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NEW YORK — <\/span>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 The network reported Turner died Wednesday, citing a news release from Turner Enterprises.<\/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 actor 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 2 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 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 Robert Edward Turner III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati. When he was 9, his family moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he grew up. After being expelled from Brown University for sneaking a coed into his room, Turner came to Atlanta to work as an account executive for his domineering father\u2019s billboard company, Turner Advertising.<\/p>\n After his father\u2019s 1963 suicide, Turner took over the company. In 1970, he bought an independent UHF station with a weak signal that didn\u2019t even cover Atlanta.<\/p>\n On Dec. 17, 1976, he began transmitting the station to cable systems around the country via satellite. It became the TBS SuperStation. \u201cIt was the start of something bigger than we ever imagined,\u201d Turner said in 1996.<\/p>\n TBS\u2019 motley collection of old movies and \u201cThe Andy Griffith Show\u201d reruns was augmented by Turner\u2019s acquisition of baseball\u2019s Atlanta Braves. Perennial doormats, the Braves slowly attracted fans across the nation through their superstation exposure and in the 1980s began declaring themselves \u201cAmerica\u2019s Team.\u201d<\/p>\n Turner, who early on donned a uniform and managed one game, helped open baseball\u2019s free-agent price wars by signing pitcher Andy Messersmith.<\/p>\n In the 1980s, Turner went deeply into debt to buy MGM, a move again greeted with skepticism.<\/p>\n But the acquisition gave his company a huge library of vintage movies that eventually were parlayed into the TNT and Turner Classic Movies networks. His devotion to older movies earned Turner a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004. He was also criticized for adding color to classic movies like \u201cCasablanca,\u201d which he said he did to make them appealing to a younger audience.<\/p>\n TBS also acquired the Hanna-Barbera animation library, which led to the launch of the Cartoon Network.<\/p>\n \u201cHe sees the obvious before most people do,\u201d Bob Wright, former president and CEO of NBC, told The New Yorker in 2001. \u201cWe all look at the same picture, but Ted sees what you don\u2019t see. And after he sees it, it becomes obvious to everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n He revealed his ambitions as a younger man: \u201cI used to tell people I wanted to become the world\u2019s greatest sailor, businessman and lover all at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked to share the secret to his success, he said: \u201cEarly to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.\u201d<\/p>\n For much of his life a partying roustabout who wooed beautiful women with a roguish charm, the lean, mustachioed sportsman married three times. He was married to Fonda from 1991 to 2001. She quit acting while married to Turner, but tired of his philandering and divorced him, although they remained friends.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was sexy. He was brilliant. He had 2 million acres by the time I left. It would have been easy to stay,\u201d Fonda said of her relationship with Turner.<\/p>\n Turner had an unexpected friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, bonding over hunting and arguments about politics over rum and cigars. A once bitter rival who compared Fox\u2019s Murdoch to Adolf Hitler, they later reconciled over a mutual concern over the environment.<\/p>\n Turner built a sports empire, at one point owning professional baseball, basketball and hockey teams in Atlanta. He was best remembered at the helm of the Atlanta Braves, turning the doormats into postseason regulars by the 1990s. Their stadium, built for the 1996 Olympics, was named Ted Turner Field. The Braves replaced it in 2016 with a newer stadium north of Atlanta.<\/p>\n Perhaps Turner\u2019s greatest love was for the land. He acquired millions of acres in ranches complete with roaming buffalo and was Nebraska\u2019s largest private landholder. He spoke often of reviving the West\u2019s bison herds, and in 2002 started a restaurant chain serving bison burgers, Ted\u2019s Montana Grill. Researchers at Texas A&M University credited his donation of a few bulls in 2005 with helping increase the genetic diversity of the last herd of southern Plains bison.<\/p>\n He had a net worth of $2.5 billion in 2023, but had dropped off Forbes magazine\u2019s ranking of the 400 richest Americans in 2021.<\/p>\n During a stock market bust, Turner\u2019s net worth went from nearly $10 billion to about $2 billion in two-and-a-half years. <\/p>\n \u201cTo put this in perspective, I lost nearly $8 billion in 30 months,\u201d he wrote in his autobiography, \u201cCall Me Ted,\u201d in 2008. \u201cThat means that, on average, my net worth dropped by about $67 million \u201cper week,\u201d or nearly $10 million \u201cper day, every day, for two and a half years.\u201d<\/p>\n He had enough time, and money, to devote to such lofty goals as promoting world peace and protecting the environment.<\/p>\n \u201cSee, my life is more an adventure than a quest to make money. Adventure is going out and doing something for the pure hell of it,\u201d Turner once said. \u201cYou just want to see if you can do it, period. There\u2019s no thought of gain other than your own satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n Through the years, Turner\u2019s antics occasionally overshadowed his business activities.<\/p>\n Fresh from skippering his boat \u201cCourageous\u201d to the America\u2019s Cup title in 1977, a very inebriated Turner was captured by TV cameras stretched out on the floor at the victory celebration.<\/p>\n Turner managed to insult many with his shoot-from-the-lip style. An atheist since his only sister died of lupus at age 17, he called Christians \u201closers\u201d and \u201cJesus-freaks,\u201d later apologizing for both remarks.<\/p>\n He once suggested in a speech that unemployed Black people be used to haul mobile missiles with ropes \u201clike the Egyptians building the pyramids.\u201d After civil rights leaders demanded an apology, he said he was just joking.<\/p>\n Other times, his humor saved him from potentially awkward situations, like when he talked to an audience in Berlin in 1999. \u201cYou know, you Germans had a bad century,\u201d Turner said, according to The New Yorker. \u201cYou were on the wrong side of two wars. You were the losers. I know what that\u2019s like. When I bought the Atlanta Braves, we couldn\u2019t win, either. You guys can turn it around. You can start making the right choices. If the Atlanta Braves could do it, then Germany can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Turner, father of five children, grabbed a leadership role in American philanthropy with his Sept. 18, 1997, pledge to give $1 billion, or $100 million a year for 10 years, to United Nations charities. Even as Turner\u2019s fortune shrank after the AOL Time Warner merger, he continued giving money to the U.N., calling it the best hope for peace.<\/p>\n He promoted a range of humanitarian causes. Turner joined former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn to start the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to reducing the threat of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Turner fretted publicly about the world\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I had to predict, the way things are going, I\u2019d say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct in 50 years,\u201d Turner said in 2003. \u201cWeapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me.\u201d<\/p>\n As he poured millions into nonprofits on a global scale, Turner was also fond of spreading his wealth in small ways. He once gave $500 to a volunteer fire department that helped extinguish a blaze on one of his ranches. Another time he lent personal paintings for an exhibit at a Bozeman, Montana, museum.<\/p>\n ____<\/p>\n Former Associated Press correspondent Ryan Nakashima contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n