Ted Turner has died | Hacker News Reader

Ted Turner has died

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296 pointspseudolus238 comments

I remember around 2000 I read about how Ted Turner started his empire: he bought podunk local TV stations that had loose contracts with media owners that allowed them to broadcast shows as often as they wanted, with no restrictions. In the those days, local TV stations were broadcast just like radio and so the assumption was the contract only concerned the audience the TV station's antenna could reach. But the contract didn't specify this. Recognizing the loophole, he bought multiple stations and combined that content into its own cable channel(s) that played old movies and TV shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Turner This was the basis that allowed him to branch into CNN and more.

When I learned about this, the story was very applicable to me at the time, as my startup had acquired licenses for content that was historically sold directly to libraries by a salesman who would negotiate with each library individually. He used a standard contract. When we contacted the company to license content for display on the internet, they gave us a ridiculous contract with a small one time fee and access to display the content forever. Only after reasoning through their business model and history did we understand how this occurred, which was exactly the same type of gap that Ted Turner had exploited.

Wow. It wasn't until I read your comment that it clicked that the Turner in Turner Classic Movies is Ted Turner.

There was a bit of a furore when he tried colorizing old B&W movies… imagine if he’d had AI to do colorization, upscaling and sharpening back then!

Guess we’ll still have Ted’s Montana Grills for a while…

Rightfully so if you ask me. Out the gate think about the implications of determining, say, skin color. I’m not saying “under no circumstances should it be done” but I also think people don’t appreciate the importance of the decisions made and the politics/implicit biases under the hood. I’m not even getting in to artistic intent and impact on lighting here either.

Colorizing b&w images is still debated to this day.

Eh regarding skin color people don’t care about realism these days. You have historical remakes with totally anachronistic ethnicities in them and “no one” cares.

I mean sure, some people do, the same as some people used to complain about overrepresentation of caucasians in some old movies set in what was then called “the orient”. I think the only ones who put up a fight are the Japanese who don’t like their productions ethnically misrepresented as much.

B&W highlights the stories better. With color you get more ambient context and sometimes that’s interesting.

> Eh regarding skin color people don’t care about realism these days. You have historical remakes with totally anachronistic ethnicities in them and “no one” cares.

This isn't exactly the same thing. Colorizing historical footage decides what the color is. A remake is an interpretation with nowhere near the same claim of accuracy and the audience 100% knows this. The social politics of this are incredibly important.

> The social politics of this are incredibly important.

Or they are incredibly transient, fashion-led and led either by the least intelligent people available, or those who stand to gain from them.

you’re welcome to your opinion as well

I think you have a misperception of the past. The actors that played the great chinese detective Charlie Chan were Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and Roland Winters.

Because of the film technology at the time, a lot of the skin tones on set wouldn't match what you'd expect anyway due to makeup designed for the b&w film. Lots of sickly greens, yellows, and blues in place of red tones for instance.

https://www.bustle.com/articles/30501-i-tried-a-vintage-film...

At that point if you've already decided you want to colorize the film, there's a real question of how do you approach it, because being true to what was on set definitely isn't the right choice. So now you're playing with skin tones regardless.

Huh. That actually brings up a kind of modern parallel I hadn't thought of. A lot of action movies are done primarily, or in part, on greenscreen. The intent of using a greenscreen has nothing to do with what was captured, and more so to do with what is trying to be depicted; what ought be seen, not what is being seen by the actors and actresses.

It would be interesting to know if, in say, 100-200 years, there is some alternative technology that could de-render todays CGI perfectly, and then replace it with some alternative, perhaps insert some form of practical effect in a convincing way? Would being able to do so be better to do just because it can be done?

Like, suppose that one of the more recent big budget movies, Transformers or whatever, could entirely have all of the CGI stripped out of them instantly, and then be replaced with some form of "less fake" effects in a different way. Would it be good to do so, if that were possible? For me personally, I'm very much in favor of rubber suits and fake blood over sticks with ping pong ball overlayed with graphics. [1] In spite of my preference though, I don't know if however many hundreds of people who had worked the digital modeling for all of those scenes would appreciate essentially deleting all of the thousands of hours they had put into the movie.

Bringing that back to B&W films, I think that if someone was really excellent at doing the set design for B&W films, it makes me wonder how they might react if someone insisted on "fixing" the film by colorizing it, and showing their set pieces in a way that they never intended for those pieces to be seen by the audience. Like, if they weren't outright upset with even the idea of doing it at all, perhaps they might insist on some sort of creative control on how each of those set pieces were colorized and portrayed in the final product. Obviously, that would then extend out to all of the other things too, like wardrobe, makeup, etc. I could see the complexity ballooning out to be as complicated and involved as making the movie was to begin with! For example, maybe the guy that scouted the original location for the film wouldn't have chose the spots he had chosen if he knew that people would be able to see it on giant TVs that they could pause every single frame of, and perform all kinds of upscaling and digital zooms in and out on.

[1] I am firmly in favor of practical effects over digital for everything, except small technical errors like a boom mic or a coffee cup in a shot, because I think that the constraints a movie set faces will demand either: incredible innovative solutions by the crew, or, those constraints force directors to scale their vision back to something more contained and manageable. It helps to show where the scope creep for a movie is, and where it's simply unnecessary. For example, Jaws has a great backstory regarding the constant issues of the mechanical shark, it really forced Spielberg to rethink how and when the shark would be shown, and when it would be better to let the viewers mind fill in the blanks.

I think these are really interesting questions and I like a lot of what you’re saying. I don’t really agree with your near prohibition on CG, but I definitely get where it comes from and think that some productions definitely abuse it

> Because of the film technology at the time, a lot of the skin tones on set wouldn't match what you'd expect

It wasn't just skin tones. Wardrobe was picked for the resulting look on B&W film vs what it looked like in real life. Here's a pretty in depth article: https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-39-first-release/desi...

Those colorized movies were awful, AI would have just made them awful in their own way.

Outside of film restoration, old movies should be enjoyed the way they were made.

I would say film restoration is what allows old movies to be enjoyed the way they were made.

Colorization does not count as restoration. That's enhancement, at best.

All restoration choices are at least a little bit subjective.

That said, I agree with you!

Just wait until we simulate old films and media and turn them into living, breathing VR games.

We'll eventually do that for all of history. At least the history we have samples of or can plausibly recreate.

I'd imagine playing one of those might be like living your life right now. Punctuated by lots of mundane, lifelike moments. Like reading an "internet forum" full of other period appropriate "humans".

