Ted Turner: the man whose 24-hour CNN network broke the news

No, at the start of his greatest invention, Ted Turner was simply looking to capitalize on the dazzling, newfangled cable-satellite technology that had catapulted his sleepy little independent station in Atlanta on to the national stage.

The fearless zeal with which he plunged into the venture was the same gumption that led him to become a wave-defying, award-winning yachtsman.

It’s hard for even those of us who were alive back at CNN’s dawn to remember that time, when the universe wasn’t wired for 24/7 everything – a time when “breaking news” was actually that. We can thank Ted Turner for turning on the TV spigot. When he first bought Channel 17 in 1970, he was appalled, insomniac that he was, that the station went dark after the late-night movie. All stations did. As prosaic as that seems today, keeping the lights on was the first act of his genius.

Buying a faltering baseball team and beaming it around the country was the next. In doing that, he created “America’s Team”.

Ted Turner at CNN’s 10th anniversary celebration with Jane Fonda and Larry King in Atlanta in 1990. Photograph: Robin Rayne/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock

But no one knew on 1 June 1980, when CNN began beaming into a little over a million homes, that the channel derided at first as “Chicken Noodle News” would someday make or break presidents. Sway public opinion about wars and revolutions. Rivet the world to its seats when the space shuttle exploded, and a little girl got trapped in a well. Rile entire generations of helpless couch potatoes into hand-wringing helplessness and anxiety.

Over time, we learned not just to turn on the news at any hour of the day but to expect it delivered to us, on the toilet or on the airplane, instantaneously. And with each drip, we became further entertained – and paralyzed.

That unifying sense of a plugged-in, always-on world – one ruled by peace, goodwill and unity – revved up Ted’s poetic, romantic self. (A classics major at Brown University, he got thrown out for various antics like torching a rival’s homecoming display and harboring a girlfriend in his dorm room.) What he didn’t bargain for was how the unity that CNN initially brought could, when amplified by competition and revved up the internet, spin out of control.

How the news itself would go from the straight, somber reporting of facts to become a weapon.

It’s inevitable when a mogul dies for people to search for comparisons to contemporaries. As is always the case, alas, that’s so apples to oranges. Nothing about the moment in time that gave us the singular, brash, blustering sensation of Ted Turner, or the media empire he was able to create from the billboard company he inherited, is parallel to anyone or any entity today.

Ted Turner is honored with the Alan Cranston peace award in New York in 2005. Photograph: Shutterstock

Imagine a modern titan posing in Fidel Castro’s office with a clunky video camera rolling, the analog equivalent of a selfie. Castro says directly into the lens, “We receive a very important service by the CNN.” Then, he as much as apologizes for “smuggling” the signal, adding, “One cannot smuggle the news. Space is universal and news is universal, too.”

Ted Turner believed those words so much he pushed executives back at CNN to run the tape of this endorsement from a “commie dictator”. The executives steadfastly refused. Exploiting this bizarre, stealthy meeting to advertise, a news network was gauche, and most certainly bad business. Chagrined, Ted went back to work, infused by the holy spirit of a meeting with an enemy become friend.

Just imagine what CNN, or any other network, would do with such footage today.

Lisa Napoli is the author of Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN & the Birth of 24 Hour News