Ted Turner's Ghost
I never really met the CNN founder. He made me anyway
I’m probably not the right person to tell you about Ted Turner.
By the time I joined CNN, in 2000, the network and parent Turner Broadcasting were part of Time Warner (soon to be AOL Time Warner), and Captain Outrageous—as he was once tagged—had been muted by the bean counters paying the bills. I spent my career as first one company and then another took over Ted’s golden goose and turned it into just another initialized cable broadcaster, albeit a very profitable one with a remarkable legacy.
So I wasn’t there when Ted routinely walked the halls. I believe I once saw him in an elevator, and I could swear I once met him in our newsroom … though I may be confusing the latter for the time he came by and I was on vacation1. (We had a life-sized cutout of him left over from the CNN Studio Tour; he signed it during his visit.)
But his presence? That was always there.
People pointed out his 14th-floor penthouse with the lion in the window. The many, many “CNN Originals”—employees who had been with the company since its 1980 founding—who were living reminders. The veterans of the (1st) Gulf War and the OJ saga who talked about his unconditional support. (The network was cheap, but if you needed money in a hurry, Ted would write checks on the spot.)
Things started changing with the Time Warner merger in 1996, then came AOL. And the threads started to fray.
Not that CNN was always held in high esteem. The favorite punching bag of a certain president was initially ridiculed as “Chicken Noodle News.” Even years later, after the Persian Gulf War, there were a couple teams of CNN people at the trivia show I hosted, always bitching about this and that. Indeed, when I was told about a job there, I was leery of applying. I had turned down a position a few years earlier; not enough money, too much pressure.
But it would be at the relatively new CNN.com, I was told, not the meat grinder of television. It was an online site with some of the most creative of the CNN veterans. And so I signed on.
They were the most fulfilling years of my life.
I can chart my career in the stories I oversaw or took part in: the madness over Harry Potter IV. The Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman divorce. 9/11. Columbia. Obama’s speech. Anna Nicole Smith. (Oh God, Anna Nicole Smith.) Obama’s victory. Michael Jackson. Balloon Boy. Steve Jobs. The escalator.
(Speaking of charts, there used to be a graph near the entrance of the company cafe that noted the ratings spikes for major news events. It was a double-edged reminder: of our responsibility, and of the kinds of news that attracted viewers. News is a business, something we were reminded of more than we liked.)
It was one blur after another, always deadlines bearing down, my jaw stiffened, my right hand a claw around my mouse. Gaining weight with free food. Losing it with adrenaline.
And yet, CNN gave me the best colleagues you could hope for. They were the people you wanted in a foxhole, full of laughter, ready with support, knowledgeable about their beats. I often felt a victim of imposter syndrome, a former freelance writer who had wandered in to a real newsroom and been put to work. I wanted to do right by the obligation.
All because of Ted.
He was much more than CNN’s founder, of course. Not just responsible for CNN’s offshoots, Headline News and the Airport Network, but also TCM and the Cartoon Network. Owner of the Braves and Hawks (for which Turner employees got free tickets—thanks, Ted). Partner in Ted’s Montana Grill (the first place I had a buffalo burger). Dedicated to the resurgence of downtown Atlanta when too many others were headed for the suburbs.
As I noted, in recent years he disappeared. The lion vanished and the penthouse was vacated. He was an absence, which made him a presence all the more for what had been lost.
Go ahead and criticize CNN. We all did, and do. (Journalists are the biggest whiners.) But I know the people, and they busted their asses every day. They focused on the work.
Because of Ted’s presence.
Memory is faulty, and I guarantee my old CNN colleagues will correct my flawed record and misconstrued details here.