Sounds a bit dystopian where people are living in what amount to a synthetic reality. At that point reality’s importance decreases and at some point the virtual reality becomes the more normal existence and people eschew actual reality. And at some point you think why not virtualize all experience and then life itself…

When my nephews were kids I used those old colorized movies from Turner Classics as partial proof that the old joke about the world being black, white, and shades of grey when I was kid was true. They grew up in the late 80's and early 90's watching TV shows including some great old stuff that Turner later colorized. I had told him how scientists had discovered how to improve the appearance of everything by adding other colors and as a result, scientists and artists and representatives from around the world met and collaborated on methods of colorizing everything that existed. Everyone agreed that blues would be great for the sky to lighten things up after storms; animals needed fur that blended into their environment so browns and tans like the dirt outside; rocks could be any color but earth tones (like their Mom was using in painting their house) got their names after everyone had picked colors for rocks, tree bark, leaves, etc. Plants would be green for the most part but leaves that had lightened or darkened in the fall could change colors too so every continent and country was able to decide how to color flowers and plants as they wished since coloring all flowers one color would just be boring. Snow and ice were white and water was up for grabs especially if it was in a river.

The notes they could read in the movie credits about it being a colorized version simply told them that all of the colors in that movie had been added later.

I was so convincing that one of them interrupted his teacher in class to let her know she was wrong about the rainbows and where color came from. I had made it clear that everything that we saw as colored had the colors that were assigned by international agreement after people had become tired enough of the BWG palette to sit down and make it all change.

In the end, the teacher told him he was wrong and he argued about it so I got a call one day that he had been in trouble at school and that the teacher was not thrilled to hear his explanation so I needed to clear things up for him since he was not inclined to believe her at all. I'm not sure that I ever got that completely cleared up because, to me, it was just too funny that I was the most trusted source.

Thanks TED. R.I.P.

I was wondering if they are going to put Ted's crayons in the box with him. At the time of this first being done it was so comically bad, and the jokes were ruthless. As much as I'm not a fan, the modern AI stuff is so much better without saying it's good. That's just how bad Turner's colorization was. The best colorization was Weta's footage from WWI where they used the actual uniforms in the images as reference rather than just someone adding color based on the feels.

I kind of wonder if there were color photos of the actors and scenes from the time of some of the black-and-white movies. You could use them as conversion-training-data with AI to auto-colorize the movies.

(maybe they do that now?)

This is like being surprised that the Obama the Obama Presidential Library is about is Barack Obama.

I had a chuckle at your comment and felt it was true. But wonder if the commenter is younger. Ted Turner was much more of a household name and public figure in the 20th century. He became less involved in the cable empire by the mid 90s. Younger millennials and onwards probably heard people talk about him a lot less.

Ps. Another memorable media portrayal of Turner, he was clearly the basis for the boss character in the 1994 cartoon The Critic.

Obama is also a lot more recently known and a more unique sounding name

Won’t you be surprised to finally learn about the precursor band to Canadian legends The Guess Who: Barackman Turner Overdrive

Oh! I thought it was Jim Obama, the owner of Obama Chevrolet of Sheboygan!

I don't think anyone else with the name Obama has been president of anything that confers a library (let alone a presidential library), your answer seems a bit needlessly derisive. I suspect you're just insecure about your personal level of useful knowledge and are trying to lord over someone with your trivia fact.

Also the "T" in TBS, originally WTCG in Atlanta that became "superstation" WTBS (later dropping the leading W).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_TBS_(American_TV_ch...

And WTBS the radio station was also purchased by Ted Turner!

It was originally "Tech Broadcasting Service" and run by an MIT student group.

For the $50k purchase, the newly-named WMBR purchased a new transmitter.

https://wmbr.org/www/history

I never knew this.

Also if you're in the Boston/Cambridge area, WMBR is a fun and weird listen and clearly sounds like college radio when compared to something like WERS.

Wmbr is great. I always assumed it was “Walker Memorial Building Radio” based on the building it transmits from.

I remember when Ted Turner bought a scrappy Atlanta TV station, Channel 17.

The channels refer to specific radio frequency allocations. Anything below Channel 12 is "Very High Frequency", and anything above that is "Ultra High Frequency". The Channel number was basically arbitrary, but went up in frequency in numerical order, so Channel 5 had a higher frequency than Channel 17.

The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength, and in general the smaller the area of coverage. Fewer viewers. The big networks dominated VHF, megawatt transmitters that could reach the entire metro area and beyond. In the Atlanta area, we had all three major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC on Channels 2, 5, and 11.

UHF was the domain of independent operators, who filled airtime with anything they could get. Mostly old TV shows and movies from syndicate distributors. Channel 17 was mostly old movies, while Channel 36 featured old TV shows. "Superman" and "The Lone Ranger". "Star Trek". Later in the evening, 1950s schlock horror or flying saucer films...

With an uneven format and transmission range that limited viewership and advertising revenue, it could be more challenging for the UHF stations to make ends meet. When Channel 17 ran into financial difficulties, Ted Turner pumped it up. UHF stations typically signed off at night, went off the air, but the Turner Superstation was 24 hours a day.

Apparently, Ted Turner was playing a long game.

(Also apparently, I watched a lot of television as a 1970s latchkey kid.)

Think you mean channel 17 had a higher frequency. Channel 5 would be VHF (low) in the range 54 MHz – 88 MHz while Channel 17 would UHV in the range 470 MHz – 698 MHz. You're absolutely right about UHF stations being difficult to tune in.

Thanks, yes: Channel 17 higher frequency.

(I tried to read what I wrote for errors, as autocorrect can smash any attempt at careful writing. But I didn't catch this.

Was invisible to me because I was reading the meaning of what I was attempting to say.

I think I just learned about semantic typos. Meme-os?)

It flipped after the analog shutoff in 2009, most US TV stations are UHF now (even if the tv displays their VHF channel number)

>*Anything below Channel 12 is "Very High Frequency"

VHF covers up to and including channel 13

It's actually something people across the country may feel familiar with because "Channel 13" is New York City's PBS channel (WNET) and they export programming like Sesame Street out to PBS affiliates everywhere (not as much as WGBH in Boston, but a lot)

Oops... Thanks! I wasn't certain of the boundary channel, but I went ahead and wrote it anyway.

Going from memory, and didn't verify.

We also had PBS at Channel 18, I believe.

> 1970s latchkey kid

I am now administering the secret '70s latchkey quiz:

   - Ricky, I want to be...
   - This is Jim Rockford...
   - Ladies, please don't...
   - Bingo, Bango, Bongo, and...
   - Missed it by...
   - We can rebuild...

I got 4 out of 6 of them. How many of these were on Nick at Night so you wouldn't necessarily have to be a 70s latchkey kid?

Since I didn't watch Nick at Night I have no idea which of these were on it.

Numbers 145 were common on N@N.

