6 ms·
Ted Turner has died
- sameers 6mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48036974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48036974
- JSR_FDED 6mo agoI remember CNN bursting onto the scene. It was revolutionary. Although there was never (even today) enough news to fill a 24hr period. Just endless repeats of the same block of news.
- ranger_danger 6mo agoI think there absolutely would be enough if they also covered international stories as well as happier news. There's a whole lot more good going on in the world right now than bad, but for some reason we do not highlight it.
- ap99 6mo ago"For some reason" is that people do not watch it. Once you get a taste of "bad" it dominates.
- ranger_danger 6mo agoMaybe for some people, but I see no reason we shouldn't seek out and show good news... I think it makes people happier.
- lotsofpulp 6mo agoGood news is much easier to fake.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- wat10000 6mo agoIt's important to remember that actually reporting news is a tertiary purpose of the news business. The primary purpose is to sell advertising. The secondary purpose is to get eyeballs onto their product, in order to facilitate the primary purpose. Reporting news is only done because it's how they've chosen to get those eyeballs.
- Ylpertnodi 6mo ago'Good going on', rarely affects my wallet.
- SkyeCA 6mo agoAnd most of the "bad going on" is completely out of your control. People could do with consuming a lot less national/international news.
- ranger_danger 6mo agoThere are other valid reasons to watch the news though.
- throwaway27448 6mo ago> There's a whole lot more good going on in the world right now than bad, I have no clue how you could ever even estimate this sort of ratio. How do you even quantify the "number of things going on", let alone confidently split them into good and bad?
- harimau777 6mo agoI think that a lot of the issue might be that the "good" is often irrelevant to the user. E.g. Great news! Scientists discover new drug for treating cancer (in mice).
- HerbManic 6mo agoAs they say "If it bleeds it leads" Mentally you tend to equally weigh both good and bad news over a long time span, but negative news gets a much quicker and stronger initial reaction, thus it gets priority. Just an evolutionary trait, don't wait to see if the shadow is a tiger just assume it is about to attack. This is why social media ends up the way it is, that quick reaction is what the algorithms pick up on even if long term it isn't any different. It is a hard issue to overcome especially when it is a free market race to the bottom.
- xattt 6mo agoOf all the fascinating things that I’ve seen, there was a Moscow TV station rebroadcasting CNN during the Gulf War. My memory is hazy, and I accepted it as-is at the time, but the idea that American news could be watched live shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union seems entirely wild.
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- Scoundreller 6mo agoNow instead of so many repeats, we get panels of 5 talking heads "analyzing" 15 seconds of news for 15 minutes.
- pstuart 6mo agoTV news is garbage everywhere.
- throwaway27448 6mo ago> Although there was never (even today) enough news to fill a 24hr period. Of course there's enough news; they simply choose not to report on it. This is true both domestically and certainly around the world. Presumably this is a mixture of highly dubious editorial decision and some reasoning that this doesn't make money.
- james_pm 6mo agoThe original "Situation Room" concept with Wolf was pulling in all these live feeds from all over the place and reporting on them. Car chase in LA! Train crash in India! Protest in Paris! Let's go live! They had a web subscription product around 2006 that gave you access to just watch all these raw feeds from CNN Affiliates all over the world. It was like Periscope but all "professional" feeds.
- jimt1234 6mo agoI also remember when CNN first appeared. I was a kid, but I recall people (adults, Boomers) sort of rejected it at first. I think there was a trust issue, not just with CNN, but cable-TV in general. But yeah, I recall people thinking CNN was a passing fad, like it would fail in a year or so because people liked/trusted the local broadcasters and network anchors they'd known for most of their lives.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoI just remember it as a channel you could bring up that always had the top headlines right now. Yes they would repeat a lot of it every 15-30 minutes but if you didn't want to wait for the national TV news at 6:00pm you could just turn on CNN and feel informed. It was also the start of people getting addicted to the need to know everything all the time, later amplified 100x by the rise of the internet and mobile phones/media. I remember some people getting addicted to CNN, just had it on all the time.
