Ted Turner, CNN Founder and Media Mogul, Dies at 87

Ted Turner, the media tycoon who founded CNN and built an empire that included cable channels TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies as well as the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, has died. He was 87. CNN reported the death Wednesday, citing a statement from his company, Turner Enterprises. Details about Turner's death were not immediately available.

In 2018, he revealed he was fighting Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.

"Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgement," CNN Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson said in a statement. "He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN. Ted is the giant on whose shoulders we stand, and we will all take a moment today to recognize him and his impact on our lives and the world."

Turner never shied from a challenge on land or sea. He skippered the yacht that brought the America's Cup trophy back to the U.S. in 1977. He devoted hundreds of thousands of acres of land to save the American bison. He owned the Atlanta Hawks for 19 years and the Atlanta Braves for 20 years. During that time, the Braves won the 1995 World Series. In 1980, Turner launched CNN, the first 24-hour cable news network.

"I'm a lot of different people, if you don't know that by now," Turner told CBS' "60 Minutes" in 1979. "I'm a multifaceted person. I've got a lot of different personalities. You ought to see me at midnight on a full moon."

Turner was a hard-drinking, cigar-smoking adventurer with deep pockets.

"I get thousands, millions and billions mixed up," Turner said during a 2008 "60 Minutes" interview. He was debating with Morley Safer whether he had lost nearly a million dollars a day or $10 million a day for two and a half years as the largest individual shareholder of AOL Time Warner. It was the latter. The corporate parent of what had been Turner's empire suffered heavy losses when the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s.

Turner also made off-color remarks that earned him nicknames like the Mouth From The South and Captain Outrageous. For some, he was as unlikable as he was invincible.

In 2018, he told "CBS Sunday Morning" senior contributor Ted Koppel he was fighting Lewy body dementia. "It's a mild case of what people have as Alzheimer's," Turner said. "It's similar to that, but not nearly as bad."

Turner married three times, including his decade-long marriage to actor and activist Jane Fonda from 1991 to 2001. In 2012, Turner told CNN that Fonda was probably the great love of his life. He said he hadn't gotten over her and doubted he ever would.

"When you love somebody, and you really love 'em, you never stop loving 'em," he said.

Turner's legacy ties closely to CNN. Yet the achievement he seemed most proud of was the natural habitats he saved by buying and protecting more wild acreage than almost anyone in the U.S. He called himself a caretaker, not a master of his domain. We don't own anything, he said. We just borrow it for a while.