Lisa Napoli - Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News

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Copyright 2020 Lisa Napoli

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In memory of my father, Vincent,
a news junkie before anyone called it that
and
For the other Ted, my one and only,
who voluntarily gave up the sets

Someday, Im going to be the first person in the history of the world to talk to everyone. Ill be able to talk to all the worlds leaders and bring peace to the world through television.

Ted Turner

His handsome face tired, his silver hair and mustache now fully whitehis speech as bombastic as when reporters first anointed him the Mouth of the South, a nickname he despisedTed Turner grabbed the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism as he ascended the stage at the Forum of Public Affairs at Harvard University.

He found the honor amusing. Before him, it had been bestowed on luminary broadcast journalists like Ted Koppel, Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters, and Lesley Stahlvenerable practitioners whose networks Ted had charged after with nuclear force, changing the very nature of TV. Though hed never reported a story in his lifethough hed long ago derided news as evilhe supposed he had been a journalist of sorts. After all, he still drew a paycheck from a media company, Time Warner, which had acquired his Turner Broadcasting years earlier, including the service for which he was being feted that nightCNN, a source of news to two billion people around the globe. Heck, way back in grade school, hed hawked newspapers at a streetcar stop for a penny a pop. Didnt that count as journalism?

Even as a kid, hed been a salesman above all else, shouting, EXTRA! to the passersby to suggest that the latest issue promised big, breaking news.

It wasnt an extra, he confessed to the audience, who lapped up his irreverence, but I was trying to sell these goddamned papers.

After a few too many drinks at the pre-event dinner party, he propped up the framed commendation on the seat of a chair next to the podium. The citation proceeded to fall to the floor. He left it there.

It wont stand up, he said, and Im having trouble doing the same myself.

As much as the cocktails, the dismal facts of life since the dawn of the new millennium had knocked him off-kilter.

When clocks ticked into the year 2000, the world had not imploded, as many had expected it might, but Teds universe had.

Days into the new year, his third wife, the actress Jane Fonda, had moved out. Hed honored her wish that he not run for president of the United States, a job he wanted if only to promote his passion for environmental preservation. Fonda had said shed leave him if he ran, so he didntshe went ahead and split anyway. He loved her still.

The best lay I ever had, hed lamented to the deans wife earlier that eveningthe ultimate compliment by this inveterate ladies man.

Just a few days after that personal loss, a different life-altering bombshell exploded, this one dropped by Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin. Levin had altered the course of Teds life before. In 1975, hed sparked a media revolution when he catapulted a faltering pay-cable service called HBO into spacethen a brand-new frontier. When Ted learned about this pioneering use of a satellite to transmit a television signal, he was inspired to make the copycat move for his little independent station in Atlanta. This changed everything for him, and for the station, and, ultimately, for all of television.

Swept up in this new century by the irrational exuberance of the World Wide Web, Levin, now Teds boss, had negotiated the sale of their company to a preposterous suitor, the red-hot America Online. Ted had his doubts, but he no longer had any say. Wall Street so disapproved of this merger that Time Warners stock tanked. In the past months alone, his personal fortune had shrunk by $3 billion.

Just a week earlier, hed suffered another incalculable lossof power. Hed been shunted aside into an emeritus role. The networks hed created, including CNN, would no longer fall under his control.

Absent his job, his wife, or a healthy slice of his fortune, now he had to stand tall here in Cambridge at the august university that had, decades earlier, rejected his application for admission.

If I had come to college here, God knows what I would have accomplished, he mused, as the audience erupted in laughter. Because, aside from the recent tumult, no one could argue that his achievements had been anything but formidable.

In introducing Ted, his Harvard host extolled him as a visionary in the spirit of the savior of the venerable New York Times, Adolph Ochs, or, better yet, Elvis. Elvis Presley changed music. But Ted had done one better. Hed changed America.

Yet few in that audience rememberedif they ever knew at allthe improbable empire-building that had emboldened Ted to believe he could start the very first all-news channel in 1980. Hardly anyone thought the idea could work, much less lastmuch less that a rogue like him could pull it off. Then, there was the parade of obstacles that had threatened to derail him every step of the way.

That evening, the audience at Harvard wasnt concerned with history, especially history they didnt even know. They were worried about CNNs future and what would become of the news network they relied on now that Ted would no longer be a part of it. Layoffs had just been announced, and the accelerating power of the Internet loomed large. How would that change CNN? a student asked. It already had, Ted responded, his voice tinged with regret. But, he added, he had no crystal ball. All he could do was hope for the best.

Before the digital revolution unleashed a never-ending tsunami of information; back before videotape and portable camera gear and time-code editing and live shots allowed television news to rev more quickly and vividly than ever; way back when the world was a slower, quieter place and televisions crackling black-and-white glow began to muscle radio for mindshare, Ted had been a little boy with a ferocious disciplinary problem about to be shipped off to military school, selling newspapers to commuters on their way home from workfretting, as he voraciously memorized the stories of kings and battles and explorers, that there were no new worlds left for him to conquer. It was as if the medium of television was waiting for him to come along to upend it.