- Jtsummers 6mo agoThere was CNN and HNN (CNN2 at one point). CNN had more variety of coverage, interviews, etc. HNN was the one that repeated itself every 30 minutes or so (if nothing new came in), it was more like watching the national evening news at essentially any time of day. Then in the '00s they switched over to do more talking head junk.
- unselect5917 6mo agoNews isn't watched, it's read. There's extraordinary convincing power in having a talking head say things to you. You're way more likely to believe it regardless of truth. It's why they all do it.
- smcin 6mo agoI don't think so. In latter decades CNN descended into a spin zone with blatant conflicts-of-interest, such as: - CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux was married to Karine Jean-Pierre (Biden's press sec, 2022-5) - CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour is married to James Rubin, (was Clinton admin asst. secretary of state for public affairs, 1997-2000) - Jen Psaki's 2017 revolving-door when she was said to be actively shopping herself for a job at CNN while still Obama's WH communications director (no 12-month "cooling-off" period). Left WH 1/2017, joined CNN 2/2017. - for decades now, CNN seems to function like a retirement home for Clinton-era operatives like James Carville and Donna Brazile. In particular this was a blatant conflict-of-interest in the 2016 primary (Hilary vs Bernie, and the DNC shenanigans). I've seen many bloggers say that TV loves these commentators not because they're that relevant or insightful, but because they steer candidates and their budgets towards big wasteful traditional media spends (and not more targeted internet campaigns, like Obama 2008 or Trump 2016). - the legendary 2004 takedown of CNN's Crossfire debate show (a younger Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala) by Jon Stewart ("You're on CNN! The show that leads into me is puppets making prank phone calls! What is wrong with you?") I don't find talking heads persuasive, and one simple antidote is to flick between coverage of the same issue on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, PBS, ABC/NBC/CBS, BBC, DW, RT, foreign channels, etc. to see conflicting narratives, or sometimes conflicting facts. Maybe the better converse question is: when did CNN stop being any more credible and up-to-the-minute than other news sources (incl. internet ones, or SM)? Maybe late 1990s. Its rise and fall parallel the Clinton admin.
- smcin 5mo ago(Why did this get downvoted? I'm genuinely interested in how CNN went from being a premium news source (Somalia 1993) to the current thing, after several takeovers. This has contemporary relevance, like an inability to make objective criticism of the DNC in 2016 or 2024). Orthogonal to whether people find print vs video trustworthy or authoritative, which I think is conditioned by what each person grew up considering to be trustworthy or authoritative.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- gosub100 6mo agoThey know better than everyone what people watch. Apparently it's not profitable to do in-depth journalism. As someone else in this thread said, the bobble-head analysis is what people watched (past tense, because now they are the "legacy media"). I think it's strongly related to the market for "reaction videos" on youtube, or even the early-2000's VH1 shows where a famous/popular person would react to music videos. Perhaps people want to project their emotions onto an avatar?
- thrownaway561 6mo agocnn email alert was how I learned that 9/11 was happening. love or hate the man and the news outlet, but you have to admit that they ushered in the news era of the internet.
- dylan604 6mo agoCNN was how we watched Desert Storm in '91
- antonchekhov 6mo agoNowadays, almost any news org can have journalists reporting from across the planet in real-time. But back before internet connectivity was ubuquitous, StarLink satellites, smartphones and streaming video everywhere, CNN had a few reporters who had the then-very-rare satellite phones (I think they were almost small-backpack sized) who could report from Iraq on-site during Desert Storm, and it was revolutionary. CNN's ratings went through the roof during that war, and after the war was over, it was reported they raised their ad rates over 1000%, because they had this new giant audience. It really felt like a transformation of public news media.
