation

In 1990, he created the Turner Foundation, which focuses on philanthropic grants in environment and population. In the same year he created Captain Planet, an environmental superhero. Turner produced two TV series with him as featured character. Turner appeared in the Gettysburg as Colonel Waller T. Patton in 1993 and reprised the role in the 2003 prequel Gods and Generals; he produced both films.

MIBC

In 1993 Turner and Russian journalist Eduard Sagalajev founded The Moscow Independent Broadcasting Corporation. This corporation operated the sixth frequency in Russian television and founded the Russian channel TV-6. The company was later purchased by Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky and an unknown group of private persons. In 2007 the license for TV-6 had expired and there was no application for renewal.

Time Warner merger

Turner Broadcasting System, Inc merged with Time Warner, Inc. on October 10, 1996, with Turner as vice chairman and head of Time Warner's cable networks division. On January 11, 2001 Time Warner merged with AOL as AOL Time Warner. The company has since dropped "AOL" from its name. As of December 2009, AOL has been divorced from the company entirely.

Turner was vice-chairman and Time Warner's biggest stock holder. It is estimated he lost as much as $7 billion when the stock collapsed in the wake of the merger. He stepped down as vice chairman in 2006. Asked about buying back his former assets, he replies that he can't afford them now.^[17]

Achievements

In 1991, Turner became the first media figure to be named Time magazine's Man of the Year.

He is America's largest private landowner, owning approximately two million acres (8,000 km²), greater than the land areas of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. According to documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, Turner's land has a higher gross domestic product than Belize. He has the largest private bison herd, with 50,000 head. In 2002, Turner co-founded Ted's Montana Grill, a burger restaurant chain specializing in bison meat.^[18]

Under his ownership, World Championship Wrestling became the only federation to outrate and outsell the McMahon family and their World Wrestling Federation. This event brought about a rise in popularity to professional wrestling and is now known as the Monday Night Wars. WCW television ratings were also heavily competing with ABC's Monday Night Football.

After the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics, Turner founded the Goodwill Games as a statement for peace through sports.

In 1990, the American Humanist Association named Turner the Humanist of the Year.

In 1998, Turner pledged to donate $1 billion of his then $3 billion to United Nations causes, and created the United Nations Foundation to administer the gift. The foundation "builds and implements public-private partnerships to address the world’s most pressing problems, and broadens support for the UN through advocacy and public outreach." In 2006, the foundation delivered its billionth dollar to UN causes — $600m of which came from Turner and $400m from public and private partners. Turner has pledged to use the remaining $400m of his commitment to leverage additional funds for UN causes and activities.

Turner served in the United States Coast Guard. He is also a recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism.

In 2006 Turner received the Bower Award for Business Leadership from The Franklin Institute.^[19]

Politics

On 19 September 2006, Turner said in a Reuters Newsmaker conference, of 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." He facetiously advocated banning men from public office: "Men should be barred from public office for 100 years in every part of the world... The men have had millions of years where we've been running things. We've screwed it up hopelessly. Let's give it to the women."^[20]

A proponent of Obama’s healthcare bill, Turner has said: “We’re the only first world country that doesn’t have universal healthcare and it’s a disgrace.”^[21]

Views on the shifting media landscape

Turner claims to have predicted the demise of newspapers 30 years ago and has called print journalism “an obsolete way of distributing information.”^[21]

Books

In 2008, Turner wrote Call Me Ted, which documents his career and personal life.

Personal life

Turner married twice before marrying and divorcing Jane Fonda (1991 to 2001). His first marriage to Judy Nye lasted 1960 to 1964. His second, to Jane Shirley Smith, lasted over 22 years (1965 to 1988). He has five children.^[22] His main home is the Flying D Ranch, outside Bozeman, Montana.

Through Turner Enterprises, he owns 15 ranches in Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.^[23] Totaling 1,910,000 acres (7,700 km²), his US land-holdings make Turner the largest individual landowner in North America (by acres).,^[23] According to his Ted's Montana Grill website, "Turner Enterprises' mission is to manage Turner lands in an economically sustainable and ecologically sensitive manner, while conserving native species."

