Robert Edward Turner III (November 19, 1938 – May 6, 2026) was an American businessman, television producer, media proprietor, and philanthropist. He founded CNN, the first 24-hour cable news channel, and WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television. Turner also founded the television networks TNT, TBS, The Cartoon Network, Inc., and Turner Classic Movies, and acquired professional wrestling company Jim Crockett Promotions, which became the basis of the promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW).
Turner began his media empire in March 1963 when he took over his father's billboard businessTurner Outdoor Advertising, then worth $1 millionafter his father's suicide at the age of 53. His purchase of an Atlanta UHF station in 1970 began the Turner Broadcasting System. In 1980, he founded CNN, one of the most prominent news networks in the world. Turner owned the Atlanta Braves baseball team, which won the 1995 World Series. He turned the team into a nationally popular franchise, and he launched the charitable Goodwill Games. Turner was also a passionate proponent of professional wrestling as a television product, having aired wrestling on TBS dating back to 1971, and credited wrestling with helping TBS gain a national footprint with the coming of cable television. In 1988, Turner purchased Jim Crockett Promotions, which he then rebranded as WCW, a promotion that would supersede the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) in popularity during the mid-1990s, an era now called the Monday Night War.
As a philanthropist, he gave $1 billion to create the United Nations Foundation, a public charity to broaden U.S. support for the United Nations; Turner served as co-chairman of its board of directors. In 2001, he co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) with U.S. senator Sam Nunn (), a non-partisan organization dedicated to reducing global reliance on and preventing the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
In 2020, Forbes awarded Turner a perfect philanthropy score of 5, the highest possible rating, placing him among an exclusive group of just ten Forbes 400 members, alongside Warren Buffett, George Soros, Eli Broad, and others who have each given away at least 20% of their fortune.
Turner was also known for his controversial statements, which earned him the nicknames "The Mouth of the South" and "Captain Outrageous". He was the largest private landowner in the United States until John C. Malone surpassed him in 2011. He used much of his land for ranches to re-popularize bison meat for his Ted's Montana Grill chain, having amassed the largest privately owned bison herd in the world. Turner devoted much of his assets to environmental causes and also created the environmental-themed animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
Early life Robert Edward Turner III was born on November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Florence (née Rooney) and Robert Edward Turner II, a billboard magnate. When he was nine, his family moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he was raised as an Episcopalian. He attended The McCallie School, a private boys' preparatory school in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Turner attended Brown University and was vice-president of the Brown Debating Union and captain of the sailing team. He became a member of Kappa Sigma. Turner initially majored in classics. His father wrote that this choice made him "appalled, even horrified", and that he "almost puked". Turner later changed his major to economics, but before receiving a degree, he was expelled for having a female student in his dormitory room. He was awarded an honorary B.A. from Brown University in November 1989 when he returned to campus to give the keynote address for the National Association of College Broadcasters' second annual conference.
Turner joined the United States Coast Guard Reserve to fulfill his national service obligation before he would have been drafted. Honored by the United States Navy Memorial with its Lone Sailor Award in 2013, Turner told The Washington Post, "I liked boats", and ended up getting "deployed to some pretty sweet places — Charleston and Fort Lauderdale."
Business career
WTBS After leaving Brown University, Turner returned to the South in late 1960 to become general manager of the Macon, Georgia, branch of his father's business. Following his father's suicide in March 1963, Turner, at age 24, became president and chief executive of Turner Advertising Company; he turned the firm into a global enterprise. He joined the Young Republicans, saying he "felt at ease among these budding conservatives and was merely following in [his father]'s far-right footsteps", according to It Ain't as Easy as It Looks.
During the Vietnam War era, Turner's business prospered; it had "virtual monopolies in Savannah, Macon, Columbus, and Charleston" and was the "largest outdoor advertising company in the Southeast", according to It Ain't as Easy as It Looks. The book observed that Turner found that his father had sheltered a substantial amount of taxable income over the years by personally lending it back to the company and that the billboard business could be highly profitable tax-depreciable revenue stream that threw off enormous amounts of cash with almost no capital investment".
In the late 1960s, Turner purchased several Southern radio stations. In 1969, he sold his radio stations to buy a struggling television station in Atlanta, UHF channel 17 WJRJ-TV. At the time, UHF stations did well only in markets without VHF stations, like Fresno, California, or in markets with only one station on VHF. Independent UHF stations were not ratings winners or profitable even in larger markets, but Turner concluded that this would change as people wanted more than several choices. He changed the call sign to WTCG, representing Turner Communications Group, and promoted the company as "Watch This Channel Grow".
