72 Facts About Ted Turner

Robert Edward Turner III was born on November 19,1938 and is an American entrepreneur, television producer, media proprietor, and philanthropist.

Ted Turner founded the Cable News Network, the first 24-hour cable news channel.

Additionally, in 2001, Ted Turner co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative with US Senator Sam Nunn.

Ted Turner currently serves as Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Ted Turner turned the Atlanta Braves baseball team into a nationally popular franchise, and launched the charitable Goodwill Games.

Ted Turner helped revive interest in professional wrestling by buying World Championship Wrestling.

Ted Turner was the largest private landowner in the United States until John C Malone surpassed him in 2011.

Ted Turner uses much of his land for ranches to re-popularize bison meat, amassing the largest herd in the world.

Ted Turner created the environmental-themed animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers.

Ted Turner was born on November 19,1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Florence and Robert Edward Ted Turner II, a billboard magnate.

Ted Turner attended The McCallie School, a private boys' preparatory school in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Ted Turner attended Brown University and was vice-president of the Brown Debating Union and captain of the sailing team.

Ted Turner's father wrote saying that this choice made him "appalled, even horrified", and that he "almost puked".

Ted Turner later changed his major to economics, but before receiving a degree, he was expelled for having a female student in his dormitory room.

Ted Turner joined the Young Republicans, saying he "felt at ease among these budding conservatives and was merely following in [his father]'s far-right footsteps", according to It Ain't as Easy as It Looks.

The book observed that Ted 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".

Independent UHF stations were not ratings winners or that profitable even in larger markets, but Turner concluded that this would change as people wanted more than several choices.

Ted Turner changed the call sign to WTCG, erroneously claimed to have stood for "Watch This Channel Grow" but in actuality stood for Turner Communications Group.

Ted Turner would go on to purchase UHF Channel 36 WRET in Charlotte, North Carolina and ran it with a format similar to WTCG.

Ted Turner bought a 5,000-acre plantation in Jacksonboro, South Carolina, for $2 million.

In 1978, Turner struck a deal with a student-operated radio station at MIT, Technology Broadcasting System, to obtain the rights to the WTBS call sign for $50,000.

Such a move allowed Ted Turner to strengthen the branding of his "Super-Station" using the initials TBS.

In 1976, Ted Turner bought the Atlanta Braves, and in 1977, he bought the Atlanta Hawks, partially to provide programming for WTCG.

In 1986, Ted Turner founded the Goodwill Games with the goal of easing tensions between capitalist and communist countries.

In 1979, Ted Turner sold his North Carolina station, WRET, to fund the transaction and established its headquarters in lower-cost, non-union Atlanta.

Ted Turner has sometimes played the tape for reporters, noting the reason he made it.

In 1981, Ted Turner Broadcasting System acquired Brut Productions from Faberge Inc.

Ted Turner kept MGM's pre-May 1986 and pre-merger film and television library.

Ted Turner Entertainment was established in August 1986 to oversee film and television properties owned by Ted Turner thanks to the deal with Kerkorian.

In 1988, Ted Turner purchased Jim Crockett Promotions which he renamed World Championship Wrestling which became the main competitor to Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation.

In 1989, Turner created the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for fiction offering positive solutions to global problems.

Ted Turner produced the television series Captain Planet and the Planeteers and its later sequel series with Captain Planet as the featured character.

Ted Turner was later purchased by Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky and an unknown group of private persons.

Ted Turner was dropped as head of cable networks by CEO Gerald Levin but remained as Vice Chairman of Time Warner.

Ted Turner resigned as Time Warner vice chairman in 2003 and then from the board of directors in 2006.

Ted Turner dropped "AOL" from its name in October 2003.

Ted Turner had a long-running feud with fellow cable magnate Rupert Murdoch for years.

At the post-race dinner, a drunken Turner verbally assaulted Murdoch, afterward challenging him to a televised fistfight in Las Vegas.

In 2003, Turner challenged Murdoch to another fistfight, and later on accused Murdoch of being a "warmonger" for his support and backing of President George W Bush's invasion of Iraq.

