TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012290/0122250.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.1 KB | 191 lines

                                                                                VIDEO, Page 58

The Greening of Ted Turner


As his once shaky ventures thrive, he turns into a liberal
activist

By RICHARD ZOGLIN -- Reported by Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta


    He has always been a hard man to avoid, but these days Ted
Turner seems to be everywhere. His thriving TV empire, which
started as a single Atlanta UHF station, has grown to four
nationwide cable networks. The newest of them, Turner Network
Television, has been an unexpected hit, more than doubling its
audience after just 15 months on the air. CNN and Headline
News, his two all-news channels, grow in resourcefulness and
credibility with each passing world crisis. Turner has launched
a publishing company, and is shopping for a movie studio
(though negotiations to purchase MGM/UA have come to a halt).
Visitors to his Atlanta headquarters can even browse through
the Turner Store, which sells everything from CNN T-shirts to
Wizard of Oz beach towels and Scarlett O'Hara chocolates.

    But talk to Ted Turner about business today, and he will
probably steer the conversation into something closer to his
heart. Like the folly of spending $300 billion a year on
defense: "I think we can get by easily with a $75 billion
military budget. These bombers and all of this stuff is an
absolute waste of money and a joke." Or industrial pollution:
"We get more information every day that toxic poisons are a
greater threat to us than anyone ever thought. Intelligent
people now know that we are really in trouble." Or East-West
relations: "Gorbachev has probably moved more quickly than any
person in the history of the world. Moving faster than Jesus
Christ did. America is always lagging six months behind."

    It's vintage Turner, a mix of bluntness and good-ole-boy
bluster. But people don't laugh condescendingly anymore at the
man who was once dubbed the "Mouth of the South." The raffish
and unpredictable outsider has become an industry leader, and
the critics who once forecast his demise have for now been
silenced. The Turner Broadcasting System, which three years ago
was close to collapsing in debt, showed an operating profit for
the first nine months of 1989, the first time it has emerged
from the red since 1985. Turner, meanwhile, has become an
advocate for a range of liberal causes. In an industry in which
executives are careful to keep political views to themselves
(except perhaps for flag waving during Bicentennial
celebrations), Turner is that rare bird: a TV chieftain with
an outspoken conscience.

    On the business front, Turner's turnaround has been
impressive. After his abortive 1985 attempt to take over CBS
and his costly acquisition of MGM's library of 3,300 old films,
Turner appeared to be in financial trouble. In desperate need
of cash, he turned for a bailout to a group of cable-owning
companies (among them Time Inc.), which bought a large share
of Turner Broadcasting. His stake in the company has been
reduced from 80% of common stock to just over 40%, and for the
first time he must get approval for major decisions from a
board of directors.

    He and his partners are "getting along extremely well,"
Turner says, relaxing in a stuffed chair in his spacious
Atlanta office, cluttered with silver trays, banners and other
memorabilia. But he admits that the restraints often chafe. "My
hands are absolutely tied. This is not my company anymore." The
board has scotched some of Turner's ideas (like a proposal to
buy the Financial News Network, and another to lease part of
New York City's Pan Am Building and emblazon it with the CNN
logo). But it approved one of his boldest moves: the October
1988 launch of TNT.

    Some cable executives were skeptical that the new network
would find a niche on an already crowded cable dial, especially
since it would be filled largely with old movies. But TNT, seen
today in 37.5 million cable homes, has drawn an enthusiastic
cult audience for its treasure trove of MGM, RKO and pre-1950
Warner Bros. movies. Film lovers, who were outraged at Turner
for colorizing classics originally released in glorious
black-and-white, are now also praising him for unearthing the
oeuvres of Warren William, Edna May Oliver and Alfred E. Green.

cable partners," says Turner. "But I knew they would be
popular."