1. ?

2. Rockford Files (with James Garner)

3. ?

4. ?

5. Get Smart (created my Mel Brooks)

6. the Six Million Dollar Man (with Lee Majors)

I watched a lot more movies than TV shows as a kid. I miss the time when my idea of a real-life villain was Turner for colorizing B&W movies. God speed. RIP

I guess the latchkey experience in the '70s wasn't as universal as I thought :-)

   1. ...in the show! -- I Love Lucy
   2. ...at the tone leave your name and number and I'll get back to you. -- Rockford Files opening.
   3. ...squeeze the Charmin! -- Charmin toilet paper commercials
   4. ...and Irving. -- The Mosquitos on Gilligan's Island
   5. ...that much! -- Get Smart
   6. ...him. We can make him faster... -- the Six Million Dollar Man

Growing up, I always thought it curious that my hometown in central Illinois operated only on UHF stations (19/25/31/43/47 I think) despite the fact there was no major metro for over 100 miles in any direction, where when we would visit major cities and see stations in the 2-13 range.

Ted Turner owned the largest American Bison herd (~45k animals), supplying meat for his "Ted's Montana Grill" restaurants.

I don't know much else about the man, but as a supporter of Bison I can commend that part of his legacy. An impressive vision and execution.

how do you own a herd

…

Our illustrious president doesn't want any bison.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/us/politics/trump-buffalo...

That’s not why the person I’m replying to doesn’t understand the relationship between humans and herds of animals.

The same way you own anything. You buy it or make (breed) it.

The same way every beef farmer does.

One head of bison at a time.

First thing one need is herd mentality.

By owning (or renting) the land where it is kept ?

This comment is low-effort, but in the case you are genuinely confused, the herd refers to the animals on a given ranch. As in, you have a ranch of 100 acres and 100 bison on it. The owner of the ranch owns a herd of 100.

The bison aren't roaming free on the land. It would be nice if they were, and there are efforts to restore wild bison herds, but these are commercial herds. Far better than cows and CAFOs.

I don't know, but I wonder if your parent commenter is making a philosophical point about the potentially illusory nature of owning a group of semi-wild animals. Like, if the only way you have of asserting your ownership is to use them as a food source, then do you really "own" them? Or do they exist outside and apart from human ideas of property?

Or like owning a mountain or a centuries-old tree. Does that even mean anything?

Owning is, like, a human construct man. If you can slaughter a herd of animals without facing any human imposed consequences, it's probably fair within the bounds of language and meaning to say that you own them.

Owning might be a human construct; but, arguably, a herd or a mountain or a tree is not. Which I guess was the point I was trying to suggest.

See also: Is it possible to own a cat?

I'm very open to the possibility that I am missing your point, but my point was that you are playing word games.

Do I own this T-shirt if it can burn? Do I own this stick or am I just carrying it for a while? Is this my banana, or does everything belong to the universe?

Not playing word games, but mostly just thinking aloud. Thanks for your interesting replies.

Pierson v. Post 3 Cai. R. 175 (1805) is instructive. Your post is a great starting point for exploration of basic property law. TLDR ownership consists of a varied bundle of many different kinds of rights which can arise in many different and possibly conflicting ways.

This is a very generous read of the original comment - but that is what we’re supposed to do here, and I regret not doing it in my comment.

Do you and they not have any vague understanding of how ranching works? Indeed, there seems to be misunderstandings here.

The philosophical question is interesting, but eating them once in a while is not what ranching is, and ignorance of where your food comes from isn’t cool.

In order to own your herd, you need to herd your own

Here's some good slice of life for you: https://www.youtube.com/@CrossTimbersBison

> but as a supporter of Bison

If you support Bison, why commend someone who killed them for a profit?

I support them as wildlife, a food source, and ecological resource. If people in the US ate bison instead of cows, it would be a huge benefit for the climate, ecosystem, and our health.

If he had not created a profitable enterprise, there would not be 45k wild bison roaming free with the same amount of dollars.

It's not like I want bison to die, but if an American is going to eat a bovid, it's much better for it to be a bison. The American great plains are big enough to support vast wild herds and sustainable, profitable enterprises, but in order for that to happen, Americans need to eat bison, not cows.

>If you support Bison, why commend someone who killed them for a profit?

Because they wouldn't exist otherwise.

Because the person who killed then for a profit also paid to have them exist, gave them a home and food. In wanting to eat bison meat, he paid to have more bison exist, so there are more bison than if he hadn't killed some of them for eating.

I 100% agree. However, I do think there is room for discussion for someone to ask is that a good thing? It is good if there is more of them if they only exist to be killed? I don't think things like this are black and white. If they only existed in the worst conditions in factory farms my answer would be no. If they can live a good life and be slaughtered humanely my answer would be yes. I think it's easy to dismiss comments like the one you responded to, but I would argue it's always good to think about these things.

it's hard to argue that decreased genetic diversity will help humans. Maybe we don't need hundreds of thousands of new exotic huge bovines to shit methane into the air all day every day, but it should be seen as fairly vital that we try to keep genetic diversity as high as we can in order to maximize future opportunities that may arise from research and development for the sake of humanity.

> it's hard to argue that decreased genetic diversity will help humans.

Nobody was arguing about what is best for humans.

If the choice of existence for all pigs (randomly selected as an animal commonly used for food) was to live in factory farming conditions or for pigs to go entirely extinct, I'd rather they go extinct. Not for the benefit of humanity, but because never existing is a better outcome for those would-be pigs than living lives full of nothing but suffering.

As someone who lives near one of the herds, this isn't a factory farming situation. They live pretty good lives on open space with a bit of population management that ends up with meat and hides that help offset the cost of managing the herd.

That's good to know (genuinely).

I wasn't specifically talking about the bison here which is why I randomly selected some other animal to talk about and made the choice more binary than it is in the real world.

I was just making a point that what is best for humans is hardly the only criteria to use to make these sorts of decisions for some people (myself included).

he also gave LIFE - people need food for survival AND full protein to grow muscles and brain.

Meat is super efficient for protein - thats why every successful Civilization does it

>as a supporter of Bison...

I'm not sure I've run into a 'supporter' of a particular type of bovine before.

Why?

Bison are surely pretty comparable on a lbs mass to methane released ratio when fed with the same diets that cattle are.

other bovines didn't get to near-extinction and spring back after years of remediation and lobbying efforts, the American bison did.

You might find the European bison interesting [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_bison

One of the last existent species of North American megafauna!

Bison are less selective eaters and tend to spread out more, so they're less damaging to grasslands than cattle. They also require less water, antibiotics, and general attention than cattle.