Turner's biggest ranch is Vermejo Park Ranch in New Mexico, at 920 square miles (2,400 km²), it is the largest privately owned, contiguous tract of land in the United States.^[24]

Turner sponsors the Public forum debate of the National Forensic League. Every year, he speaks at the National Forensic League's National Speech and Debate Tournament.

See also

• Douglas Tompkins, who likewise owns two million acres (8,000 km²) of land
• Diane Meyer Simon environmentalist

References

1. ^ "The Forbes 400 - #190 "Robert E "Ted" Turner". Forbes. 2008-09-17. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/54/400list08_Robert-E-Ted-Turner_ETX7.html. Retrieved 2008-10-11. 
2. ^ Ted Turner - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
3. ^ UN Foundation, additional text.
4. ^ ^{a b} Porter Bibb (1996). Ted Turner: It Ain't As Easy as It Looks: The Amazing Story of CNN. Virgin Books. pp. 55–56. ISBN 0-86369-892-1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/155566203X/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-4443697-6472033#reader-link. 
5. ^ Porter Bibb (1996). Ted Turner: It Ain't As Easy as It Looks: The Amazing Story of CNN. Virgin Books. pp. 138, 272, 283, 442. ISBN 0-86369-892-1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/155566203X/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-4443697-6472033#reader-link. 
6. ^ "Turner becomes largest private landowner in US - Americas, World". The Independent. 2007-12-01. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/turner-becomes-largest-private-landowner-in-us-761711.html. Retrieved 2009-03-29. 
7. ^ Ted Turner Biography (1938-)
8. ^ http://www.bu.edu/arion/Volume1/1.1/Autolycus.pdf
9. ^ Porter Bibb (1996). Ted Turner: It Ain't As Easy as It Looks: The Amazing Story of CNN. Virgin Books. pp. 26–33. ISBN 0-86369-892-1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/155566203X/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-4443697-6472033#reader-link. 
10. ^ ^{a b} Jim Rutenberg (March 19, 2001). "MediaTalk; AOL Sees a Different Side of Time Warner". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0DEFDA133DF93AA25750C0A9679C8B63. 
11. ^ "Ted Turner uses churches for malaria campaign". Spero News. 2008-04-06. http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=14937. 
12. ^ Scott McMillion (2003-08-05). "Poisoning begins on Cherry Creek". Bozeman Daily Chronicle. http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2003/08/05/news/003cherryckbzbigs.txt. 
13. ^ Mike Morris (2008-04-03). "Ted Turner: Global warming could lead to cannibalism". Atlanta Journal-Constitution. http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/news/stories/2008/04/03/turner_0404.html. 
14. ^ You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story (2008), p. 255.
15. ^ WB retained a pair of features from 1949 that they merely distributed, and all short subjects released on or after September 1, 1948; in addition to all cartoons released in August 1948.
16. ^ "Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) - Trivia". Imdb.com. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035575/trivia. Retrieved 2009-03-29. 
17. ^ Turner To Leave Time Warner February 25, 2006 - washingtonpost.com
18. ^ "Ted's Montana Grill". Tedsmontanagrill.com. http://www.tedsmontanagrill.com/menu.html. Retrieved 2009-03-29. 
19. ^ "R.E. (Ted) Turner - The Franklin Institute Awards - Laureate Database". The Franklin Institute. 2006. http://www.fi.edu/winners/2006/turner_ted.faw?winner_id=4379. Retrieved 2008-08-05. 
20. ^ Reuters News Service, September 20, 2006.
21. ^ ^{a b} "Working Lunch 1: In Conversation with Ted Turner." Global Creative Leadership Summit, September 2009.
22. ^ A Conversation With Ted Turner, at time 48:40. Retrieved April 6, 2008.
23. ^ ^{a b} "Ranches". Ted Turner. http://www.tedturner.com/enterprises/ranches_Template.asp?page=ranches_faq.html. Retrieved 2009-03-29. 
24. ^ STATE, VERMEJO PARK RANCH ENTER INTO AGREEMENT REGARDING ABANDONED MINE RECLAMATION allbusiness.com - April 14, 2006

