Ted Turner transformed television as we know it. Here are five of his biggest accomplishments.

MW Ted Turner transformed television as we know it. Here are five of his biggest accomplishments.

By Lukas I. Alpert

Turner created the 24-hour news channel, championed Hollywood's history and was a founding father of cable television. He died Wednesday at age 87.

Ted Turner's many innovations evolved into the backbone of modern media.

There is little of the media landscape over the past half-century that Ted Turner didn't play a key role in building. From creating the 24-hour news cycle to laying the groundwork for the cable-television boom, Turner revolutionized modern media.

He died Wednesday at age 87, according to his company, Turner Enterprises.

Turner's impact on American media as we know it cannot be understated. The company he built, Turner Broadcasting System, was sold in 1996 to Time Warner, but his legacy carried on.

"Ted's entrepreneurial spirit, creative ambition and willingness to take on risks changed the media industry forever," said David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery $(WBD)$, which now owns much of what Turner built.

Following are some of Ted Turner's most impactful innovations and successes.

CNN and 24-hour news

On June 1, 1980, Turner launched CNN, a nationally broadcast channel dedicated to news 24 hours a day. The channel, based in Atlanta, was initially a financial boondoggle, but Turner was undeterred, creating Headline News two years later, to provide focused news updates around the clock.

The need to fill 24 hours with news proved challenging at first, but Turner came up with the idea of backfilling down time with pundits voicing their opinions on the day's events. The formula proved a success and helped the operation become a force.

The turning point for the network's success came in 1990 with the first Gulf War, when CNN's on-the-scene reporting from Baghdad bested even the biggest news networks, and the upstart channel's ratings shot through the roof.

The model of mixing news with opinion set a template for others, and now the media landscape is dominated by channels offering variations on that approach, such as Fox News and MS NOW.

Capitalizing on the cable boom

Turner began building his media empire in 1970 when he bought a money-losing local television station in Atlanta that he gave the call letters WTCG, the latter three for Turner Communications Group.

He soon realized that a cable boom was coming, and by the late 1970s he began investing heavily in satellite technology to build out a national network for the channel he owned, which would eventually become the Turner Broadcasting Service - TBS.

The move came ahead of a broad shift in television viewership to cable in the 1980s, making Turner a billionaire many times over.

Sports as an engine of programming

When Turner acquired WTCG, he was hard-pressed to find enough programming to fill its broadcast hours. That's when he had a stroke of genius.

Despite being heavily in debt, he borrowed more money to buy the local, and also struggling, major-league baseball team the Atlanta Braves for $8.5 million in 1976. That gave him access to 162 games to broadcast on his channel, a solid block of programming that helped turn the business around.

When he transformed the channel into the nationally broadcast TBS, those baseball game began airing across the country, and, as a result, the Braves could plausibly be dubbed "America's Team." Turner later bought the basketball team the Atlanta Hawks, as well.

Both teams went to Time Warner when TBS was sold in 1996. The Braves were later sold to Liberty Media, which spun it off into a separate company, Atlanta Braves Holdings $(BATRA)$, in 2023. The Hawks have been sold twice to groups of Atlanta business executives.

Using classic Hollywood assets to fuel growth

In 1985, Turner acquired MGM-UA, a conglomerate made up of the film studios MGM and United Artists, for $1.5 billion. To Turner, one key piece of the acquisition was the studio's vast archive of legendary films including classics like "Gone With the Wind," "Dr. Zhivago" and "The Wizard of Oz." The deal also included the library from Warner Bros.'s earliest days, including the Looney Toons cartoons and "Casablanca."

The price tag soon proved to be too much, and Turner unloaded the studio, but he kept the library, which he saw as programming for his channels. He soon added Turner Classic Movies to the mix. He later bought the archive of cartoon maker Hanna-Barbera, famed for "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons," among others, and used that content to build the Cartoon Network.

He later created his own production business, Turner Films, which made movies including "Gettysburg" and "Tom and Jerry: The Movie."

The MGM library is now owned by Amazon (AMZN). Hanna-Barbera is part of Warner Bros. Discovery, which is being sold to Paramount Skydance $(PSKY)$ in a deal that's set to close later this year.

Protecting the environment and global health as a philanthropist

Turner's gambles on media properties by the late '80s had left him saddled with a substantial debt burden, so he sold 37% of his company to a consortium of cable companies. That ushered in a period of growth and prosperity that made Turner a multibillionaire.

In his later years the media tycoon turned to philanthropy.

Turner in 1997 donated $1 billion to the United Nations to support global health initiatives, humanitarian-aid programs and efforts to empower women around the world.

An ardent environmentalist, Turner became one of the largest landowners in the United States, turning much of his property into conservation trusts, meaning they could never be developed.

Turner also invested heavily in clean-energy initiatives.

"The planet is collapsing all around us," he once said. "Ocean fisheries are collapsing from overfishing. Wind, water and erosion are washing the topsoil away. We've got to take better care of the planet."

-Lukas I. Alpert

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May 06, 2026 13:46 ET (17:46 GMT)

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