I asked a farmer once about if it was possible to switch from cows to bison. he said they need a special fence, because they are so massive (and temperamental) that they will just bust through a normal barbed wire fence. Not sure how true it is but seems plausible. I think he said they need a pen that is dug down, so the bison would have to climb up an incline to reach the fence.

That is absolutely true. They are also much more resistant to being handled for tagging or vaccinations. Cattle are docile and compliant, and bison are absolutely not.

He's why Atlanta got the 1996 Olympics.

He's responsible for rejuvenating Atlanta. It grew into a reasonable city after he built the TBS, CNN, and Turner Broadcasting empire. Without him, Atlanta may have been closer to a Charlotte in size, and definitely could not have pulled the Olympic games.

He gave Atlanta a media presence and those that came after him turned it into a media production hub.

He also created Captain Planet, which raised millennials on environmental causes.

We wouldn't have had Cartoon Network, Toonami, or Adult Swim without his William Street studios.

He briefly owned the Atlanta Braves and was their owner during their 90's World Series win. He funded their stadium, which doubled as the Olympic Stadium during the games (and which is now a part of Georgia State University).

He may have created the Georgia Guidestones (sadly they were bombed) and reportedly recorded a secret message not to be played until WWIII / nuclear annihilation.

He did a lot of good.

> He may have created the Georgia Guidestones

Go on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

It's an unsubstantiated local rumor:

https://rondougherty.com/photoalbum/2010/20101118EasternTrip...

https://people.howstuffworks.com/georgia-guidestones-monumen...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Georgia/comments/133x11v/the_fate_o...

> reportedly recorded a secret message

https://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2015/jan/06/cnn-end-...

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/06/cnn-apocalypse...

“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise!” - Ted Turner

Side note, for those of you that enjoy biographies, his autobiography “Call Me Ted” is a real page-turner (pun intended).

A highly inspirational story of entrepreneurship, which includes a raw and authentic account of his flaws.

A true legend.

Rest in peace Ted.

There is 4 part series on HBO with same name ( I think). I watched it last year. Learned a lot from business to personal life.

Ted personally funded the 1986 Goodwill Games in Seattle as a direct response to the US/USSR mutual Olympic boycotts of '80 and '84, losing ~$26M out of pocket. CNN also hosted the famous US-Soviet "space bridge" TV linkups around the same time. RIP.

He also helped Atlanta land the 1996 Olympic games.

#4 largest private land owner in the US: https://landreport.com/land-report-100#top-100

Wonder what's going to be done with it now that he's dead.

Jane Fonda was his last spouse. I hope he left it to her. She's a very cool lady with a great head on her shoulders. A recent interview (The Interview, NYT) is worth listening to. She talked very positive about Ted in this interview, which made me think they had a good relationship still.

She had a terrible influence against nuclear energy which retarded the industry by five decades!

We would not be in the pickle we are if she didn’t mindlessly scare and misinform people undermining a whole industry based on her misunderstanding.

I agree she had a negative impact on nuclear, but I don't think it was just her.

I wonder what ever happened with the stream poisoning effort on a creek that ran through his ranch. That was bit of a thing growing-up back in Montana in the 90s, where the billionaire outsider wanted to poison the stream to kill off one species of fish to encourage another species.

https://www.rangemagazine.com/archives/stories/winter00/murk...

I was a Boy Scout growing up and the Philmont Ranch is a destination for hiking and backpacking situated on his property. Twi weeks of backpacking through that wilderness was a formative experience for me, and I hope future generations aren't deprived of the opportunity to enjoy it.

isn't that land part of a scheme to farm bison and save them from extinction? it would make sense for his will to specify that it keeps being used for this.

> (…) founded CNN, a pioneering 24-hour network that revolutionized television news (…)

> (…) audacious vision to deliver news from around the world in real time, at all hours (…)

And thus marked the beginning of the end. 24-hour news, like social media, are a net negative for society. Networks have to keep making shit up to pad the never-ending run time, and they’re always bad news, making the world seem worse than it is and radicalising more people. It’s a version of doomscrolling where you don’t even have to scroll. It’s social media where only one a few people can post and their only goal is engagement.

Seems like he did good things in his life, and even here I don’t think he could’ve predicted (or even intended) the negative effects of this invention, but it doesn’t mean it should be celebrated (though this is on CNN’s website, so of course they will). I wonder if, like Nobel, he eventually realised the thing he created did more harm than good.

He’s been pretty quiet in the news for a while so he sort of fell into the category of those famous people who when they died, half your response is a bit of surprise that they were still alive (which is neither a good nor bad thing, just a thing¹).

⸻

1. I once had an idea for a party game which involved people trying to guess whether a formerly prominent person was alive or dead.

I'd play that game

The MTV show Remote Control had a round called "Dead or Canadian", which has morphed into pub quizzes as "Dead or Canadian, Both or Neither?", which is shockingly tricky at times.

The Dead or Canadian category on its own was surprisingly tricky. Remote Control was fun TV.

I might have to steal that idea!

I guess it would need an internet connection to work but sounds fun.

I made a list that I kept on my phone of potential names (Provided below with the answers removed—I made the list three years ago so I know at least one of the living then are alive no more).

Actors: Gary Burghoff Alan Alda Wayne Rogers Jamie Farr Loretta Switt Harry Morgan Mike Farrell David Ogden Stiers McLean Stevenson Lary Linville Cast of Gilligan’s Island Crocodile Dundee

Musicians: Pete Best Stuart Sutcliffe Frankie Avalon Annette Funicello

Politics: Henry Kissinger Geraldine Ferraro Jane Byrne Michael Bilandic Eugene Sawyer Eddie Vrdolyak

Appreciate going deep on MAS*H

I'd be a bit surprised if anybody who knew who Stuart Sutcliffe is didn't know he was dead. He's not particularly well-known outside of people who have read about the history of the Beatles, and the fact that he died while they were still in their heyday is probably the only thing that people who know about him would be remember.

It’s putting him with Pete Best that makes it tricky so that people have to remember which one is the one who died early. George (Harrison and Martin), Paul, John and Ringo are all gimmes.

I had a similar idea, Who's Still Alive / Who Died First with pairs of people. (Who died first: Johnny Carson or Ed McMahon? John Glenn or Neil Armstrong?)

I remember CNN bursting onto the scene. It was revolutionary. Although there was never (even today) enough news to fill a 24hr period. Just endless repeats of the same block of news.

I think there absolutely would be enough if they also covered international stories as well as happier news. There's a whole lot more good going on in the world right now than bad, but for some reason we do not highlight it.

"For some reason" is that people do not watch it.

Once you get a taste of "bad" it dominates.

Maybe for some people, but I see no reason we shouldn't seek out and show good news... I think it makes people happier.

