[Note: I wrote this as a senior in university.]
Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III was born on November 19 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio and was the oldest child of Ed and Florence Turner. When he was nine years old, Ed Turner moved the family to Savannah, Georgia where he had acquired an outdoor billboard company that was renamed The Turner Advertising Company. Discipline in the Turner household was very strict. At his father’s insistence, the young Turner was required to learn every aspect of the family business, from maintenance to accounting. With the family business prospering, Ed Turner rewarded his son with the gift of sailing when Ted was nine years old. Turner soon developed a passion for sailboat racing and by age eleven he was competing in Savannah’s junior regatta.
Still an ever demanding father, Turner at age twelve was sent to military schools in Georgia and Tennessee. In 1951 he was sent to the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In his first years there Turner loathed the school’s discipline code, yet he emerged as a leader amongst his classmates and helped his school to win the Tennessee debating championship. During the summers Turner continued to work in his father’s billboard business and by the end of his teens he had become an effective salesman. Initially Turner wanted to go to the Naval Academy but his father persuaded him to go to Brown University where he could study business. At Brown University Turner was vice president of the debating team and captain of the sailing team. The rebellious Turner studied the classics and was an avid reader of military history, to the disgust of his father. Although he excelled in his studies and extracurricular activities, Turner was soon expelled from Brown University for entertaining a female companion in his dormitory room which was against college regulations.
In late 1960 after a short stint with the Coast Guard, Turner returned to Georgia to work as a general manager of the Macon, Georgia branch of his father’s advertising business. In the wake of a troubling marriage and his sister’s death to illness, Turner immerged himself into his work and soon his father promoted him to assistant manager of Turner Advertising’s Atlanta branch. Fuelling this economic growth, the senior Turner took on large amounts of debt to buy out a competitor. With his health failing and the recent pressures of the merger bearing down on him, he committed suicide on March 5, 1963. At age 24 Turner inherited a struggling business that was quickly growing but heavily indebted. In order to return the company to a profitable enterprise, Turner immediately began working on the firm’s cash flows.
Turner worked endlessly, offering customers a discount for early payment which increased his cash on hand and allowed the company to expand its operations. In a few years Turner had reversed the company’s sagging fortunes and stabilized it to become the largest billboard company in the south east. However, Ted Turner soon recognized that his billboard customers were allocating larger shares of their advertising budgets to radio and television. He began looking for opportunities in the broadcast market and in the late 1960s Turner used profits from Turner Advertising Company to buy Southern radio stations.
During this time, the television business was essentially an oligopoly of three major networks (CBS, NBC and ABC) that also operated with its own local affiliates in the major regional markets. Only the largest cities could accommodate a fourth or fifth station. Still in its infancy, cable television was a business with only a select handful of operators that provided service to remote areas that the major networks could not reach. In the 1950s the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened a new range of ultra-high frequencies (UHF) for television broadcasting. However only a small number of television viewers knew how to receive UHF transmission. Previously the industry standard was very high frequencies (VHF) which were used by the three major networks. UHF stations only worked well in markets without VHF stations or in markets with only one VHF station. UHF stations were not very profitable or ratings winners in broadcast television, but Turner had the foresight to see that people’s consumptions habits were changing and they wanted more choices in their TV viewing.
After his investment in a select number of radio stations, he went on to purchase a failing Atlanta UHF station in 1970. This was Turner’s first foray into television and helped him to assemble his own broadcasting system. “I was spending much of my energy ocean racing, when a UHF-TV station came up for sale in Atlanta. It was losing $50,000 a month and its programs were viewed by fewer than 5 percent of the market. I acquired it,” Turner says of his purchase. He then changed the name of his company to Turner Communications Group and renamed the station WTCG. The new station started by running old movies from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s in addition to theatrical cartoons and very old dramas and sitcoms. Turner also relied on a combination of local sports, news programming and popular network re-runs such as Star Trek.
Turner’s core strategy in these early years was picking up popular syndicated product that dropped from VHF stations, at a very low price. At the time WTCG mainly ran second and third hand product including content such as Gilligan’s Island, Hazel, I Love Lucy and Bugs Bunny. In 1973 WTCG acquired the rights to telecast the Atlanta Braves baseball games. Over the course of three years Turner achieved a significant 16 percent share of the television market and steered WTCG’s cable network from losing $900,000 before the merger in 1970, to $1.7 million in revenues in 1973. With the burgeoning success of his Atlanta station, Turner moved to buy a second station in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Charlotte station was in a worst financial condition than the Atlanta station had been, and the company’s board vetoed Turner’s decision to expand. Turner then mortgaged his house and he purchased UHF Channel 36 WRET by himself and ran it in a similar format to WTCG. With both stations in place Turner began to secure broadcast rights outright, enabling him to show programs repeatedly without paying royalties. Although initially hemorrhaging money, soon both stations became profitable.
