CNN founder Ted Turner death: Television pioneer and Jane Fonda’s ex husband has died aged 87
The founder of CNN and ex-husband of Jane Fonda - Ted Turner - has died at 87.
Famed for once saying “If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect”, the brash and outspoken television pioneer, Ted Turner, has died at the age of 87. The CNN founder will be remembered for transforming the news landscape and living a life many might only dream of.
His death at his home near Tallahassee, Florida, was reported by CNN on Wednesday (May 6), citing a Turner Enterprises news release.
Married three times, most famously to actress Jane Fonda, he was also known for racing yachts and owning huge chunks of the American West. During his lifetime he earned himself the nicknames Captain Outrageous and The Mouth of the South.
Mr Turner’s signature achievement was creating CNN, the first 24-hour, all-news television network in 1980. In part, Mr Turner’s own frustration with television news was the instigator. He often worked past 8pm, 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 11pm.
He took a chance by starting the operation sometimes derided as the “chicken noodle network” in the early days of cable television, living in an apartment above its Atlanta office. In a 2016 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Mr Turner recounted what it took to get started.
He said: “I was going to have to hit hard and move incredibly fast and that’s what we did – move so fast that the (broadcast) networks wouldn’t have the time to respond, because they should have done this, not me. But they didn’t have the imagination.”
CNN’s 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’s outbreak, with anti-aircraft tracers streaking across the sky and correspondents flinching from the concussion of bombs.
By the time he sold his Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner in a 1996 media megadeal, Mr Turner had turned his late father’s billboard company into a global conglomerate that included seven major cable networks, three professional sports teams and two hit film studios.
Mr Turner was promised a continued role in CNN after his company’s sale to Time Warner for 7.3 billion dollars in stock, but was gradually pushed out, much to his regret. “I made a mistake,” he later said. “The mistake I made was losing control of the company.”
Long since out of the television business, Mr Turner concentrated on philanthropy and his more than two million acres of property, including the nation’s largest bison herd. His garrulous personality sometimes overshadowed a driven, risk-taking business acumen.
A life that could never be considered pedestrian, Mr Turner owned professional sports teams in Atlanta, defended the America’s Cup in yachting in 1977 and donated a stunning one billion US dollars to United Nations charities.
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.
In the 1993 biography It Ain't As Easy as It Looks by Porter Bibb, Mr Turner discussed his struggles with mental illness and use of lithium. In later life he was slowed by a diagnosis of Lewy body dementia. In January 2025, Mr Turner was hospitalized with pneumonia and later recuperated at a rehabilitation facility.
After three failed marriages, in 2012 Turner revealed he had four girlfriends, which he acknowledged was complicated but nonetheless easier than being married. He had five children.