Ted Turner, an American broadcasting pioneer likely best known for founding CNN, the world’s first 24-hour cable news network, has passed away. He was 87 when his death occurred May 6, following a seven-year battle with Lewy Body Dementia (LBD).
A progressive brain disorder, there is no known cure for LBD. It is caused by abnormal protein deposits that build up in brain cells, eventually leading to severe dementia.
For the LGBTQ+ community, Turner was long recognized as an ally, particularly through his support for marriage equality and the actions taken by his company, Turner Broadcasting.
In a 2008 talk with the Commonwealth Club of California, Turner explicitly stated his support for the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals to marry, noting that he expected his own marriages to be supported.
In 2016, Turner Broadcasting was among the media companies that threatened to boycott North Carolina over the state’s “bathroom bill,” which restricted anti-discrimination protections for the LGBTQ+ community.
Under his influence, Turner Broadcasting (and later Time Warner) maintained a firm commitment to an inclusive work environment that forbade discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Born November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Turner expanded his father’s billboard business before building a media empire that also included TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies.
Turner’s work revolutionized television news and he became a major environmental philanthropist through the Turner Foundation and United Nations donations. In various interviews, his former wife and actress Jane Fonda talked about Turner’s efforts with endangered species populations such as black-footed ferrets, prairie dogs, bighorn sheep, Mexican gray wolves, and red-cockaded woodpeckers. She specifically credited Turner with the restoration of the American bison population, bringing them back from the brink of extinction.
Turner was also known for owning professional sports teams, including the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Falcons, and had been the owner of a Charlotte based television station. Digital Broadcast Channel 36, currently known as WCNC-TV, was analog broadcast station WRET-TV during Turner’s ownership throughout most of the 1970s.
In a post on Instagram, Fonda summed up her relationship with Turner as follows: “He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I’ve never been the same. He needed me. No one had ever let me know they needed me, and this wasn’t your average human being that needed me, this was the creator of CNN, and Turner Classic Movies, who had won the America’s Cup as the world’s greatest sailor. He had a big life, a brilliant mind and a soaring sense of humor.”