Further reading

• Call Me Ted by Ted Turner and Bill Burke (Grand Central Publishing, 2008) ISBN 978-0-44658-189-9
• Racing Edge by Ted Turner (Simon & Schuster, 1979) ISBN 0-671-24419-1
• Biographies:
  • Media Man: Ted Turner's Improbable Empire by Ken Auletta (W. W. Norton, 2004) ISBN 0-393-05168-4
  • Clash of the Titans: How the Unbridled Ambition of Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch Has Created Global Empires that Control What We Read and Watch Each Day by Richard Hack (New Millennium Press, 2003) ISBN 1-893224-60-0
  • Me and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN by Reese Schonfeld (HarperBusiness, 2001) 0060197463
  • Ted Turner Speaks: Insights from the World's Greatest Maverick by Janet Lowe (Wiley, 1999) ISBN 0-471-34563-6
  • Riding A White Horse: Ted Turner's Goodwill Games and Other Crusades by Althea Carlson (Episcopal Press, 1998) ISBN 0-9663743-0-4
  • Porter Bibb (1996). Ted Turner: It Ain't As Easy as It Looks: The Amazing Story of CNN. Virgin Books. ISBN 0-86369-892-1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/155566203X/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-4443697-6472033#reader-link. 
  • Citizen Turner: The Wild Rise of an American Tycoon by Robert Goldberg and Gerald Jay Goldberg (Harcourt, 1995) ISBN 0-15-118008-3
  • CNN: The Inside Story: How a Band of Mavericks Changed the Face of Television News by Hank Whittemore (Little Brown & Co, 1990) ISBN 0-316-93761-4
  • Lead Follow or Get Out of the Way: The Story of Ted Turner by Christian Williams (Times Books, 1981) ISBN 0-8129-1004-4
  • Atlanta Rising: The Invention of an International City 1946–1996 by Frederick Allen (Longstreet Press, 1996) ISBN 1-56352-296-9

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ted Turner

• Official website
• Turner Foundation
• Ted Turner at the Internet Movie Database
• Ted Turner on AskMen.com
• Ted Turner speaks at The Global Philanthropy
• The Independent: "Turner becomes largest private landowner in US"
• The United Nations Foundation
• Sports Illustrated cover featuring Ted Turner
• [1] Ted Turner Reflects on the Time Warner/AOL Merger at Fora.Tv

Preceded by Dave Bristol	Atlanta Braves Manager one game in 1977	Succeeded by Dave Bristol
Preceded by Bill Bartholomay	Atlanta Braves President 1976-1986	Succeeded by Stan Kasten

v • d • e Time Warner Inc. Board of directors Herbert Allison · Jim Barksdale · Stephen Bollenbach · Jeffrey Bewkes · Frank Caufield · Robert Clark · Mathias Döpfner · Jessica Einhorn · Reuben Mark · Michael Miles · Ken Novack · Richard Parsons · Deborah Wright Home Box Office HBO (Multiplex) · HBO Films · Cinemax (Multiplex) · Warner Channel (with Warner Bros.) Time Inc. All You · Coastal Living · Cooking Light · Entertainment Weekly · Essence · Fortune · Golf · Health · InStyle · Life.com · Money · People · People en Español · People StyleWatch · Real Simple · Southern Living · Sports Illustrated · Sports Illustrated Kids · Sunset · Time · Time for Kids · This Old House IPC Media Amateur Gardening · Amateur Photographer · Chat · Country Homes & Interiors · Country Life · Cycling Weekly · Decanter  · Hi-Fi News · Horse & Hound · Ideal Home · InStyle · Livingetc · Loaded · Marie Claire (UK)  · NME · Now · Nuts · Pick Me Up · Rugby World · Shooting Times · Soaplife · Superbike · The Field · The Railway Magazine · Shooting Gazette · TV & Satellite Week  · TV easy · TVTimes · Uncut · Wallpaper · Webuser · What's on TV · Woman · Woman's Own · Woman's Weekly · World Soccer Turner Broadcasting Related articles Warner Bros. Related articles Annual Revenue: $43.6 billion USD (▲4% FY 2005) · Employees: 87,850 (▲2,950 FY 2005) · Stock Symbol: NYSE: TWX · Website: timewarner.com

