Ted Turner

Robert Edward Turner III was born on November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Florence (née Rooney) and Robert Edward Turner Jr., who ran a billboard advertising business. When Ted was nine, the family moved to Savannah, Georgia, with his younger sister Mary Jean, so his father could grow the business there. He was raised Episcopalian. Mary Jean predeceased him, and Turner rejected religion for many years following her death.

At 12 Turner was sent to board at the McCallie School, an all-boys preparatory school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and he kept close ties to the school all his life. He then attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was vice-president of the Brown Debating Union, captain of the sailing team and a member of Kappa Sigma. He first majored in classics, which horrified his father, then switched to economics, but was expelled before receiving a degree. Brown gave him an honorary degree in November 1989. To meet his national service obligation he joined the United States Coast Guard Reserve; in 2013 the U.S. Navy Memorial gave him its Lone Sailor Award.

Turner joined his father's Turner Advertising Company after Brown and ran its Macon, Georgia, branch. After his father's suicide in March 1963 he became president at 24 and built the firm into the largest outdoor advertising company in the Southeast. In the late 1960s he bought Southern radio stations, then sold them in 1969 to buy Atlanta's struggling UHF channel 17, renamed WTCG ('Watch This Channel Grow'). Cheap reruns, old films, cartoons and live Braves and Hawks games built an audience. On December 17, 1976, WTCG began transmitting by satellite to cable systems nationwide, creating the superstation model; it was later renamed WTBS after Turner bought the call letters from an MIT student radio station.

In 1978 he worked with Reese Schonfeld on plans for a 24-hour news channel, sold his Charlotte station WRET-TV to fund it, and launched CNN from Atlanta on June 1, 1980. Turner famously said CNN would stay on the air until the end of the world. CNN Headline News and CNN International followed.

He bought MGM/UA in 1986 for about $1.5 billion, sold back the studio but kept the pre-1986 film library, and set up Turner Entertainment. He bought Jim Crockett Promotions in 1988 and renamed it World Championship Wrestling, which later fought WWF in the Monday Night War. He launched TNT in 1988, Cartoon Network on October 1, 1992 (built on the Hanna-Barbera library he bought in 1991), and Turner Classic Movies in 1994. Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner on October 10, 1996, with Turner as vice chairman. After the 2001 AOL merger he lost an estimated $7 billion as the stock collapsed, resigned as vice chairman in 2003 and later left the board. He then ran Turner Enterprises, which manages his land, bison ranches and investments.

Turner bought the Atlanta Braves in 1976 and the Atlanta Hawks in 1977, and later owned the NHL's Atlanta Thrashers. Broadcasting the Braves nationally on WTBS made them 'America's Team.' In 1977 he was suspended by baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn over his pursuit of free agent Gary Matthews, and he briefly managed the team himself for one game. The Braves won the 1995 World Series under his ownership, and their 1996 ballpark was named Turner Field. He founded the Goodwill Games in 1986.

A lifelong sailor, he won the Southern Ocean Racing Conference in 1966, skippered Courageous to a four-race sweep of Australia in the 1977 America's Cup and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and won the 1979 Fastnet Race on Tenacious during a storm that killed 15 sailors. He was inducted into the America's Cup Hall of Fame in 1993 and the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011.

Turner married three times. With his first wife, Judy Nye (married 1960, divorced 1964), he had Laura Lee (Laura Turner Seydel) and Robert Edward IV ('Teddy'). With his second wife, Jane Shirley 'Janie' Smith (1965 to 1988), he had Rhett Lee, Reed Beauregard ('Beau') and Sara Jean ('Jennie'). He married actress Jane Fonda in December 1991 at his Avalon Plantation in Florida; they divorced in 2001 but remained close friends. All three of his sons graduated from The Citadel. He openly discussed his use of lithium and his mental health in Porter Bibb's 1993 biography. He loved fly fishing in Montana, quail hunting in Georgia and Florida, and springs on his New Mexico ranches, and he said his greatest achievement was his family.