- dylan604 6mo agoIt wasn't just the sat phones, but they had cameras with satellite links as well. Plus, CNN was the only team that stuck around in Baghdad when everyone else left town. From their hotel room, we watched with them the unedited footage as all of the tracers from the AA lit up the night sky in a way few outside of military service had ever seen. The DoD provided additional footage of missiles through windows, but CNN was the place where everyone watched the live views. This was a pivotal time for news coverage. The only thing that is at the same level was the JFK assassination. Until then, newspapers were the main source of news. The JFK coverage is where TV took over with live coverage instead of reading yesterday's news. Throw in the live coverage of Oswald being shot, and it was pretty much a standing 8 count with the internet being the final TKO for newspapers. PBS did a special on this called "JFK: Breaking the News"[0] [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7yAaUmKwKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7yAaUmKwKs
- westurner 6mo agoNow we can make a "Captain Planet" movie to honor Ted. Captain Planet and the Planeteers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planeteers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planete...
- bsimpson 6mo agoTIL Turner was a creator of Captain Planet.
- daveslash 6mo agoI think I heard somewhere (can't find reliable source right now) that he created Captain Planet as a revenge. He had some renewable energy initiative/deal that he was trying to get pushed through that got clobbered by big oil lobbyists. So he created Captain Planet as some revenge scheme.
- bitwize 6mo agoRelevant: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uVzLzClY2E8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uVzLzClY2E8
- westurner 6mo agoHadn't heard that. Oil price shock and a curiously delayed hostage situation displaced Carter in the 1980 election. And we've debt-financed trillions in oil commodity market manipulating wars since. From "The surprising story behind the making of 'Captain Planet'" (2021) https://grist.org/culture/captain-planet-planeteers-real-story/ https://grist.org/culture/captain-planet-planeteers-real-sto... : > “Our mission was to inspire and to educate the next generation of environmental activists,” Pyle said. She and producer Nicholas Boxer made it a point to slip as much planetary realness into the show’s fantastical plotlines. In fact, Pyle says many ideas were taken directly from the Global 2000 Report to the President, a 1980 paper commissioned by Jimmy Carter that warned of environmental disaster should policies fail to account for the world’s booming population growth. The Global 2000 Report to the President (aka "The Doomsday Report") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_2000_Report_to_the_President https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_2000_Report_to_the_... Looks like it was predictively close on population estimates, but the 100% increase in food price production wasn't accurate (though we do have soil depletion and foreign mineral depletion instead). FAO Food Price Index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Food_Price_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Food_Price_Index Unknown how much affect there was on the indicator due to calling attention to the indicator with such report. /? oil disasters prior to 1980: https://www.google.com/search?q=oil+disasters+prior+to+1980 https://www.google.com/search?q=oil+disasters+prior+to+1980 Ixtoc I oil spill in 1979 (2nd after Deepwater Horizon, which also resulted in dying dolphins and fish and birds on the beach) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill Earth Day (April 22nd) was created in response to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day#1969_Santa_Barbara_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day#1969_Santa_Barbara_o... Big oil lobbyists haven't paid their bills for foreign wars. Over the estimated interval of 1980 through 2000, Gross National Debt to GDP ratio grew from 35% to 59%. GND-to-GDP is approximately 120% in 2026. The Carter plan for renewables would've saved trillions of dollars and many lives compared to the 1980-1992 Reagan-Bush debt-financed oil wars. FWIU the Limits to Growth report is more accurate than the Global 2000 report that - TIL - led to Captain Planet and the Planeteers for us kids back then.
- vikingerik 6mo agoThe Onion headline should be: Ted Turner dies at 87:05
- simmons 6mo agoAh, that took a second to get. If anyone is stumped, it's a reference to Turner Time [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TBS_(American_TV_channel)#Turner_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TBS_(American_TV_channel)#Turn...
- ButlerianJihad 6mo agoThey are planning a 6-minute funeral and a 30-second commitment, while the left side teases a documentary on the birth of Mark Thompson's children https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreditsPushback https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreditsPushback
- Aeroi 6mo agoBefore starting CNN, Ted Turner captained the sailing Yacht Courageous to an America's Cup victor 4-0 over the Australians in Newport, RI during what was arguably sailings hay day.
- Aeroi 6mo agogreat watch on his accomplishments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qknXQgqIjzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qknXQgqIjzI
- stego-tech 6mo agoOh my god I finally get a very specific Harvey Birdman joke as a result of this factoid. Fuck me, Phil Ken Sebben as a parody of Ted Turner kinda works.