v • d • e Atlanta Braves Formerly the Boston Red Stockings, Boston Red Caps, Boston Beaneaters, Boston Doves, Boston Rustlers, Boston Bees, Boston Braves and the Milwaukee Braves · Based in Atlanta, Georgia The Franchise History · Records · Seasons · Managers · Opening Day starting pitchers · Broadcasters · Atlanta Braves Radio Network Ballparks South End Grounds · Congress Street Grounds · South End Grounds · Fenway Park · Braves Field · Milwaukee County Stadium · Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium · Turner Field Spring Training: St. Petersburg Athletic Park · McKechnie Field · Municipal Stadium · Champion Stadium Culture Chief Noc-A-Homa · Homer · Rally · Braves TBS Baseball · Tomahawk Buzzcut · Tomahawk Chop · Continental League · The Slide Rivalries New York Mets · Philadelphia Phillies Important Figures Hank Aaron · Bobby Cox · Tom Glavine · Greg Maddux · Eddie Mathews · Leo Mazzone · Dale Murphy · Phil Niekro · Johnny Sain · John Smoltz · Warren Spahn · Chipper Jones · Andruw Jones · Ted Turner · Stan Kasten · Skip Caray · Rabbit Maranville · Johnny Evers · Frank Selee · Kid Nichols · Hugh Duffy · Fred Tenney · Billy Hamilton · Julio Franco · Mark Wohlers · John Rocker · Jeff Blauser · Steve Avery · Terry Pendleton Retired Numbers 3 · 21 · 31 · 35 · 41 · 42 · 44 Key Personnel Owner: John C. Malone (Liberty Media) · General Manager: Frank Wren · Club President: John Schuerholz · Manager: Bobby Cox World Series Championships (3) 1914 · 1957 · 1995 National League Championships (17) 1877 · 1878 · 1883 · 1891 · 1892 · 1893 · 1897 · 1898 · 1914 · 1948 · 1957 · 1958 · 1991 · 1992 · 1995 · 1996 · 1999 National Association Championships (4) 1872 · 1873 · 1874 · 1875 Minor League Affiliates AAA: Gwinnett Braves · AA: Mississippi Braves · A: Myrtle Beach Pelicans · Rome Braves · Rookie: Danville Braves · Gulf Coast League Braves · DSL Braves Other Assets SportSouth · TBS   Seasons (140) 1870s 1870 • 1871 • 1872 • 1873 • 1874 • 1875 • 1876 • 1877 • 1878 • 1879 1880s 1880 • 1881 • 1882 • 1883 • 1884 • 1885 • 1886 • 1887 • 1888 • 1889 1890s 1890 • 1891 • 1892 • 1893 • 1894 • 1895 • 1896 • 1897 • 1898 • 1899 1900s 1900 • 1901 • 1902 • 1903 • 1904 • 1905 • 1906 • 1907 • 1908 • 1909 1910s 1910 • 1911 • 1912 • 1913 • 1914 • 1915 • 1916 • 1917 • 1918 • 1919 1920s 1920 • 1921 • 1922 • 1923 • 1924 • 1925 • 1926 • 1927 • 1928 • 1929 1930s 1930 • 1931 • 1932 • 1933 • 1934 • 1935 • 1936 • 1937 • 1938 • 1939 1940s 1940 • 1941 • 1942 • 1943 • 1944 • 1945 • 1946 • 1947 • 1948 • 1949 1950s 1950 • 1951 • 1952 • 1953 • 1954 • 1955 • 1956 • 1957 • 1958 • 1959 1960s 1960 • 1961 • 1962 • 1963 • 1964 • 1965 • 1966 • 1967 • 1968 • 1969 1970s 1970 • 1971 • 1972 • 1973 • 1974 • 1975 • 1976 • 1977 • 1978 • 1979 1980s 1980 • 1981 • 1982 • 1983 • 1984 • 1985 • 1986 • 1987 • 1988 • 1989 1990s 1990 • 1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999 2000s 2000 • 2001 • 2002 • 2003 • 2004 • 2005 • 2006 • 2007 • 2008 • 2009 2010s 2010

