Remembering Ted Turner — the Anti-Trump

Ted Turner had been absent from the national scene for so long — he lost control of his media companies more than two decades ago, and more recently drifted into dementia-induced isolation — that his death this week was a somewhat jarring callback to an all-but-forgotten era.

But what an era it was. I was television critic for the Atlanta Constitution for four years in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, when Turner was at his entrepreneurial, newsmaking peak. He was an endlessly fascinating story: a TV innovator (inventor of the first satellite-distributed “superstation”), a loudmouth, always quotable yachtsman and sports tycoon (owner of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks); and of course, the creator of CNN, the nation’s first 24-hour television news network.  

Brash and iconoclastic, he was an intriguing mix of traditional Southern conservatism and liberal idealism.  In the early years, he aligned himself with Christian evangelicals and others who campaigned for “family-friendly” TV programming; he hated the glut of network crime series and dumb game shows, and loved wholesome, old-school sitcoms like The Andy Griffith Show and Leave It to Beaver. “That’s great stuff,” he said. “There’s always nice people in the show; it’s the kind of thing that children and parents can watch together; and there are little messages in it.”  

Yet in 1982 he paid a controversial visit to Fidel Castro of Cuba, in defiance of the U.S. government’s boycott of the Communist regime. When I interviewed him about the trip, Ted regaled me with photos (off the record, of course) of his deep-sea fishing expedition with Fidel. “He was very nice to me,” Turner said. “And I certainly think he’d like to have good relations with the United States. He said it’s hard to understand that we can trade with Russia and not trade with them. After all, he’s just a knothole on the log. I told him, ‘Well, you’re always saying bad things about us. Ease up a bit.’” 

Turner’s decision to launch what he dubbed the Cable News Network was just as much a show of defiance — against the broadcasting veterans who were skeptical that such a venture could succeed, particularly by a underfinanced, Atlanta-based operation staffed largely by local-news veterans and network castoffs (along with a few name stars, notably former CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr). I was there on the lawn of the old antebellum Progressive Club— converted into CNN’s first headquarters — when Turner inaugurated the news network’s start-up on June 1, 1980. As the spigot of nonstop news was turned on (with a story on the shooting of Vernon Jordan, director of the National Urban League), Ted strode around the newsroom, proudly surveying his new operation (“Nobody believed we could do it,” he chirped, “but there it is”) — before asking for a TV set, so he could watch his Atlanta Braves’ afternoon game.  

Turner’s colorful career bears inevitable comparison to that of the media-savvy business mogul currently in the White House. Like Donald Trump, Turner was the inheritor of his father’s business — outdoor advertising across the South, in the Turner family’s case. Both were headstrong risk-takers, with a penchant for irreverent, off-the-cuff, sometimes offensive comments (as well as a reputation for womanizing). 

But there were big differences. Unlike Trump, most of Turner’s risky business ventures turned out to be successful. What’s more, as he grew richer and more famous, Turner plowed his money into public-spirited ventures that never would have occurred to Donald Trump.  After the Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Turner created the Goodwill Games, to foster better relations between the two global superpowers. He became an environmental activist, even launching a cartoon series, Captain Planet, to enlist kids in the cause. He was a prolific philanthropist, donating $1 billion to the United Nations.  

Indeed, in important ways, Turner was the anti-Trump. He was boastful and sometimes crude (and, unlike Trump, a heavy drinker). But in all my dealings with him, I never found him vindictive, dishonest, or mean-spirited. He was open-minded, naïvely optimistic, confident in his ability to affect the world in positive ways. He had the life spirit. Trump is the death star. 

In the end, of course, it was the other guy, the one now building monuments to himself all over Washington, D.C., who wound up having a more profound effect on the world. Ted Turner, alas, would have done a better job.