- openuntil3am 6mo agoIncidentally, Turner created Cartoon Network.
- stego-tech 6mo agoThat I was aware of. I'm more familiar with his media and wildlife conservation efforts than his business acumen or sports achievements. Captain Planet, Turner Classic Movies, Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network, etc.
- dhosek 6mo agoHe’s been pretty quiet in the news for a while so he sort of fell into the category of those famous people who when they died, half your response is a bit of surprise that they were still alive (which is neither a good nor bad thing, just a thing¹). ⸻ 1. I once had an idea for a party game which involved people trying to guess whether a formerly prominent person was alive or dead.
- christoff12 6mo agoI'd play that game
- chrisparsons 6mo agoThe MTV show Remote Control had a round called "Dead or Canadian", which has morphed into pub quizzes as "Dead or Canadian, Both or Neither?", which is shockingly tricky at times.
- gbacon 6mo agoThe Dead or Canadian category on its own was surprisingly tricky. Remote Control was fun TV.
- lotsoweiners 6mo agoI guess it would need an internet connection to work but sounds fun.
- dhosek 6mo agoI made a list that I kept on my phone of potential names (Provided below with the answers removed—I made the list three years ago so I know at least one of the living then are alive no more). Actors: Gary Burghoff Alan Alda Wayne Rogers Jamie Farr Loretta Switt Harry Morgan Mike Farrell David Ogden Stiers McLean Stevenson Lary Linville Cast of Gilligan’s Island Crocodile Dundee Musicians: Pete Best Stuart Sutcliffe Frankie Avalon Annette Funicello Politics: Henry Kissinger Geraldine Ferraro Jane Byrne Michael Bilandic Eugene Sawyer Eddie Vrdolyak
- misterboo72 6mo agoAs a film fan I remember all of the outrage over his plan to colorize classic films. He was also a critic of the film "Taxi Driver" and complained about the film's values. He was everywhere in the late 70s and early 80s. WTCG -- The Super Station.
- schlauerfox 6mo agoCan't find the source but the quote I heard attributed to Orson Welles to Turner wanting to colorize the purposefully black-and-white Citizen Kane was "Tell Ted Turner to keep his goddamn crayolas off my movies"
- 5555624 6mo agoBy 1980, WTCG had become "WTBS" and then "TBS SuperStation" and simply "TBS"
- tren_hard 6mo ago> In 2010, 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. Does The Giving Pledge still exist? Will this happen?
- georgemcbay 6mo agoThe Giving Pledge still exists, but like most philanthropy it has always been more about PR and reputation washing rather than real public good. The majority of people who have died since making the pledge did not meet the terms they agreed to and the vast majority of people still alive who made the pledge are on track to fail to meet the terms as their wealth is growing significantly faster than their charitable donations. This is not to say everyone who has made the Giving Pledge is bad, there are some people on the list who have legitimately done a lot of good, but being on the list has overall been a meaningless indicator of actual outcomes.
- john_strinlai 6mo ago>more about PR and reputation washing rather than real public good. there is a parable i cant quite remember, but something along the lines of "the starving kid does not care where the food comes from". that doesn't quite capture it... but in this context: the people receiving the money/help do not care if they got it because of "reputation washing" or "real public good". they get the help in both scenarios, and that's what matters. as long as the money is going to actual, real charities/non-profits/good causes... who cares whether the billionaire did it because they are truly generous or because they thought "this will look good in the news"?
- tyg13 6mo agoI'd even argue that we should encourage _more_ of this behavior, if it leads to more charity. The idea that you have to do good deeds without expecting any kind of reward or recognition seems distinctly Christian to me. For Christians, the intent of this requirement is to ensure people remain humble (pride is a sin, of course) but this clearly contradicts the (imo much more relevant) principle of self interest. You can't really expect people to do something for other people without some kind of reward -- be it the promise of eternal salvation, some kind of social credit, or simply an internal sense of satisfaction. As long as people aren't merely simulating charity to receive it, I don't see any downside to allowing people a bit of social reward for their giving.
