Ted Turner, the brash, visionary media mogul who invented 24-hour cable news with CNN, built a sprawling broadcasting empire from a single Atlanta UHF station and gave away a record-shattering $1 billion to the United Nations, has died. He was 87.
Turner died peacefully on Wednesday, May 6, 2026, surrounded by his family, according to a statement from Turner Enterprises. In September 2018, he had disclosed his diagnosis of Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder that affects memory and other cognitive functions, and had largely withdrawn from public life in the years since.
Tributes poured in within hours of the announcement. President Trump, a frequent critic of the modern CNN, called Turner “one of the greats of broadcast history, and a friend of mine,” adding, “Whenever I needed him, he was there, always willing to fight for a good cause!”
From Billboards to a Broadcasting Empire
Robert Edward Turner III was born November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Ed and Florence Turner. He grew up in the orbit of his father’s billboard advertising business. He enrolled at Brown University in 1956 but was expelled in 1959 — reportedly for having a woman in his dorm room — before serving a stint in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Turner joined the family firm, becoming general manager of a branch office in 1960. When his father died by suicide in 1963, the 24-year-old took over as president and CEO. He renamed the company Turner Communications after acquiring several radio stations, then made the leap that would define his life: buying a money-losing UHF television station in Atlanta.
That station became WTBS, then the foundation of Turner Broadcasting System Inc., rebranded in 1979. Beamed via satellite, the “superstation” TBS reached 2 million cable homes and helped ignite the cable and satellite TV boom of the mid-1970s. Turner soon launched TNT, pioneered original programming on basic cable, and later created Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies. He briefly owned MGM, selling the studio and name but keeping its priceless film library.
The Birth of 24-Hour News
On June 1, 1980, Turner launched Cable News Network — the first dedicated rolling news channel and the first 24-hour cable news network in the United States. Skeptics mocked it as the “Chicken Noodle Network.” It didn’t stay a punchline for long.
CNN proved its worth with breathless coverage of the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan and the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986. The network truly came of age with its live rolling coverage from Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. President George H.W. Bush was reported to have watched CNN for updates during the crisis, a testament to the network’s reach.
“Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgment,” CNN chairman and CEO Mark Thompson said in a statement honoring the founder. “He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN.”
Captain Outrageous and the Mouth of the South
Turner’s outspoken, unpredictable streak earned him the nicknames “The Mouth of the South” and “Captain Outrageous.” He lived for a stretch inside CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, sometimes wandering the newsroom in a bathrobe to debate the day’s news.
He was equally relentless in sports. A world-class yachtsman, Turner won the America’s Cup in 1977 and the Fastnet race, and became the first person named yachtsman of the year four times. In 1983, after a Murdoch-sponsored yacht collided with his boat in an Australian race, Turner challenged Rupert Murdoch to a fist fight.
He bought the Atlanta Braves in 1976 — partly to fuel programming on his superstation — and the team won the World Series in 1995 under his ownership. He also owned the Atlanta Hawks, acquired in 1977, and later the Atlanta Thrashers. In 1977, he famously named himself manager of the Braves, sparking a dispute with Major League Baseball; the Braves lost his only game in charge.
Married three times, Turner had five children. His highest-profile marriage was to actress Jane Fonda from 1991 until 2001.
A Billion-Dollar Conscience
In 1997, after receiving an award from the United Nations, Turner stunned the philanthropic world by pledging $1 billion — one-third of his wealth at the time — to create the United Nations Foundation. He was among the first billionaires to give away enormous sums while still alive rather than bequeathing them.
“Everybody could be doing more! Nobody’s doing enough. I could be doing more!” he once said of his drive to make the world safer.
He co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative, campaigned for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons and donated millions to fight climate change, fossil fuels and overpopulation. He even produced “Captain Planet and the Planeteers,” a Saturday-morning cartoon with an environmental message. In 2002, he opened Ted’s Montana Grill, an eco-friendly chain whose flagship bison burger came from herds raised on his own land — part of the vast holdings that helped reintroduce bison across the American West.
Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1991, Turner leaves behind a media landscape he largely built himself — and a philanthropic blueprint that reshaped how the ultra-wealthy give.