Ted Turner, Cartoon Network and TNT Founder, Dies at 87

Ted Turner was a behemoth in the entertainment industry, having helped to build quite a few channels and projects over his long career. Following the creation of the likes of Cartoon Network, CNN, TNT, and too many other outlets to cover, Turner would eventually retire from the media empire to focus on his health. It has recently been confirmed that Ted Turner passed away at the age of 87, leaving behind a titanic legacy in the world of entertainment that won’t soon be forgotten.

Turner, for those who might not know, was struggling with “Lewy Body Dementia,” as was revealed before his 80th birthday. The progressive brain disorder that was revealed in 2018 would eventually help cause a hospital visit in 2025, as the Cartoon Network founder was hospitalized due to contracting pneumonia. First starting his career with the moniker “The Mouth of the South,” Turner spent years building an entertainment empire out of the city of Atlanta, Georgia. The businessman, in addition to his entertainment endeavors, also owned the baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, which he had purchased in 1976 before selling it to Time Warner decades later. Turner also acquired the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, specifically for the purpose of keeping the team in Georgia.

In the wake of Turner’s passing, current chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, Mark Thompson, shared the following statement: “Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless, and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgement. 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.” CNN itself was founded in 1980, with the twenty-four seven cable news network being the first of its kind.

Surprisingly enough, Turner also played a major role in the world of professional wrestling, helping the creation of World Championship Wrestling. For years, the WCW was the biggest competitor to World Wrestling Entertainment, which was the World Wrestling Federation at the time. Eventually, the two companies would merge, though WCW left the blueprints for how wrestling organizations could challenge the WWE, with AEW being one of the prominent examples in today’s world of professional wrestling.

In a previous interview with Reader’s Digest in 1998, Turner himself has laid bare what he was hoping to accomplish in his life: “I’m trying to set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime and that puts you in pretty big company: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill.” It will be up to history to decide whether Turner has hit the same heights as those he mentioned during this discussion, though when it comes to the entertainment world, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who has had a bigger impact on cable television and beyond.

Our thoughts are with Ted Turner’s family and friends during this difficult time. Turner is survived by five children, fourteen grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Via CNN