Ted Turner\u2019s death at 87 closes a chapter that remade how the world witnesses history. He inherited a shaky billboard company after his father\u2019s suicide and turned it, through audacity and risk, into a sprawling media empire. CNN, launched in 1980 and mocked as \u201cChicken Noodle News,\u201d became indispensable during the Persian Gulf War, when its live coverage pulled an anxious planet around a single glowing screen. Turner\u2019s vision didn\u2019t stop there: TBS, TNT, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network all sprang from the same restless imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was loud, impulsive, sometimes reckless, but also a philanthropist who gave billions to causes he believed might outlast him. His decade-long marriage to Jane Fonda fused Hollywood glamour with media power, even as it ultimately unraveled. Battling Lewy body dementia in his final years, Turner watched the industry he helped create fracture and multiply. Yet, as CNN\u2019s chief said, he remains its \u201cpresiding spirit\u201d \u2014 the risk-taker who proved that news, like life, never really goes off the air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ted Turner\u2019s death at 87 closes a chapter that remade how the world witnesses history. He inherited a shaky billboard company after his father\u2019s suicide and turned it, through audacity and risk, into a sprawling media empire. CNN, launched in 1980 and mocked as \u201cChicken Noodle News,\u201d became indispensable during the Persian Gulf War, when …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17070,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17068\/revisions\/17070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}