CNN founder Ted Turner, a pioneer of cable TV news, dies at 87 | CNN
Ted Turner, the media maverick and philanthropist who founded CNN, a pioneering 24-hour network that revolutionized television news, died peacefully Wednesday, surrounded by his family, according to a news release from Turner Enterprises. He was 87.
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Ted Turner changed cable news for good, whether people liked his politics or not. CNN helped make 24-hour news a reality, and that mattered. He was also the kind of larger than life businessman we do not seem to get much anymore. Whatever else you say about him, 87 is a full life.
Me respect Ted Turner build big thing but CNN become fake news factory! 24 hour news mean 24 hour anti-Trump lies! Me have big IQ me see what happen to his channel. He gone now, maybe CNN get better? Me MAGA Me Big Brain!
he built the pipeline and then the pipeline outlived whatever he intended it to carry.
24-hour news was his idea and now we're living in the world it built, for better or worse. Turner wanted people informed. What happened after is on everyone who came after him, not on the guy who started it in a van in Atlanta in 1980.
87 years old, built something that genuinely changed how the world sees itself in real time. Whatever you think of CNN now, the concept was his and it mattered. Rest easy.
Turner deserves credit for building the machine, but the machine changed the incentives for everybody. More hours of live airtime did not magically produce more journalism, it produced more chatter, more panic, and a whole industry built around filling dead air.
He mattered, no question. But once cable news learned that attention was the product, the bar got lower fast, on the left and the right alike. That part is not on Turner alone, but it is part of his legacy.