Good news is much easier to fake.

It's important to remember that actually reporting news is a tertiary purpose of the news business. The primary purpose is to sell advertising. The secondary purpose is to get eyeballs onto their product, in order to facilitate the primary purpose. Reporting news is only done because it's how they've chosen to get those eyeballs.

'Good going on', rarely affects my wallet.

And most of the "bad going on" is completely out of your control. People could do with consuming a lot less national/international news.

There are other valid reasons to watch the news though.

> There's a whole lot more good going on in the world right now than bad,

I have no clue how you could ever even estimate this sort of ratio. How do you even quantify the "number of things going on", let alone confidently split them into good and bad?

I think that a lot of the issue might be that the "good" is often irrelevant to the user. E.g. Great news! Scientists discover new drug for treating cancer (in mice).

As they say "If it bleeds it leads"

Mentally you tend to equally weigh both good and bad news over a long time span, but negative news gets a much quicker and stronger initial reaction, thus it gets priority. Just an evolutionary trait, don't wait to see if the shadow is a tiger just assume it is about to attack.

This is why social media ends up the way it is, that quick reaction is what the algorithms pick up on even if long term it isn't any different. It is a hard issue to overcome especially when it is a free market race to the bottom.

Of all the fascinating things that I’ve seen, there was a Moscow TV station rebroadcasting CNN during the Gulf War.

My memory is hazy, and I accepted it as-is at the time, but the idea that American news could be watched live shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union seems entirely wild.

Now instead of so many repeats, we get panels of 5 talking heads "analyzing" 15 seconds of news for 15 minutes.

TV news is garbage everywhere.

> Although there was never (even today) enough news to fill a 24hr period.

Of course there's enough news; they simply choose not to report on it. This is true both domestically and certainly around the world. Presumably this is a mixture of highly dubious editorial decision and some reasoning that this doesn't make money.

The original "Situation Room" concept with Wolf was pulling in all these live feeds from all over the place and reporting on them. Car chase in LA! Train crash in India! Protest in Paris! Let's go live!

They had a web subscription product around 2006 that gave you access to just watch all these raw feeds from CNN Affiliates all over the world. It was like Periscope but all "professional" feeds.

I also remember when CNN first appeared. I was a kid, but I recall people (adults, Boomers) sort of rejected it at first. I think there was a trust issue, not just with CNN, but cable-TV in general. But yeah, I recall people thinking CNN was a passing fad, like it would fail in a year or so because people liked/trusted the local broadcasters and network anchors they'd known for most of their lives.

I just remember it as a channel you could bring up that always had the top headlines right now. Yes they would repeat a lot of it every 15-30 minutes but if you didn't want to wait for the national TV news at 6:00pm you could just turn on CNN and feel informed. It was also the start of people getting addicted to the need to know everything all the time, later amplified 100x by the rise of the internet and mobile phones/media. I remember some people getting addicted to CNN, just had it on all the time.

There was CNN and HNN (CNN2 at one point). CNN had more variety of coverage, interviews, etc. HNN was the one that repeated itself every 30 minutes or so (if nothing new came in), it was more like watching the national evening news at essentially any time of day. Then in the '00s they switched over to do more talking head junk.

News isn't watched, it's read. There's extraordinary convincing power in having a talking head say things to you. You're way more likely to believe it regardless of truth. It's why they all do it.

I don't think so. In latter decades CNN descended into a spin zone with blatant conflicts-of-interest, such as:

- CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux was married to Karine Jean-Pierre (Biden's press sec, 2022-5)

- CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour is married to James Rubin, (was Clinton admin asst. secretary of state for public affairs, 1997-2000)

- Jen Psaki's 2017 revolving-door when she was said to be actively shopping herself for a job at CNN while still Obama's WH communications director (no 12-month "cooling-off" period). Left WH 1/2017, joined CNN 2/2017.

- for decades now, CNN seems to function like a retirement home for Clinton-era operatives like James Carville and Donna Brazile. In particular this was a blatant conflict-of-interest in the 2016 primary (Hilary vs Bernie, and the DNC shenanigans). I've seen many bloggers say that TV loves these commentators not because they're that relevant or insightful, but because they steer candidates and their budgets towards big wasteful traditional media spends (and not more targeted internet campaigns, like Obama 2008 or Trump 2016).

- the legendary 2004 takedown of CNN's Crossfire debate show (a younger Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala) by Jon Stewart ("You're on CNN! The show that leads into me is puppets making prank phone calls! What is wrong with you?")

I don't find talking heads persuasive, and one simple antidote is to flick between coverage of the same issue on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, PBS, ABC/NBC/CBS, BBC, DW, RT, foreign channels, etc. to see conflicting narratives, or sometimes conflicting facts.

Maybe the better converse question is: when did CNN stop being any more credible and up-to-the-minute than other news sources (incl. internet ones, or SM)? Maybe late 1990s. Its rise and fall parallel the Clinton admin.

(Why did this get downvoted? I'm genuinely interested in how CNN went from being a premium news source (Somalia 1993) to the current thing, after several takeovers. This has contemporary relevance, like an inability to make objective criticism of the DNC in 2016 or 2024).

Orthogonal to whether people find print vs video trustworthy or authoritative, which I think is conditioned by what each person grew up considering to be trustworthy or authoritative.

They know better than everyone what people watch. Apparently it's not profitable to do in-depth journalism. As someone else in this thread said, the bobble-head analysis is what people watched (past tense, because now they are the "legacy media").

I think it's strongly related to the market for "reaction videos" on youtube, or even the early-2000's VH1 shows where a famous/popular person would react to music videos. Perhaps people want to project their emotions onto an avatar?

Ted Turner won the America's cup there in 1977. His team named Courageous was legendary. Robbie Doyle was a team member, and got a degree from Harvard in applied physics. In the middle of the trials to see which team would defend the cup for the US, he remade the sails to be more competitive. Doyle went on to found a racing sailmaking company.

I used to live in Newport, RI. I love sailing and introducing people to the world of sailing. When I had guests I asked them to watch this NBC video about Ted's 77 campaign [1]. It really captures the history of Newport, sailing, and Ted

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr7-BwzceYI&list=PLXEMPXZ3PY...

There was recently another good film on Netflix about the Australian victory at the 1983 America's Cup[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSmns9QWPiE

Sounds great. I'll watch it with the kids. We've recently done this podcast about the history of the cup and it was funny and fascinating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUZmk_G6rFE

> In 2010, Turner joined Warren Buffett's and Bill Gates's The Giving Pledge, vowing to donate the majority of his fortune to charity upon his death.

Does The Giving Pledge still exist? Will this happen?