In 1976 Turner turned WTCG into cable’s first “superstation” by broadcasting to cable households across the United States via satellite. At the end of 1975, RCA launched the SATCOM II communications satellite and Turner was one of the first to rent a channel. The launching of the RCA satellite introduced rapid changes to the cable television industry and Turner quickly capitalized on the potential of this new market. He built a $750,000 transmission antenna and on December 17, 1976 the rechristened WTCG-TV superstation began beaming old movies, sitcoms, sports and cartoons to cable-TV subscribers all across the United States. It was a very implausible proposal at the time, that a local UHF station could attract households across the nation with black-and-white reruns of old television shows. Nevertheless as more homes were wired to receive cable, Turner’s audience grew because many cable systems carried his stations to free their schedules. This expansion increased his viewers and advertising, with two million subscribers by 1978, ultimately adding to the increased growth and profits of his expanding media empire.
In an effort to add programming to WTCG, Turner bought the Atlanta Braves in 1976 and began broadcasting their games live. The following year he acquired a controlling interest in the Atlanta Hawks franchise and also added its games to the broadcast lineup. For a second time the combination of popular network reruns, sitcoms, movies and live sports generated a national audience for the station. In 1979 Turner renamed his satellite channel WTBS (for Turner Broadcasting System), dubbing it the world’s first “Superstation”. The station remained one of the most popular basic cable stations through the growth of cable television in the 1980s. From 1978 to 1986 the number of families watching WTBS jumped from 2 milllion to 36 million. The rapid increase in audience and advertising revenues earned Turner Broadcasting Systems $70 million a year and provided the foundation for Turner’s wealth and other business ventures.
Turner’s second innovation in cable was his launch of the Cable News Network (CNN) in 1980. In early 1980 Turner sold his Charlotte station and used the proceeds to launch the country’s first 24 hour all news station. This was Turner’s most ambitious venture to date and most media experts expected the station to fail. Broadcast professionals and the news media alike claimed that a 24 hour news station was wholly impractical. In addition to their flagship dinnertime news broadcasts, most networks also ran news and talk shows every morning. Furthermore network affiliates already ran local news for a half hour at the end of the evening. The insiders and industry experts reasoned that this was all the news the television world needed.
Despite the skepticism Turner moved forward with his Cable News Network and added a second channel, CNN Headlines news in 1982. CNN started to gain more success as its reputation grew for having its reporters first on any scene. Furthermore CNN won viewer loyalty and industry respect by challenging the major networks authority on reporting breaking events. Some of the events that marked CNN as a serious journalistic news channel were its coverage of the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981, the Challenger disaster in 1986 and the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Turner even refashioned himself as a global newsman and banned the word “foreign” in all CNN newscasts in favor of the word international. By the end of the 1980s CNN was a staple in the cable news industry.
In 1986 after a failed attempt to purchase CBS, Turner bought the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Myer (MGM) / United Artists from Kirk Kerkorian for $1.5 billion. Burdened with debt Turner was forced to sell off parts of the acquisition including the MGM/UA studio lot in Culver City. However Turner kept MGM/UA’s pre-1986 and pre-merger film and TV library of more than 4,000 films. Leveraging MGM/UA’s extensive film library of Hollywood classics, he launched Turner Network Television (TNT) in 1988 with Gone with the Wind. Turner’s assets also included The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane and the TV series Gilligan’s Island. Initially TNT carried older films and television shows but soon added original content and newer reruns. To many observers and media critics, Turner’s move to buy MGM/UA and retain nothing but the studio’s library seemed like a sudden and ill planned move. The sale cost Turner $100 million but within the same year his film library had earned him $125 million alone.
In order to compete with the media giants, Turner’s strategy focused on obtaining direct access to the programming and content sources, which were becoming increasingly expensive in his superstation programming. This calculated and future looking maneuver allowed Turner to capitalize on all programming sources for his cable and broadcast outlets. Moreover new home video technology had created an enormous market for films on videotape. MGM’s catalogue not only included classic MGM films, but also the libraries of United Artists, RKO and Warner Brothers. These included classics like Casablanca to forgotten B-pictures and short films from the 1920s to the 1960s. Turner also utilized a new process that colorized some of the library’s black and white pictures, a practice that enraged film lovers but boosted videotape sales of many films in the collection. In 1994 Turner launched Turner Classic Movies (TCM) to broadcast the older Warner Brothers, RKO and MGM catalogues; uncut, commercial free and 24 hours a day to the delight of many film enthusiasts. TCM has since gained a reputation for its original documentaries along with its film restoration and preservation efforts.