v • d • e Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves managers Boston Red Stockings (1871–1882) Wright · Morrill Boston Beaneaters (1883–1906) Burdock · Morrill · Kelly · Morrill · Hart · Selee · Buckenberger · Tenney Boston Doves (1907–1910) Tenney · Kelley · Smith · Bowerman · Lake Boston Rustlers (1911) Tenney Boston Braves (1912–1935) Kling · Stallings · Mitchell · Bancroft · Slattery · Hornsby · Fuchs · McKechnie Boston Bees (1936–1940) McKechnie · Stengel Boston Braves (1941–1952) Stengel · Coleman · Bissonette · Southworth · Cooney · Southworth · Holmes · Grimm Milwaukee Braves (1953–1965) Grimm · Haney · Dressen · Tebbetts · Bragan Atlanta Braves (1966–present) Bragan · Hitchcock · Silvestri · Harris · Mathews · King · Ryan · Bristol · Turner · Benson · Bristol · Cox · Torre · Haas · Wine · Tanner · Nixon · Cox

v • d • e Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves Presidents Atlanta Braves (1966–present) McHale • Bartholomay • Turner • Kasten • McGuirk • Schuerholz

v • d • e Principal owners of the Atlanta Braves franchise Boston Red Stockings/Red Caps/Beaneaters/Doves/ Rustlers/Bees/Braves (1871-1952) Ivers Whitney Adams • John Conkey • Charles Porter • Nicholas Apollonio • Arthur Soden • George & John Dovey • John Dovey • William Hepburn Russell • James Gaffney • John Montgomery Ward & James Gaffney • James Gaffney • Percy Haughton • George W. Grant • Emil Fuchs • Bob Quinn • Lou Perini Milwaukee Braves (1953-1965) Lou Perini • William Bartholomay Atlanta Braves (1966-present) William Bartholomay • Ted Turner • Turner Broadcasting • Time Warner • Liberty Media

v • d • e Time Men of the Year / Time Persons of the Year Jimmy Carter (1976) · Anwar Sadat (1977) · Deng Xiaoping (1978) · Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) · Ronald Reagan (1980) · Lech Wałęsa (1981) · The Computer (1982) · Ronald Reagan / Yuri Andropov (1983) · Peter Ueberroth (1984) · Deng Xiaoping (1985) · Corazon Aquino (1986) · Mikhail Gorbachev (1987) · The Endangered Earth (1988) · Mikhail Gorbachev (1989) · George H. W. Bush (1990) · Ted Turner (1991) · Bill Clinton (1992) · “The Peacemakers”: Yasser Arafat / F.W. de Klerk / Nelson Mandela / Yitzhak Rabin (1993) · Pope John Paul II (1994) · Newt Gingrich (1995) · David Ho (1996) · Andrew Grove (1997) · Bill Clinton / Kenneth Starr (1998) “Persons”: Jeffrey P. Bezos (1999) · George W. Bush (2000) Complete roster · 1927–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present

Persondata
NAME	Turner III, Robert Edward
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Ted Turner
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American media mogul, philanthropist, founder of TBS and CNN
DATE OF BIRTH	November 19, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH	Cincinnati, Ohio
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)