The Giving Pledge still exists, but like most philanthropy it has always been more about PR and reputation washing rather than real public good.

The majority of people who have died since making the pledge did not meet the terms they agreed to and the vast majority of people still alive who made the pledge are on track to fail to meet the terms as their wealth is growing significantly faster than their charitable donations.

This is not to say everyone who has made the Giving Pledge is bad, there are some people on the list who have legitimately done a lot of good, but being on the list has overall been a meaningless indicator of actual outcomes.

>more about PR and reputation washing rather than real public good.

there is a parable i cant quite remember, but something along the lines of "the starving kid does not care where the food comes from".

that doesn't quite capture it... but in this context: the people receiving the money/help do not care if they got it because of "reputation washing" or "real public good". they get the help in both scenarios, and that's what matters.

as long as the money is going to actual, real charities/non-profits/good causes... who cares whether the billionaire did it because they are truly generous or because they thought "this will look good in the news"?

I'd even argue that we should encourage _more_ of this behavior, if it leads to more charity.

The idea that you have to do good deeds without expecting any kind of reward or recognition seems distinctly Christian to me. For Christians, the intent of this requirement is to ensure people remain humble (pride is a sin, of course) but this clearly contradicts the (imo much more relevant) principle of self interest. You can't really expect people to do something for other people without some kind of reward -- be it the promise of eternal salvation, some kind of social credit, or simply an internal sense of satisfaction.

As long as people aren't merely simulating charity to receive it, I don't see any downside to allowing people a bit of social reward for their giving.

Altruism predates humans, but we are the best at it, and this behavior long predates Christianity. That you associate altruism distinctly with Christianity just discloses massive gaps in your experience and/or education.

Not only have you misinterpreted my comment to attack claims I never made, you've also used this misinterpretation as license to insult me. Lovely.

It isn’t an insult to say you’re speaking about something you’re clearly not educated in when you clearly aren’t educated in it. A lot of people might take offense I guess, but an insult would be directed at you personally, not something you could easily rectify.

The rest of your comments confirm what I said. I am really unclear how you think I have misinterpreted your comment.

If you were interested in demonstrating my lack of education, I'm not sure you have done so.

But I'm happy to conclude this exchange with your feeling satisfied on that point. I don't imagine you're interested in an actual debate on substance, given that your only argument is essentially that I'm ignorant, and I don't know what I'm talking about.

Thank you for lending your expertise in this matter.

My argument seemed pretty clear to me. Altruism, which is generally defined as helping others without expectation of benefit, is not at all specific to Christianity, despite that being your impression.

I would be happy to discuss the topic in more detail but your responses have so far consisted of telling me I don’t understand what you’re saying, but without clarifying your position further.

I don't think that altruism is specific to Christianity. I clarified that in a sibling comment (which you seemed to indicate you had read?), and that what I meant was Christianity specifically requires that good deeds must be purely altruistic. It's not considered true charity to do something with the expectation of any kind of reward. Am I wrong in thinking this is distinctly Christian? I'm genuinely interested.

I’m trying to understand the distinction you are making. Pure altruism exists in animal communities. It is evolutionary. Are you contrasting belief systems with karma with Christianity?

I believe in the ancient world (roman, jewish, and greek) charity was seen as a moral good but the emphasis was on helping your own tribe. Jesus expanded that to helping the "other".

Sure, I never claimed that Christians invented charity. They're certainly not even the only religion that advocates universal charity.

To be clear, what I see as distinctly Christian is the idea that charity must be purely altruistic -- it's not seen as Christian to desire recognition for your charity, or to perform charitable acts with the hope of being rewarded with eternal salvation. They must be done purely out of duty to God, and love for others (which are essentially identical requirements, since "God is love").

But if there's ignorance behind that thought, I'm open to being educated.

Can we please guillotine this entire sidebar, it's offtopic to Ted Turner (or anywhere on HN).

Yeah, actually I completely agree with you. This discussion has gotten way out of hand.

I think that the problem would be if the reputation washing prevents their victims from getting justice or if they leverage their reputation to victimize more people.

The corollary is also true: the starving kid does not care that you are seen as generous. They are hungry.

We can argue all day about motives, but what really matters is action.

Who cares whether the people who control the majority of the planet’s capital actually care about other people or just the preservation of their image?

I do. I will accept the donation either way, but in terms of so much else, I fucking do.

the point of my comment is very specifically about not caring about motivation behind charitable actions, because regardless of motivation, the charitable action still occurs.

if you want to be mad about other things, like how wasteful super yachts are or whatever, by all means go for it. but that is outside the scope of my comment.

I understand, and as I said I would take the money for the cause, but I still don’t agree. This kind of passive acceptance of shallow behavior is disappointing to me. We should expect more from humanity.

> there is a parable i cant quite remember, but something along the lines of "the starving kid does not care where the food comes from".

A lot of the money never goes to the starving kid, it goes into foundations that act more as tax shelters than they do actual charitable organizations.

> who cares whether the billionaire did it because they are truly generous or because they thought "this will look good in the news"?

It matters when the scope of their giving doesn't match the PR-generating pledges they make, which is the real point of my post.

If someone gives their money away to a good cause, I don't care what their real motivation is, but if they say they are going to give >50% of their wealth to charity to generate PR and then they never do that (true for the majority of Giving Pledge pledgers) that is behavior I think it contemptable and worthy of being called out.

>A lot of the money never goes to the starving kid, it goes into foundations that act more as tax shelters than they do actual charitable organizations.

this is covered by the "actual, real charities/non-profits/good causes" caveat in my comment.

The NYTimes did a nice write-up about how The Giving Pledge is dropping out of vogue.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/business/the-billionaire-...

Will they still transfer all of their money to a (perhaps charitable) trust that their people control?

Yes.

I suppose that only works if most of them join the pledge. Otherwise, you will be "disarming" unilaterally.

Nah, there's no legal force behind the pledge. It was always just a pinky swear.

It stopped giving the wealthy so much positive PR so a lot of them have simply stopped talking about it. Whether or not they still go through with it, who knows. I somewhat doubt they will.

The other problem people are quickly becoming aware of is that charities are ineffective ways to solve social problems. And, particularly for very wealthy and well connected people, the charities seem to be much more of a tax dodge with a glossy pamphlet rather than anything real.

Before starting CNN, Ted Turner captained the sailing Yacht Courageous to an America's Cup victor 4-0 over the Australians in Newport, RI during what was arguably sailings hay day.

great watch on his accomplishments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qknXQgqIjzI

Oh my god I finally get a very specific Harvey Birdman joke as a result of this factoid. Fuck me, Phil Ken Sebben as a parody of Ted Turner kinda works.

Incidentally, Turner created Cartoon Network.