- lubujackson 6mo agoI remember around 2000 I read about how Ted Turner started his empire: he bought podunk local TV stations that had loose contracts with media owners that allowed them to broadcast shows as often as they wanted, with no restrictions. In the those days, local TV stations were broadcast just like radio and so the assumption was the contract only concerned the audience the TV station's antenna could reach. But the contract didn't specify this. Recognizing the loophole, he bought multiple stations and combined that content into its own cable channel(s) that played old movies and TV shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Turner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Turner This was the basis that allowed him to branch into CNN and more. When I learned about this, the story was very applicable to me at the time, as my startup had acquired licenses for content that was historically sold directly to libraries by a salesman who would negotiate with each library individually. He used a standard contract. When we contacted the company to license content for display on the internet, they gave us a ridiculous contract with a small one time fee and access to display the content forever. Only after reasoning through their business model and history did we understand how this occurred, which was exactly the same type of gap that Ted Turner had exploited.
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- superfrank 6mo agoWow. It wasn't until I read your comment that it clicked that the Turner in Turner Classic Movies is Ted Turner.
- mc32 6mo agoThere was a bit of a furore when he tried colorizing old B&W movies… imagine if he’d had AI to do colorization, upscaling and sharpening back then! Guess we’ll still have Ted’s Montana Grills for a while…
- Forgeties79 6mo agoRightfully so if you ask me. Out the gate think about the implications of determining, say, skin color. I’m not saying “under no circumstances should it be done” but I also think people don’t appreciate the importance of the decisions made and the politics/implicit biases under the hood. I’m not even getting in to artistic intent and impact on lighting here either. Colorizing b&w images is still debated to this day.
- voidfunc 6mo agoGreatest Contribution to the world is Turner Movie Classics and restoring all that old Hollywood film.
- bsimpson 6mo agoTurner also gave us Cartoon Network and [adult swim].
- bulatov 6mo agoTed personally funded the 1986 Goodwill Games in Seattle as a direct response to the US/USSR mutual Olympic boycotts of '80 and '84, losing ~$26M out of pocket. CNN also hosted the famous US-Soviet "space bridge" TV linkups around the same time. RIP.
- echelon 5mo agoHe also helped Atlanta land the 1996 Olympic games.
- nikitalita 6mo agoIt's funny to me that, whenever these uber-rich old ghouls that were widely despised like 40 years ago die, they're remembered fondly, simply because we have much, much worse rich old ghouls now.
- dyauspitr 6mo agoTed Turner seemed like a solid guy, not just relatively better.
- harimau777 6mo agoAgreed. I'm generally super cynical (it's something I'm working on!) but Turner seems like a decent person.
- Supermancho 6mo agoAlthough Ted Turner’s net worth at the time of his death in May 2026 was estimated between $2.2 billion and $2.8 billion, his politics were very progressive. > In 1996, Turner admitted, "For the 10 years I ran [the team], it was a disaster. ... As I relinquished control of the Braves and gave somebody else the responsibility, it did well." When's the last time you heard a billionaire say something like that? > "We're the only first-world country that doesn't have universal healthcare and it's a disgrace." > Iran's nuclear position: "They're a sovereign state. We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10? We don't say anything about Israel — they've got 100 of them approximately — or India or Pakistan or Russia." > dubbed opponents of abortion "bozos" > In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror > in 2008, Turner asserted on PBS's Charlie Rose that if steps are not taken to address global warming, most people would die and "the rest of us will be cannibals". There's more than wikipedia covers, but you get the idea.
- parineum 6mo ago>> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror That's a funny thing to mark as "progressive" as I don't think that'd have been considered progressive until fairly recently. Plus, he walked it back. > In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror: "The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism." He apologized for that and the remarks in 2011 about the 9/11 hijackers, but also defended himself: "Look, I'm a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word ... I mean, I don't type my speeches, then sit up there and read them off the teleprompter, you know. I wing it. He was also uncomfortably concerned with population growth. > Turner also said in the interview that he advocated Americans having no more than two children. In 2010, he stated that the People's Republic of China's one-child policy should be implemented. I'm not sure I'd call him progressive. Thinking Iran should have nuclear weapons doesn't seem to make sense from any perspective unless you want them to use them. Frankly, he seems like pretty standard anti-natalist environmentalist to me.