In 1992 after purchasing the animation studio Hanna-Barbera, which developed popular children’s programming, Turner launched the Cartoon Network. Adding additional content from the MGM library, which included Warner Brothers properties such as the early Looney Tunes libraries and the Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios Popeye cartoons, Turner created another fixture in homes around the world. The following year Turner purchased two motion picture production companies, New Line Cinema and Castle Rock Entertainment further expanding his film library and production capability. With the innumerous expansion of Turner’s media empire, it was clear that he had proved the critics wrong. The MGM acquisition that looked to be a case of poor judgment now looked like a stroke of genius. Turner had successfully streamlined his operations and was now the creator, producer and distributor of his own content and programming. His media empire now included cable TV, sports programming, film distribution and production. His business acumen solidified him as one of the foremost media moguls in the second half of the 20th century.
1996 marked a historic change in the media landscape and Turner’s broadcasting company was a major stakeholder in this momentous event. In 1995, Turner agreed to sell Turner Broadcasting to multi-media conglomerate Time Warner for $7.5 billion. On October 10 1996 the merger went into effect and Turner became Time Warner’s largest individual shareholder. Over the next nine months Time Warner’s share price soared and Turner’s personal fortune increased by another billion dollars. He served as the parent company’s vice chairman and headed all of the merged company’s cable television networks. Turner reported to the company’s CEO Gerald Levine, and was responsible for Time Warner’s Home Box Office (HBO) and TBS’ Cable News Network (CNN), Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies.
The merger was also the source of a colossal battle between Turner and another media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. This was a long running grudge that stemmed back to 1983 when a Murdoch sponsored yacht collided with Turner’s boat during the Sydney-to-Hobart race, which caused Turner’s boat to sink 10km from the finish line. Turner was outraged and at the post race dinner challenged Murdoch to a televised fist fight in Las Vegas. This brawl was exacerbated in the fall of 1996 when Turner convinced Levine not to carry Murdoch’s own 24 hour cable news station, Fox News Service. In its approval of the Time Warner/TBS merger the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) required that Time Warner offer its millions of subscribers another 24 hour news service in addition to CNN. Levine sided with Turner and instead of Fox News; he chose to air MSNBC, a joint venture between Microsoft and General Electric’s NBC. MSNBC was a softer alternative and posed less of a threat to CNN’s news outlet. Turner boasted that he was “looking forward to squishing Rupert like a bug.”
Time Warner’s refusal to carry the Fox News station prevented Murdoch from accessing the financially profitable New York City market, where Time Warner held a near-monopoly with 1.1 million cable subscribers. Consequently Murdoch’s news station would have been unable to secure the millions in revenues from Madison Avenue advertising agencies and other media heads. In order to bypass Time Warner’s lock on cable systems, Murdoch announced plans to invest $1 billion in a satellite TV service called sky, offering both cable TV and local broadcasting. Time Warner’s decision spurred a war of words between the media moguls that spilled into the personal arena.
After Murdoch cancelled plans to carry a Time Warner owned entertainment channel, Turner publicly likened Murdoch to Adolf Hitler and called him a “scumbag.” Murdoch’s New York Post then yanked CNN from its television schedule listings. The Post revealed a shadowy past of Turner’s third wife, “Hanoi Jane” Fonda. The paper also speculated about Turner’s manic-depressive behavior and his refusal to take his lithium. In September 1997 Turner again challenged Murdoch to a highly publicized boxing match, saying “It would be like Rocky, only for old guys.” In the most recent years Fox News has eroded CNN’s market share in the cable television landscape and has become the most-watched cable news channel. Nevertheless these two bitter rivals continue their feud to this day.
On January 11 2001 Time Warner merged with internet company AOL to become AOL Time Warner, in a move that Turner initially supported. Turner became vice-chairman and senior adviser of AOL Time Warner Inc. The merger proved to be an unsuccessful one, as the growth and profitability of AOL was significantly hurt by the dot-come bubble which burdened the merged company’s performance and stock price. At a fall 2001 board meeting, Turner’s outburst against AOL Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin caused a strain in Turner’s relationship with the company. In 2003 Turner resigned from vice chairman of the company and in 2006 he decided that he would not seek reelection to Time Warner’s board of directors. Throughout his five decades in the industry, Turner transformed the telecommunications industry and brought essential innovations to the media industry that are still employed today. Through his broadcasting business ventures he connected the world and provided access to information in real-time. Turner has now committed himself to philanthropy, donating $1 billion to his own UN Foundation. However he will always be remembered as a media mogul; for the ideas and strategies that he mastered in cable news and multi-media platforms.
Bibliography
Porter Bibb. “Ted Turner: It Ain’t As Easy as It Looks: A Biography.” Johnson Books 1997
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.turner.html http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/mar2009/ted-turner-mogul.html
http://www.biography.com/articles/Ted-Turner-9512255
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tur0bio-1
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