Initially, the station ran old movies from prior decades, along with theatrical cartoons, classic sitcoms and drama programs. As better syndicated products fell off the VHF stations, Turner would acquire them for his station at a very low price. WTCG ran mostly second- and even third-hand programming of the time, including fare such as Gilligan's Island, I Love Lucy, Star Trek, Hazel, and Bugs Bunny. Other low-cost content included humorist Bill Tush reading the news at 3 a.m., prompting Turner to jokingly comment that, "we have a 100% share at this time". Tush once delivered the news with his "co-anchor" Rex, a German Shepherd. The dog, which belonged to an associate, was shown next to Tush on set, wearing a shirt and tie while eating a peanut butter sandwich. Rex appeared only on one episode, but a myth grew where many people thought the dog was a nightly guest.
In 1972, WTCG acquired the rights to telecast Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks games. In addition to the Atlanta station, Turner purchased the former WCTU in Charlotte, North Carolina, which became WRET-TV after his initials. The station initially flailed to the point that, in 1972, Turner appeared on the station to appeal for contributions from viewers; by 1975, the station had become profitable and one of the most-watched independent stations in the country. In 1976, each of the contributors to the station four years prior received checks returning their money—with interest. WRET became Charlotte's NBC affiliate in 1978.
In 1976, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed WTCG to use a satellite to transmit content to local cable television providers around the nation. On December 17, 1976, the rechristened WTCG-TV Super-Station began to broadcast old movies, situation comedy reruns, cartoons, and sports nationwide to cable-television subscribers."Ted Turner." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., vol. 15, Gale, 2004, pp. 355–357. As cable systems developed, many carried his station to free their schedules, which increased his viewership and advertising. The number of subscribers eventually reached 2 million, and Turner's net worth rose to $100 million. He bought a plantation in Jacksonboro, South Carolina, for $2 million.
In 1976, Turner purchased the Atlanta Braves, and in 1977, the Atlanta Hawks, partially to provide programming for WTCG. Using the rechristened WTBS superstation's status to broadcast Braves games into nearly every home in North America, Turner turned the Braves into a household name even before their sequential success in the 1990s and early 2000s. At one point, he suggested to pitcher Andy Messersmith, who wore number 17, that he change his surname to "Channel" to promote the television station.
In 1978, Turner struck a deal with a student-operated radio station at MIT, Technology Broadcasting System (now WMBR), to obtain the rights to the WTBS call sign for $50,000. Such a move allowed Turner to strengthen the branding of his "Super-Station" using the initials TBS. Turner Communications Group was renamed Turner Broadcasting System and WTCG was renamed WTBS.
In 1986, Turner founded the Goodwill Games, intending to ease tensions between capitalist and communist countries. Broadcasting the events of these games also provided his superstation the ability to provide Olympic-style sports programming.Burton, Paul. "Turner, Ted." Notable Sports Figures, edited by Dana R. Barnes, vol. 4, Gale, 2004, pp. 1651–1653. Turner Field, first used for the 1996 Summer Olympics as Centennial Olympic Stadium and then converted into a baseball-only facility for the Braves, was named after him.
CNN
In 1978, Turner contacted media executive Reese Schonfeld about his plans to launch a 24-hour news channel (Schonfeld had previously approached Turner with the proposition in 1977 but was rebuffed). Schonfeld responded that it could be done with a staff of 300 if they used an all-electronic newsroom and satellites for all transmissions. It would require an initial investment of $15 million–$20 million and several million dollars per month to operate.
In 1979, Turner sold WRET-TV in Charlotte for $20 million, then a record price for a UHF television station, to fund the transaction and established its headquarters in lower-cost, non-union Atlanta. Schonfeld was appointed first president and chief executive of the then-named Cable News Network (CNN). CNN hired Jim Kitchell, former general manager of news at NBC, as vice president of production and operations; Sam Zelman as vice president of news and executive producer; Bill MacPhail as head of sports, Ted Kavanau as director of personnel, and Burt Reinhardt as vice president of the network. In 1982, Schonfeld was succeeded as CEO by Turner after a dispute over Schonfeld's firing of Sandi Freeman; and was succeeded as president by CNN's executive vice president, Burt Reinhardt.
Turner Doomsday Video
Turner famously stated before CNN debuted, "We won't be signing off until the world ends. We'll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event ... We'll play the National Anthem only one time, on the 1st of June [the network's debut on June 1, 1980], and when the end of the world comes, we'll play 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' before we sign off." Reportedly, Turner planned to make good on that promise. To this end, he commissioned a video recording of a military marching band playing the hymn. Turner sometimes played the tape for reporters, noting the reason he made it. In 2015, the video was found in CNN's database and leaked. The video was tagged in the database as "[Hold for release] till end of world confirmed".
Other ventures