{"id":8,"date":"2026-05-06T20:30:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloradorelocationreport.com\/?p=8"},"modified":"2026-05-06T20:30:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:30:37","slug":"cnn-founder-ted-turner-a-brash-and-outspoken-television-pioneer-has-died-at-age-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradorelocationreport.com\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"CNN founder Ted Turner, a brash and outspoken television pioneer, has died at age 87"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By David Bauder<\/strong>, Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n

Ted Turner, a brash and outspoken television pioneer who raced yachts, owned huge chunks of the American West and transformed the news business by launching CNN in 1980, has died at age 87.<\/p>\n

Read more Hello world!<\/a><\/p>\n

CNN reported that he died Wednesday, citing a Turner Enterprises news release.<\/p>\n

Turner owned professional sports teams in Atlanta, defended the America\u2019s Cup in yachting in 1977 and donated a stunning $1 billion to United Nations charities. He married three women \u2014 most famously actress Jane Fonda \u2014 and earned the nicknames \u201cCaptain Outrageous\u201d and \u201cThe Mouth of the South.\u201d<\/p>\n

He once bragged: \u201cIf only I had a little humility, I\u2019d be perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was slowed in later years by Lewy Body Dementia. Long since out of the television business, he concentrated on philanthropy and his more than two million acres of property, including the nation\u2019s largest bison herd.<\/p>\n

His garrulous personality sometimes overshadowed a driven, risk-taking business acumen. By the time he sold his Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner Inc. in a 1996 media megadeal, Turner had turned his late father\u2019s billboard company into a global conglomerate that included seven major cable networks, three professional sports teams and a pair of hit movie studios.<\/p>\n

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Just south of Colorado, Ted Turner\u2019s ideal of conservation takes shape. Ben Clark\u2019s new film \u201cPreserved\u201d takes us there.<\/h3>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u25b6 FULL STORY\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Turner\u2019s signature achievement was creating CNN, the first 24-hour, all-news television network in 1980. At a time news is instantly available at anyone\u2019s fingertips, it\u2019s hard to recall that the idea of letting consumers decide when they choose to learn what\u2019s going on in the world was once revolutionary.<\/p>\n

In part, Turner\u2019s own frustration with television news was the instigator. He often worked past 8 p.m., after the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly newscasts had already gone off the air, and was in bed by the time his local stations did their own newscasts at 11 p.m.<\/p>\n

He took a chance by starting the operation sometimes derided as the \u201cchicken noodle network\u201d in the early days of cable television, living in an apartment above its Atlanta office.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was going to have to hit hard and move incredibly fast and that\u2019s what we did \u2014 move so fast that the (broadcast) networks wouldn\u2019t have the time to respond, because they should have done this, not me,\u201d Turner recalled in a 2016 interview with the Academy of Achievement. \u201cBut they didn\u2019t have the imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s breakthrough moment came during the Gulf War with Iraq in 1991. Most television journalists had fled Baghdad, warned of an imminent American attack. CNN stayed, capturing arresting images of a war\u2019s outbreak, with anti-aircraft tracers streaking across the sky and correspondents flinching from the concussion of bombs.<\/p>\n

Turner was promised a continued role in CNN after his company\u2019s sale to Time Warner for $7.3 billion in stock, but was gradually pushed out, much to his regret.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made a mistake,\u201d he later said. \u201cThe mistake I made was losing control of the company.\u201d<\/p>\n

That same year \u2014 1996 \u2014 saw the birth of Fox News Channel and arrival of a new dominant mogul in cable news, Rupert Murdoch. Political opinion became the stock in trade of networks like Fox News and MSNBC. Even though CNN built a worldwide news organizations particularly strong online, it struggles to this day with a diminished desire for straighter TV newscasts.<\/p>\n

Among his vast land holdings was Vermejo Park Ranch, a more than half-million-acre property that straddles the New Mexico-Colorado border. A feature-length documentary called \u201cPreserved\u201d recounts how Turner bought the land in 1996, transforming it from a landscape scarred by mining, logging and overgrazing into a model for conservation. <\/p>\n

The billionaire later restored 60 miles of streams and 18 lakes for Rio Grande cutthroat trout, fostered diverse species like the black-footed ferret and Mexican gray wolf and built a \u201cgenetically unique\u201d bison herd free of bovine mitochondrial DNA, according to the film, which premiered in January at the Oriental Theater in Denver.<\/p>\n

In other Colorado ties, Turner also supplied the University of Colorado Boulder with a famous mascot \u2014 Ralphie IV, a buffalo who roamed the sidelines from 1998 until its death in 2008, at age 19, from liver failure. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brash, outspoken television pioneer raced yachts, owned huge chunks of the American West and transformed the news business by launching CNN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\nCNN founder Ted Turner, a brash and outspoken television pioneer, has died at age 87 - Colorado Relocation Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/coloradorelocationreport.com\/?p=8\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CNN founder Ted Turner, a brash and outspoken television pioneer, has died at age 87 - 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