Ted Turner

1938-

American baseball executive

World-class sailor. Sports impresario. Stadium developer. Philanthropist. Media maverick and tycoon.

These are just some of the many roles played by Robert Edward Turner III, better known as Ted Turner.

"He has set ocean racing records that will never been equaled. (With the launch in 1980 of Cable News Network) he has revolutionized the broadcast industry and made Marshall McLuhan's 'global village' real by tying the world together in one television network," Porter Bibb says in It Ain't as Easy as It Looks, a seminal Turner biography published in 1993. "He is complicated and contradictory, but utterly compelling," Bibb writes.

Where to begin with this multifaceted man who grew up in a privileged, but somewhat dysfunctional household? How about at Brown University where Turner, after serving a six-month suspension during his freshman year in 1956, returned to win nine intercollegiate sailing races. Later Turner, who held his own against some of the nation's best collegiate sailors, was elected Brown team captain, as well as commodore of the Brown Yacht Club.

Sailing became an outlet for Turner, who started his business career working for his father's billboard company in 1960. Their relationship was strained, at best. "Nothing could have suited his temperament or his talent better. Alone against the elements, his fate in his own hands … he could sail away from the banalities of the business world, the petty demands of ordinary existence," Bibb writes.

By the late 1960s, Turner was sailing virtually full-time because of the success of the family billboard company. But Turner, the consummate sailor and businessman, was not complacent in either endeavor. Troubled by spending money to maintain unrented billboards, Turner turned them into a vehicle to promote local radio stations he just had purchased. Essentially, Turner was validating what would become a keystone of his business strategy: cross fertilization among the disparate parts of the far-flung media empire that Time Warner ultimately swallowed in 1996.

Brash and Abrasive

Turner refused to modify his occasionally abrasive style, even when navigating the somewhat staid sailing ranks. Because of his brashness he was awarded the moniker "Mouth of the South." His outspokenness, however, did not affect his sailing prowess. A string of successes culminated in Turner being named Yachtsman of the Year in 1970. In fact, he bested Bill Ficker who, as Intrepid captain earlier that year, engineered an America's Cup victory over Australia's Gretel II. Turner won the same award again in 1973, 1977 and 1979.

Meanwhile, Turner continued to build a media empire. In January 1970, Turner Communications Corp.'s merger with Rice Broadcasting brought it WJRJ, the weaker of two UHF (Ultra High Frequency) independent stations in the Atlanta market. To fill what seemed like endless programming hours, Turner broadcast popular, low-cost 1960s fare such as "Leave it to Beaver" and reruns of "I Love Lucy." Moreover, he won a bidding contest in 1973 with a competing Atlanta television station for rights to 60 baseball games played by the then struggling Atlanta Braves, three times the number previously televised.

Looked to Expand

With this plethora of programming at hand, Turner sought a wider outlet. He found it in late 1974 when he decided to send television signals to an orbiting communications satellite that, in turn, would relay them to dishshaped receivers owned by the cable television stations across the country. Thus on December 17, 1976, Turner's "Superstation" was born. The signal was seen from Honolulu to the Virgin Islands and throughout all of North America. "Ted's strategic thinking was sound and foresighted. He essentially was doing an end run around the networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—and their huge investment in landlines," says Jeremy Byman in his short biography, "Ted Turner, Cable Television Tycoon."

To ensure that the Braves would remain a TBS regular, Turner bought the money-losing team in 1976. Because the Braves provided guaranteed programming, Turner said he could afford to lose $5 million a year on team operations and still come out ahead.

But such subsidies did not sit well with Turner. To bolster the sagging team's fortunes and endear himself and the team to a nonplussed Atlanta, Turner became its prime cheerleader and marketing guru. Seemingly nothing was off limits when building Braves mania. Promotions included Easter egg hunts, ostrich races, free halter-top giveaways and belly dancer performances.

His work paid off when the Braves captured the first professional sports championship for Atlanta after they beat the Cleveland Indians, four games to two, in the 1995 World Series. Through the 2002 season, the team won 11 straight division titles.

Chronology

Awards and Accomplishments

Clashed with Baseball Hierarchy

However, prior to registering such unprecedented success, some of Turner's antics did not sit well with the baseball establishment. Turner even managed the Braves for one game, in May 11, 1977, before Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ordered him out of the dugout. Charged with tampering in the signing of outfielder Gary Matthews, Kuhn suspended Turner for the balance of the 1977 season.

That gave Turner the opportunity to focus elsewhere. In late December 1976, Turner also added the struggling Atlanta Hawks basketball team to his growing professional sports stable. Making the deal sweeter was the low price tag: $400,000, plus assumption of a $1 million note.

Freed at least for a year from his pressing baseball obligations, Turner threw himself into his other passion, sailing. He underwrote construction of the innovatively designed, aluminum-hulled Courageous, a boat selected to defend the America's Cup against challenger Australia. Turner piloted his craft to a sweep over the challenger from Down Under.

Clashed with Baseball Hierarchy

However, Turner's bid to defend the Cup three years later fell short, with his loss to Dennis Connor. The result: Turner renounced competitive sailing and sold his boats, Courageous and Tenacious. In fact, most of Turner's subsequent racing has been with an 18-foot catamaran crew, with son, Rhett, on the crew.

Turner in 1986 launched the quadrennial Goodwill Games, an alternative international sports competition, that were played through 1998. The motivations were twofold: to provide an alternative athletic forum following Washington's decision to boycott the 1980 Winter Olympics in Moscow (the Soviet Union boycotted the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 1984) and, of course, provide a source of ready programming for TBS during the slack periods.

Turner also expanded his sports franchise when he founded the Atlanta Thrashers, a National Hockey League expansion team that began play in 1999. It plays at the $213 million Philips Arena, a new face on the Atlanta sports skyline that complements the $235 million Turner Field, named after the owner of the Atlanta Braves, the primary tenant. It opened in March, 1997.

Turner's Impact

As sportsman, Turner was a sailing champion. As a sports entrepreneur in the 1970s, Turner represented a new breed of owner. He epitomized corporate ownership while remaining a hands-on maverick. He blurred the distinction between business and sports, and remains highly influential today in both, despite his departure from AOL Time Warner early in 2003 amid a management shakeup. Turner, at the time of his announcement, remained the largest individual shareholder of AOL Time Warner.

SELECTED WRITINGS BY TURNER:

(With Gary Jobson) The Racing Edge. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.

Captain Planet and the Planeteers (original idea by Ted Turner). Atlanta: Turner Publications, 1992.

(With Janet Lowe) Ted Turner Speaks: Insights from the World's Greatest Maverick. New York: Wiley, 1999.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Bibb, Porter. It Ain't As Easy As It Looks. New York: Crown, 1993.

Byman, Jeremy. Ted Turner: Cable Television Tycoon. Greensboro, NC: Morgan Reynolds, 1998.

Periodicals

Peers, Martin and Ken Brown. "AOL's Winners and Losers." Wall Street Journal (January 14, 2003): B1.

Other

"Future Muddy for Braves, Hawks, Thrashers." Atlanta Journal-Constitution. http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/sports/0103/30turner.html (January 29, 2003).

"Ted Turner Bio Information." Austin American-Statesman. http://www.austinaas/business/ap/ap_story.html/Financial/AP.V7urner-Bio-Box.html (January 29, 2003)

Sketch by Paul Burton