- schlauerfox 6mo agoSomeone needs to update the simpsons wiki : ( https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Ted_Turner https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Ted_Turner
- mekdoonggi 6mo agoTed Turner owned the largest American Bison herd (~45k animals), supplying meat for his "Ted's Montana Grill" restaurants. I don't know much else about the man, but as a supporter of Bison I can commend that part of his legacy. An impressive vision and execution.
- foolfoolz 6mo agohow do you own a herd
- DANmode 6mo ago…
- TheGrassyKnoll 6mo agoOur illustrious president doesn't want any bison. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/us/politics/trump-buffalos-montana.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/us/politics/trump-buffalo...
- DANmode 6mo agoThat’s not why the person I’m replying to doesn’t understand the relationship between humans and herds of animals.
- cman1444 6mo agoThe same way you own anything. You buy it or make (breed) it.
- Fordec 6mo agoThe same way every beef farmer does.
- jihadjihad 6mo agoOne head of bison at a time.
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- Henchman21 6mo agoI'd say it changed it extremely negatively. Before CNN, the news was reported when it happened. AFTER CNN, creating "news" to fill the gaps between news actually worth reporting happened. This was the start of the slippery slope to the news being little more than entertainment.
- jcgrillo 6mo agoIt seems like a powerful lesson in good intentions and their unintended consequences.
- Henchman21 5mo agoIt does seem like that. But it isn't a lesson as we won't learn anything from it.
- washadjeffmad 6mo agoWhen CNN was sold to Time Warner, we lost the last voice in cable news from outside of New York.
- paddy_m 6mo agoTed Turner won the America's cup there in 1977. His team named Courageous was legendary. Robbie Doyle was a team member, and got a degree from Harvard in applied physics. In the middle of the trials to see which team would defend the cup for the US, he remade the sails to be more competitive. Doyle went on to found a racing sailmaking company. I used to live in Newport, RI. I love sailing and introducing people to the world of sailing. When I had guests I asked them to watch this NBC video about Ted's 77 campaign [1]. It really captures the history of Newport, sailing, and Ted [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr7-BwzceYI&list=PLXEMPXZ3PY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr7-BwzceYI&list=PLXEMPXZ3PY...
- jcgrillo 6mo agoThere was recently another good film on Netflix about the Australian victory at the 1983 America's Cup[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSmns9QWPiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSmns9QWPiE
- ftcHn 6mo agoSounds great. I'll watch it with the kids. We've recently done this podcast about the history of the cup and it was funny and fascinating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUZmk_G6rFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUZmk_G6rFE
- herodoturtle 6mo ago“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise!” - Ted Turner Side note, for those of you that enjoy biographies, his autobiography “Call Me Ted” is a real page-turner (pun intended). A highly inspirational story of entrepreneurship, which includes a raw and authentic account of his flaws. A true legend. Rest in peace Ted.
- geodel 6mo agoThere is 4 part series on HBO with same name ( I think). I watched it last year. Learned a lot from business to personal life.
- bitwize 6mo agoI was just talking about Ted Turner. I was at the in-laws' the other day and I said to my father-in-law, "Ted Turner—you probably already know this because you probably met Ted Turner, but he used to run an evening cartoon block for adults on TNT with old Looney Tunes and all the racist jokes and sexual innuendos preserved." And he was like "Yep, I met him several times." Because he was a big-deal media lawyer in the 80s and 90s. Here's to you, Mr. Turner. Captain Planet was blatant propaganda, but you were largely responsible for my nerdy interest in animation.