That I was aware of. I'm more familiar with his media and wildlife conservation efforts than his business acumen or sports achievements. Captain Planet, Turner Classic Movies, Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network, etc.

As a film fan I remember all of the outrage over his plan to colorize classic films. He was also a critic of the film "Taxi Driver" and complained about the film's values.

He was everywhere in the late 70s and early 80s. WTCG -- The Super Station.

Can't find the source but the quote I heard attributed to Orson Welles to Turner wanting to colorize the purposefully black-and-white Citizen Kane was "Tell Ted Turner to keep his goddamn crayolas off my movies"

By 1980, WTCG had become "WTBS" and then "TBS SuperStation" and simply "TBS"

The Onion headline should be: Ted Turner dies at 87:05

Ah, that took a second to get. If anyone is stumped, it's a reference to Turner Time [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TBS_(American_TV_channel)#Turn...

They are planning a 6-minute funeral and a 30-second commitment, while the left side teases a documentary on the birth of Mark Thompson's children

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreditsPushback

Definitely have mixed feelings about whats become of CNN and how the 24 hour news cycle has affected the world, but I'm very grateful that Turner financed the movie Gettysburg [0]. One of my favorite movies, based on one of my favorite books. I've probably seen it at least 50 times.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_(1993_film)

Greatest Contribution to the world is Turner Movie Classics and restoring all that old Hollywood film.

Turner also gave us Cartoon Network and [adult swim].

Ted Turner also created the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award, which was a half a million dollars literary prize for coming up with a book that offered “creative solutions to humanity's urgent problems".

The winner was Daniel Quinn’s “Ismael”. Quite a remarkable book that probably never would have been published without this.

Last night on AEW Dynamite [1], Tony Schiavone and Sting had some very nice things to say about Ted Turner. I didn't know he'd died until then. They both talked about how Ted started WCW and how he defended pro wrestling when certain execs wanted to cancel it.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bXSILHvWe0

Met him at the Black Pearl in Newport, RI during his America's Cup days. Gruff guy but took the time for this fan girl.

It always seemed like Turner was the last media mogul with a conscience (there were never that many in the first place). As the article mentions, it's kind of surprising that he didn't turn into a villain given what he went through, both during his childhood and his massive success in business later. Proof that it's possible for people to stay grounded, empathetic, and true to themselves despite running into wealth and power.

No one can say he didn't live a full life.

Turner Classic Movies is, in my opinion, the only TV channel actually worth paying for. Curation, curveballs, and great commentary by fans and experts -- that's what you won't find on streaming servies.

Ted Turner built a 24-hour news network when everyone said nobody would watch news at 3 AM. Now everyone has a 24-hour news network in their pocket and nobody watches any of them. He was right about the demand but wrong about who would supply it.

On the lighter side, and as a sort of RIP, https://youtu.be/uVzLzClY2E8?si=Erm6_WlW0xiEgVnk

Delete the ?si=... part because it's tracking you personally and is unnecessary.

Someone needs to update the simpsons wiki : ( https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Ted_Turner

Now we can make a "Captain Planet" movie to honor Ted.

Captain Planet and the Planeteers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planete...

TIL Turner was a creator of Captain Planet.

I think I heard somewhere (can't find reliable source right now) that he created Captain Planet as a revenge. He had some renewable energy initiative/deal that he was trying to get pushed through that got clobbered by big oil lobbyists. So he created Captain Planet as some revenge scheme.

Relevant: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uVzLzClY2E8

Hadn't heard that.

Oil price shock and a curiously delayed hostage situation displaced Carter in the 1980 election. And we've debt-financed trillions in oil commodity market manipulating wars since.

From "The surprising story behind the making of 'Captain Planet'" (2021) https://grist.org/culture/captain-planet-planeteers-real-sto... :

> “Our mission was to inspire and to educate the next generation of environmental activists,” Pyle said. She and producer Nicholas Boxer made it a point to slip as much planetary realness into the show’s fantastical plotlines. In fact, Pyle says many ideas were taken directly from the Global 2000 Report to the President, a 1980 paper commissioned by Jimmy Carter that warned of environmental disaster should policies fail to account for the world’s booming population growth.

The Global 2000 Report to the President (aka "The Doomsday Report") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_2000_Report_to_the_...

Looks like it was predictively close on population estimates, but the 100% increase in food price production wasn't accurate (though we do have soil depletion and foreign mineral depletion instead).

FAO Food Price Index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Food_Price_Index

Unknown how much affect there was on the indicator due to calling attention to the indicator with such report.

/? oil disasters prior to 1980: https://www.google.com/search?q=oil+disasters+prior+to+1980

Ixtoc I oil spill in 1979 (2nd after Deepwater Horizon, which also resulted in dying dolphins and fish and birds on the beach) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill

Earth Day (April 22nd) was created in response to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day#1969_Santa_Barbara_o...

Big oil lobbyists haven't paid their bills for foreign wars.

Over the estimated interval of 1980 through 2000, Gross National Debt to GDP ratio grew from 35% to 59%. GND-to-GDP is approximately 120% in 2026.

The Carter plan for renewables would've saved trillions of dollars and many lives compared to the 1980-1992 Reagan-Bush debt-financed oil wars.

FWIU the Limits to Growth report is more accurate than the Global 2000 report that - TIL - led to Captain Planet and the Planeteers for us kids back then.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48036974

This is still my favorite Onion article ever: “Ted Turner Sends Self Back In Time To Prevent AOL Time Warner Merger”

https://theonion.com/ted-turner-sends-self-back-in-time-to-p...

He had a "Doomsday Video" made for CNN to play when the world ends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Doomsday_Video

There is a good case to be made that he (rather impulsively) caused more impactful charitable giving than any other person.

He essentially created the modern “billionaire giving to global causes” movement by deciding to donate a billion dollars during a speech.

https://x.com/NickKristof/status/2052038692949406188?s=20

If you’re intrigued by the comments here, I highly recommend his memoir Call Me Ted.

The same man that supposedly wanted to "serve" Bill Clinton (possibly play Minitrue)? (cf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRs46IfC2ls&t=89s)

That's a clip from my favorite documentary, Spin

https://youtu.be/BcKhnzEd6x0

cnn email alert was how I learned that 9/11 was happening. love or hate the man and the news outlet, but you have to admit that they ushered in the news era of the internet.

CNN was how we watched Desert Storm in '91

Nowadays, almost any news org can have journalists reporting from across the planet in real-time. But back before internet connectivity was ubuquitous, StarLink satellites, smartphones and streaming video everywhere, CNN had a few reporters who had the then-very-rare satellite phones (I think they were almost small-backpack sized) who could report from Iraq on-site during Desert Storm, and it was revolutionary. CNN's ratings went through the roof during that war, and after the war was over, it was reported they raised their ad rates over 1000%, because they had this new giant audience. It really felt like a transformation of public news media.