A Young Republican in his youth, Turner became known for progressive and humanist views. He championed the United Nations, nuclear disarmament, universal health care, renewable energy and slowing population growth, and endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. He said he once considered running for president. He described himself as an atheist or agnostic for much of his life, but in 2008 said he no longer was and had begun praying for sick friends. He regarded nuclear weapons as society's most pressing danger.

Turner created the Turner Foundation in 1990 for environmental and population work, and co-created Captain Planet and the Planeteers with Barbara Pyle, which inspired the Captain Planet Foundation. In 1997 he made a historic $1 billion pledge in support of the United Nations, founding the United Nations Foundation in 1998 and serving as its chairman. In 2001 he co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative with Senator Sam Nunn. He founded the Turner Endangered Species Fund in 1997, became one of the largest private landowners in the United States with about two million acres, and raised the world's largest private bison herd. He co-founded Ted's Montana Grill with George McKerrow in 2002, joined The Giving Pledge in 2010, and before his death created the Turner Institute of Ecoagriculture to protect his lands. In 2020 Forbes gave him its top philanthropy score.

Turner is credited with creating the 24-hour news cycle and with proving the cable network model that ESPN, MTV, the Weather Channel and others followed. The Techwood campus where CNN launched was renamed the Ted Turner Campus in 2019. Former WCW executive Eric Bischoff called him an inspirational leader who was not afraid to fail. After his death The New York Times, CNN and the BBC described him as one of the most important figures in media history, and U.S. President Donald Trump called him one of the greats of broadcast history. AEW dedicated its May 6, 2026, Dynamite on TBS to him, and TCM honored him with his favorite film, Gone with the Wind.

Turner was Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1991. He received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1984), the Paul White Award (1989), the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism (1990), a Peabody Award (1997) and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Communication (2000). He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1992, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004, and won Emmy lifetime achievement awards for sports (2014) and news and documentary (2015). Other honours include the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism (2001), Georgia Trustee (2010), the Lone Sailor Award (2013), 48 honorary degrees and the 2026 Sierra Club Vanguard Award. AFP Greater Atlanta is set to present him a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award for Philanthropic Impact on November 5, 2026.

Christian Williams's 1981 biography Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way chronicled the founding of CNN, and Porter Bibb's 1993 biography It Ain't As Easy as It Looks covered his life and struggles. Turner told his own story in the 2008 memoir Call Me Ted, written with Bill Burke, and wrote The Racing Edge (1979) about sailing. The 2024 HBO Max docuseries Call Me Ted revisited his life. He also produced Captain Planet and the Planeteers and sponsored the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, won by Daniel Quinn's novel Ishmael.

Turner's outspokenness earned him the nicknames 'The Mouth of the South' and 'Captain Outrageous.' He apologized for calling Christianity a religion for losers and for other remarks about religion, for a joke about Polish people, and for 2002 comments about Israel and Palestinian suicide bombers. He was criticized for doing the 'tomahawk chop' with Jane Fonda at the 1991 World Series, and his colorization of classic black-and-white films drew fierce opposition from critics and filmmakers. He also had a long feud with Rupert Murdoch, which he said in 2019 had ended.

Turner revealed in 2018 that he had Lewy body dementia. His last public appearances included the 2021 celebration of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter's 75th wedding anniversary and his own 85th birthday in 2023. In January 2025 he was hospitalized with pneumonia and recovered at a rehabilitation facility. He died peacefully on May 6, 2026, at his Avalon Plantation home in Lamont, Jefferson County, Florida, aged 87, surrounded by family. No cause of death was released. A private family service was held on May 20, 2026, and CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery held a private tribute at the Ted Turner Campus in Atlanta on June 10, 2026, hosted by Anderson Cooper. The family said a public memorial would be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers they asked for gifts to the United Nations Foundation, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Captain Planet Foundation and the Lewy Body Dementia Association.