- BoingBoomTschak 6mo agoThe same man that supposedly wanted to "serve" Bill Clinton (possibly play Minitrue)? (cf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRs46IfC2ls&t=89s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRs46IfC2ls&t=89s)
- NDlurker 6mo agoThat's a clip from my favorite documentary, Spin https://youtu.be/BcKhnzEd6x0 https://youtu.be/BcKhnzEd6x0
- seizethecheese 6mo agoIf you’re intrigued by the comments here, I highly recommend his memoir Call Me Ted.
- joecool1029 6mo ago#4 largest private land owner in the US: https://landreport.com/land-report-100#top-100 https://landreport.com/land-report-100#top-100 Wonder what's going to be done with it now that he's dead.
- e40 6mo agoJane Fonda was his last spouse. I hope he left it to her. She's a very cool lady with a great head on her shoulders. A recent interview (The Interview, NYT) is worth listening to. She talked very positive about Ted in this interview, which made me think they had a good relationship still.
- throwawaypath 6mo ago[flagged]
- decimalenough 6mo agoShe was early, consistent, vocal, brave, and in the light of history morally right in her opposition to the Vietnam War.
- relativeadv 6mo agoposition is one thing. implementation of that position is another.
- gedy 6mo agoMaybe, but her posing in North Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns was pretty despicable, not brave. Nepo baby PR stunt or not.
- jst1fthsdys 6mo agoThe war was despicable. The napalming of children was despicable. The mass rape and murder of children and women at My Lai was despicable. What she did was not that.
- ingen0s 6mo agoRIP legend
- susiecambria 6mo agoMet him at the Black Pearl in Newport, RI during his America's Cup days. Gruff guy but took the time for this fan girl.
- drfloyd51 6mo agoHe died at 8:05 EST.
- rao-v 6mo agoThere is a good case to be made that he (rather impulsively) caused more impactful charitable giving than any other person. He essentially created the modern “billionaire giving to global causes” movement by deciding to donate a billion dollars during a speech. https://x.com/NickKristof/status/2052038692949406188?s=20 https://x.com/NickKristof/status/2052038692949406188?s=20
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- masihullah-yari 6mo ago[flagged]
- Merad 6mo agoDefinitely have mixed feelings about whats become of CNN and how the 24 hour news cycle has affected the world, but I'm very grateful that Turner financed the movie Gettysburg [0]. One of my favorite movies, based on one of my favorite books. I've probably seen it at least 50 times. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_(1993_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_(1993_film)
- watersb 6mo agoI remember when Ted Turner bought a scrappy Atlanta TV station, Channel 17. The channels refer to specific radio frequency allocations. Anything below Channel 12 is "Very High Frequency", and anything above that is "Ultra High Frequency". The Channel number was basically arbitrary, but went up in frequency in numerical order, so Channel 5 had a higher frequency than Channel 17. The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength, and in general the smaller the area of coverage. Fewer viewers. The big networks dominated VHF, megawatt transmitters that could reach the entire metro area and beyond. In the Atlanta area, we had all three major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC on Channels 2, 5, and 11. UHF was the domain of independent operators, who filled airtime with anything they could get. Mostly old TV shows and movies from syndicate distributors. Channel 17 was mostly old movies, while Channel 36 featured old TV shows. "Superman" and "The Lone Ranger". "Star Trek". Later in the evening, 1950s schlock horror or flying saucer films... With an uneven format and transmission range that limited viewership and advertising revenue, it could be more challenging for the UHF stations to make ends meet. When Channel 17 ran into financial difficulties, Ted Turner pumped it up. UHF stations typically signed off at night, went off the air, but the Turner Superstation was 24 hours a day. Apparently, Ted Turner was playing a long game. (Also apparently, I watched a lot of television as a 1970s latchkey kid.)
- jdeibele 6mo agoThink you mean channel 17 had a higher frequency. Channel 5 would be VHF (low) in the range 54 MHz – 88 MHz while Channel 17 would UHV in the range 470 MHz – 698 MHz. You're absolutely right about UHF stations being difficult to tune in.