However, revealing in an interview with Variety in 2019, Ted Turner said he and Murdoch have since made amends.

For most of his first decade as owner of the Braves, Ted Turner was a very hands-on owner.

Ted Turner was suspended for one year by Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn on January 3,1977, for his actions while pursuing the signing of free agent outfielder Gary Matthews from the San Francisco Giants.

Ted Turner ran the team for one game before National League president Chub Feeney ordered him to stop running the team.

Ted Turner appealed to Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn, and showed up to manage the Braves when they returned home.

Ted Turner endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the run-up for the 2016 US presidential election.

Ted Turner has put $125 million of his own money into the foundation and has set aside $6 million per year to address population growth rates.

In 2009 Ted Turner met with other business moguls to include Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, George Soros and David Rockefeller to address issues ranging from the environment to healthcare.

Ted Turner once called observers of Ash Wednesday "Jesus freaks", though he apologized, and dubbed opponents of abortion "bozos".

In 1999, Ted Turner made a joke about Polish mine detectors when asked about Pope John Paul II.

Also in 2008, Turner asserted on PBS's Charlie Rose television program that if steps are not taken to address global warming, most people would die and "the rest of us will be cannibals".

Turner Enterprises, Inc is a private American company that was founded in 1976 and manages the business interests, land holdings and investments of Ted Turner, including the oversight of Turner's 24 properties across the US and Argentina.

At two million acres of personal and ranch land, Ted Turner is the second-largest landowner in North America.

Ted Turner owned 19 ranches - 16 in the western US and three in Argentina.

Ted Turner had purchased the property in 2001 primarily to raise bison.

Ted Turner has been married and divorced three times: to Judy Nye, Jane Shirley Smith, and actress Jane Fonda.

One of Turner's children, Robert Edward "Teddy" Turner IV, announced on January 23,2013, that he intended to run in the South Carolina Republican primary for the open Congressional seat vacated by Tim Scott who was appointed to the US Senate.

In 2010, Ted Turner joined Warren Buffett's and Bill Gates's The Giving Pledge, vowing to donate the majority of his fortune to charity upon his death.

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

When Turner was 26, he entered sailing competitions at the Savannah Yacht Club and competed in Olympic trials in 1964.

Ted Turner first attempted to win the America's Cup in 1974, in a losing attempt at the defender's trials, aboard Mariner.

Ted Turner appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated on July 4,1977, after being chosen to lead the 1977 America's Cup defense as skipper of the yacht Courageous.

Ted Turner had been asked to join the America's Cup defense group formed by Lee Loomis and Ted Hood.

Ted Turner was inducted into the America's Cup Hall of Fame in 1993, and the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011.

Ted Turner has been regarded as one of the entrepreneurs who transformed the cable industry and being referred to as "Alexander the Great of broadcasting".

Ted Turner's network was built on sitcom reruns, old movies, cartoons, and Atlanta Braves games.

Ted Turner found an audience for classics of a bygone time, along with slightly down-market content like professional wrestling.

Ted Turner had great passion for doing what was right for the world.

Ted Turner stated his dream of using communication to bring peace, to tell both sides of any story, that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Ted Turner was not afraid to fail, he was more afraid of not trying and not conquering that next horizon.

On June 24,1999, Vince McMahon stated on Late Night with Conan O'Brien: "All I'll say about Ted Turner is he's a son-of-a-bitch, other than that, he's probably not a bad guy, but I don't like him at all".

Later in 2021, when asked about the upstart AEW in comparison to Turner's WCW, McMahon dismissed AEW, stating that "it certainly is not a situation where 'rising tides' because that was when Ted Turner was coming after us with all of Time Warner's assets as well".

In 2010 Ted Turner was named a Georgia Trustee, an honor given by the Georgia Historical Society, in conjunction with the Governor of Georgia, to individuals whose accomplishments and community service reflect the ideals of the founding body of Trustees, which governed the Georgia colony from 1732 to 1752.