Ted Turner

Ted Turner is an American media-and-business mogul whose six-decade career has produced multiple defining 20th-century American TV-broadcasting roles — particularly his 1980 founding of the Cable News Network (CNN), the first 24-hour cable-news TV network. He was born Robert Edward Turner III on November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio, into an American working-class family. His father Robert Edward Turner Jr. was a Cincinnati-area billboard-advertising-business operator, and his mother Florence Rooney was a homemaker. The 1947 family relocation to Savannah, Georgia (when Ted was nine) launched his early-career path.

His education at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island (1956–1960; without earning a degree, after his March 1960 Brown University expulsion for the Brown girls'-dorm-housing alcohol-related disorderly-conduct incident) launched his early-career path. The March 5, 1963 sudden death of his father from self-inflicted gunshot suicide (when Ted was 24) shaped his early-life biographical narrative — across which he subsequently took over the Turner Outdoor Advertising company.

His 1970 acquisition of the Atlanta-area UHF TV station WTCG (channel 17) launched his early-career American TV-broadcasting public profile. His 1976 satellite-broadcasting expansion of WTCG (subsequently renamed WTBS, and eventually TBS Superstation) — across which the Atlanta-area station became the first American satellite-broadcast TV "superstation" — produced his late-1970s American TV-broadcasting public profile.

His June 1, 1980 founding of the Cable News Network (CNN) — at the Atlanta-area Techwood Drive headquarters — launched his 1980s American TV-news public profile. CNN became the first American 24-hour cable-news TV network, and launched the foundational documents of late-20th-century American cable-news-TV-broadcasting industry.

His 1976 acquisition of the Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball team and his subsequent 1976–2007 ownership tenure produced his late-1970s and 1980s American Major League Baseball owner public profile. His 1986 acquisition of the MGM/UA film library (for $1.5 billion) and his subsequent 1988 founding of the Turner Network Television (TNT) cable channel expanded his American TV-broadcasting public profile.

His September 1996 merger of Turner Broadcasting System with Time Warner — and his subsequent ongoing role as the Time Warner Vice Chairman across 1996–2003 — produced his later American business-public-profile. He was married to American actress Jane Fonda from 1991 to 2001. He has five children.

His name Ted is the English short form of Edward (from the Old English root meaning "prosperous protector"). Ted has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names since 1880.