Ted Turner, the flamboyant US entrepreneur who transformed television news with the creation of CNN in 1980, has died at the age of 87, the network said.<\/p>\n
The mustached southerner, yachting enthusiast and philanthropist, whose empire also included sports clubs, had been suffering from the degenerative disease Lewy Body Dementia.<\/p>\n
Cable News Network upended established broadcasting with its dedication to around-the-clock breaking news and shot to global recognition with its coverage of the Gulf War in 1990-91.<\/p>\n
The 24-hour network was the first in the United States to run non-stop news and quickly built a worldwide footprint.<\/p>\n
Correspondents brought live coverage from major events ranging from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the Chinese crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests.<\/p>\n
CNN’s decision to keep reporters in Baghdad amid US bombing on the Iraqi capital cemented the network’s reputation as an indispensable source of breaking news.<\/p>\n
“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,” Chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide Mark Thompson said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN.”<\/p>\n
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in November 1938, Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III went to a military boarding school in Tennessee, and then attended Brown University, but was expelled before graduating.<\/p>\n
Mr Turner took over a faltering family advertising business after his father, despondent over financial problems, committed suicide.<\/p>\n
After buying a number of radio stations, Mr Turner’s purchase of a struggling Atlanta station in 1970 was his first move into television.<\/p>\n
Ten years later, that became the flagship of his nationwide Turner Broadcasting System, the profits from which he parlayed into the launch of CNN.<\/p>\n
CNN’s success inspired the creation of other 24-hour news channels including Fox News by longtime Turner rival Rupert Murdoch, MSNBC and countless networks worldwide.<\/p>\n
Mr Turner’s television empire expanded beyond CNN and included TBS and TNT channels for sports and entertainment, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network, among others.<\/p>\n
Forbes estimates his fortune at $2.8 billion (\u20ac2.3bn).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ted Turner, the flamboyant US entrepreneur who transformed television news with the creation of CNN in 1980, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-435354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}