It wasn't just the sat phones, but they had cameras with satellite links as well. Plus, CNN was the only team that stuck around in Baghdad when everyone else left town. From their hotel room, we watched with them the unedited footage as all of the tracers from the AA lit up the night sky in a way few outside of military service had ever seen. The DoD provided additional footage of missiles through windows, but CNN was the place where everyone watched the live views.

This was a pivotal time for news coverage. The only thing that is at the same level was the JFK assassination. Until then, newspapers were the main source of news. The JFK coverage is where TV took over with live coverage instead of reading yesterday's news. Throw in the live coverage of Oswald being shot, and it was pretty much a standing 8 count with the internet being the final TKO for newspapers. PBS did a special on this called "JFK: Breaking the News"[0]

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7yAaUmKwKs

Well, that and Wayne's World...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi_t54HNeIg

Here he is as 9/11 happened: https://youtu.be/yD5ZSEzriLI?t=1435

And then you couldn't get to their home page because they got hammered by traffic. They eventually slimmed the page down to just the main story and you could get it to load eventually.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night for some reason, turning on CNN, and finding out we had invaded Panama.

Growing up, TV stations shut off around midnight. Quite the sea change.

He died at 8:05 EST.

What’s going to happen to all that land he owned?

RIP.

If anyone wanted to hear interesting Ted Turner anecdotes, they're found throughout Keith Olbermann's podcast.

RIP legend

It's also worth remembering that Ted Turner also funded and asked for editorial changes to the the movie version of Gods and Generals, which downplayed slavyer and embraced the Confederate "lost cause" ideology. Most historians consider that as denial-ism on the same order as holocaust denial and the "stabbed in the back" claim that Hitler's used to seize power in the first place. He also attacked his own employees because of their religious beliefs. He later apologized for much of this, but if you want to find some of the reason for the modern return of fascism, you have to consider this.

I was just talking about Ted Turner. I was at the in-laws' the other day and I said to my father-in-law, "Ted Turner—you probably already know this because you probably met Ted Turner, but he used to run an evening cartoon block for adults on TNT with old Looney Tunes and all the racist jokes and sexual innuendos preserved." And he was like "Yep, I met him several times." Because he was a big-deal media lawyer in the 80s and 90s.

Here's to you, Mr. Turner. Captain Planet was blatant propaganda, but you were largely responsible for my nerdy interest in animation.

It's funny to me that, whenever these uber-rich old ghouls that were widely despised like 40 years ago die, they're remembered fondly, simply because we have much, much worse rich old ghouls now.

Ted Turner seemed like a solid guy, not just relatively better.

Agreed. I'm generally super cynical (it's something I'm working on!) but Turner seems like a decent person.

Although Ted Turner’s net worth at the time of his death in May 2026 was estimated between $2.2 billion and $2.8 billion, his politics were very progressive.

> In 1996, Turner admitted, "For the 10 years I ran [the team], it was a disaster. ... As I relinquished control of the Braves and gave somebody else the responsibility, it did well."

When's the last time you heard a billionaire say something like that?

> "We're the only first-world country that doesn't have universal healthcare and it's a disgrace."

> Iran's nuclear position: "They're a sovereign state. We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10? We don't say anything about Israel — they've got 100 of them approximately — or India or Pakistan or Russia."

> dubbed opponents of abortion "bozos"

> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror

> in 2008, Turner asserted on PBS's Charlie Rose that if steps are not taken to address global warming, most people would die and "the rest of us will be cannibals".

There's more than wikipedia covers, but you get the idea.

>> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror

That's a funny thing to mark as "progressive" as I don't think that'd have been considered progressive until fairly recently. Plus, he walked it back.

> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror: "The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism." He apologized for that and the remarks in 2011 about the 9/11 hijackers, but also defended himself: "Look, I'm a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word ... I mean, I don't type my speeches, then sit up there and read them off the teleprompter, you know. I wing it.

He was also uncomfortably concerned with population growth.

> Turner also said in the interview that he advocated Americans having no more than two children. In 2010, he stated that the People's Republic of China's one-child policy should be implemented.

I'm not sure I'd call him progressive. Thinking Iran should have nuclear weapons doesn't seem to make sense from any perspective unless you want them to use them.

Frankly, he seems like pretty standard anti-natalist environmentalist to me.

> I'm not sure I'd call him progressive. Thinking Iran should have nuclear weapons doesn't seem to make sense from any perspective unless you want them to use them.

Maybe the point is that the logic applies to literally every country having them, including the US, but that doesn't imply that starting a war to try to stop one of them from getting them will end up with a better situation.

I don't know if "anti-natalist" can be so simply placed on the conservative vs. progressive axis. Worrying about overpopulation means worrying about the quality of life of future generations, whereas "natalism" à la Musk is basically worrying about how they can keep making themselves richer, while not giving a damn about what happens to the world or humanity afterwards. So Turner's concern about population growth, if not necessarily progressive, strikes me as very fitting and in line with the humanist, philanthropic positions shown by the other points mentioned about him.

> I don't know if "anti-natalist" can be so simply placed on the conservative vs. progressive axis.

That was kind of my point. I doesn't belong on that axis at all, especially trying to transpose a comment from decades ago onto the current political dividing lines between "left" and "right" when so many ideologies have shifted sides over that period.

> Worrying about overpopulation means worrying about the quality of life of future generations, whereas "natalism" à la Musk is basically worrying about how they can keep making themselves richer, while not giving a damn about what happens to the world or humanity afterwards.

One can be natalist or anti-natalist for a variety of reasons. There's no one ideology that leads a person to each conclusion. People have come to (anti-)natalism from both humanist and anti-humanist arguments (and a variety of other arguments).

> So Turner's concern about population growth, if not necessarily progressive, strikes me as very fitting and in line with the humanist, philanthropic positions shown by the other points mentioned about him.

Again, avoiding the left/right/conservative/progressive labeling as those terms are dynamic over time. He's essentially a Malthusian for humanitarian and environmental reasons. Which makes sense, given his age. He'd have been in his mid 20's through the 60s and that was a fairly popular viewpoint at the time.

Besides the questionable ethics of billionaires in general, I'd say Turner's biggest blunder was inventing the 24 hour news cycle, which has since been used to push a lot awful stuff that Ted himself probably found pretty distasteful.

And on the flip side, while Turner was politically progressive, with his personal behavior, he was a hard drinking, loud talking guy who would likely have been villanized by the woke CNN of the early 2020's.

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