    TNT has served up original movies as well, like Faye
Dunaway's Cold Sassy Tree and this month's remake of Treasure
Island, starring Charlton Heston as Long John Silver. By 1992
the channel plans to churn out four made-for-TV movies a month.
TNT also carries N.B.A. basketball (Turner just renewed his
package of 50 regular-season games for four more years at the
hefty cost of $275 million), and will offer 50 hours of
exclusive Winter Olympics coverage in 1992. And if TNT seems to
be stealing some thunder (and some programming) from TBS
SuperStation, Turner's older and still more widely seen
channel, the ratings do not show it: TBS's audience in December
was the highest in its history. The creation of TNT now seems
like a marketing masterstroke. "They are like two brands put
out by the same manufacturer," says Gerry Hogan, president of
Turner Entertainment. "Like Procter & Gamble producing both
Tide and Cheer."

    Turner's news operation is also booming. CNN's coverage of
the San Francisco earthquake drew its highest ratings ever, and
the news network is assembling a 50-member investigative unit,
headed by former ABC documentary chief Pamela Hill. With the
completion of a satellite link over the Indian Ocean last
summer, CNN International is seen in virtually every country
on the globe, beamed to embassies in Europe, oil platforms in
the North Sea and satellite dishes in the jungles of Peru.
(Turner just received permission to set up a receiving dish  for
CNN in Viet Nam.) The network is also pursuing the youth market
with CNN Newsroom, a daily 15-minute news program seen in
5,600 schools.

    But Turner the entrepreneur is increasingly being upstaged
by Turner the political activist. In 1985 he founded the Better
World Society, a nonprofit organization that produces and
distributes programming on environmental issues. A year later,
he launched the Goodwill Games to foster better relations
between the superpowers following two Olympic boycotts. TNT has
aired such advocacy films as Nightbreaker, an antinuclear drama
starring Martin Sheen, and Incident at Dark River, in which
Mike Farrell (who produced the movie) plays a man whose
daughter is killed by toxic waste dumped by a local factory.
Currently in production is Captain Planet, a cartoon show for
kids about a superhero who fights environmental villains. And
Turner's new publishing unit has just created the Turner
Tomorrow Awards, offering prizes of up to $500,000 for
outstanding unpublished works of fiction that deal with saving
the planet.

    Turner's advocacy programming drew fire last summer when TBS
SuperStation aired Abortion: For Survival, a pro-choice
documentary produced by the Fund for a Feminist Majority. The
program was denounced by antiabortion groups, whom Turner later
described at a press conference as "bozos." Turner now regrets
the outburst. "I was answering a question as Citizen Turner,"
he says. "I was not answering it as Ted Turner, president of
Turner Broadcasting. I was really sorry that I used that term."
Still, Citizen Turner hasn't toned down his views. "These
people [antiabortionists] talk about adoption as an
alternative. That is a bunch of bull. The biggest problem we
have in the world is the population explosion. There are 100
million kids in the world that are up for adoption right now.
Adopt them."

    Some critics have raised concerns about whether a network
chief, of whatever persuasion, should be injecting his
political agenda into programming. Though CNN's news coverage
remains untainted, Turner's views are reflected in a variety
of entertainment fare, from the relatively mild pro-environment
messages of Jacques Cousteau's specials to more overtly
polemical TV movies like Incident at Dark River. "We never said
we were going to be totally balanced," notes Turner. Still,
when compared with timid network programming and a PBS schedule
that has been hamstrung by conservative corporate underwriters,
Turner's up-front approach is refreshing.

    At 51, the peripatetic TV kingpin has relaxed his day-to-day
involvement in TBS and toned down his former "Captain
Outrageous" image. Divorced from his second wife, Turner lives
in a penthouse atop CNN headquarters in downtown Atlanta. But
he spends an increasing portion of his time at his various
retreats: two plantations in South Carolina and Florida and a
ranch in Montana, where he goes fly-fishing and plans to keep
a herd of buffalo. "He's much mellower now," says an
associate. "He doesn't yell at people." Turner puts it
differently: "I am maturing. That's better than aging. You
enjoy different things." One thing he enjoys that hasn't
changed: keeping the TV industry guessing just what he'll do
next.