- watersb 5mo agoThanks, yes: Channel 17 higher frequency. (I tried to read what I wrote for errors, as autocorrect can smash any attempt at careful writing. But I didn't catch this. Was invisible to me because I was reading the meaning of what I was attempting to say. I think I just learned about semantic typos. Meme-os?)
- jdofaz 6mo agoIt flipped after the analog shutoff in 2009, most US TV stations are UHF now (even if the tv displays their VHF channel number)
- sleight42 6mo agoOn the lighter side, and as a sort of RIP, https://youtu.be/uVzLzClY2E8?si=Erm6_WlW0xiEgVnk https://youtu.be/uVzLzClY2E8?si=Erm6_WlW0xiEgVnk
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoDelete the ?si=... part because it's tracking you personally and is unnecessary.
- InTheArena 6mo agoIt's also worth remembering that Ted Turner also funded and asked for editorial changes to the the movie version of Gods and Generals, which downplayed slavyer and embraced the Confederate "lost cause" ideology. Most historians consider that as denial-ism on the same order as holocaust denial and the "stabbed in the back" claim that Hitler's used to seize power in the first place. He also attacked his own employees because of their religious beliefs. He later apologized for much of this, but if you want to find some of the reason for the modern return of fascism, you have to consider this.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- joshuaxls 6mo agoThis is still my favorite Onion article ever: “Ted Turner Sends Self Back In Time To Prevent AOL Time Warner Merger” https://theonion.com/ted-turner-sends-self-back-in-time-to-prevent-aol-time-1819566797/ https://theonion.com/ted-turner-sends-self-back-in-time-to-p...
- psychanarch 6mo agoHe had a "Doomsday Video" made for CNN to play when the world ends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Doomsday_Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Doomsday_Video
- arian_ 5mo agoTed Turner built a 24-hour news network when everyone said nobody would watch news at 3 AM. Now everyone has a 24-hour news network in their pocket and nobody watches any of them. He was right about the demand but wrong about who would supply it.
- enahs-sf 5mo agoWhat’s going to happen to all that land he owned?
- jinjin2 5mo agoTed Turner also created the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award, which was a half a million dollars literary prize for coming up with a book that offered “creative solutions to humanity's urgent problems". The winner was Daniel Quinn’s “Ismael”. Quite a remarkable book that probably never would have been published without this.
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoRIP. If anyone wanted to hear interesting Ted Turner anecdotes, they're found throughout Keith Olbermann's podcast.
- latexr 5mo ago> (…) founded CNN, a pioneering 24-hour network that revolutionized television news (…) > (…) audacious vision to deliver news from around the world in real time, at all hours (…) And thus marked the beginning of the end. 24-hour news, like social media, are a net negative for society. Networks have to keep making shit up to pad the never-ending run time, and they’re always bad news, making the world seem worse than it is and radicalising more people. It’s a version of doomscrolling where you don’t even have to scroll. It’s social media where only one a few people can post and their only goal is engagement. Seems like he did good things in his life, and even here I don’t think he could’ve predicted (or even intended) the negative effects of this invention, but it doesn’t mean it should be celebrated (though this is on CNN’s website, so of course they will). I wonder if, like Nobel, he eventually realised the thing he created did more harm than good.
- nticompass 5mo agoLast night on AEW Dynamite [1], Tony Schiavone and Sting had some very nice things to say about Ted Turner. I didn't know he'd died until then. They both talked about how Ted started WCW and how he defended pro wrestling when certain execs wanted to cancel it. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bXSILHvWe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bXSILHvWe0
- Anamon 5mo agoIt always seemed like Turner was the last media mogul with a conscience (there were never that many in the first place). As the article mentions, it's kind of surprising that he didn't turn into a villain given what he went through, both during his childhood and his massive success in business later. Proof that it's possible for people to stay grounded, empathetic, and true to themselves despite running into wealth and power. No one can say he didn't live a full life. Turner Classic Movies is, in my opinion, the only TV channel actually worth paying for. Curation, curveballs, and great commentary by fans and experts -- that's what you won't find on streaming servies.
- tsoukase 5mo ago[flagged]
- tomhow 5mo agoPlease don't post like this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html