By Elliott Brack
Editor and publisher, GwinnettForum
MAY 8, 2026 | What a tremendous person Ted Turner was! We are so pleased to have slightly known him. He died May 6 in Lamont, Fla., at age 87.
He was driven, super intelligent, an original thinker, an environmentalist of the first order, a sportsman, an astute businessman, able to create the future from his own mind, and a worldwide leader in philanthropy.
Ted Turner had to jump in at an early age on the death of his father to lead a South Georgia outdoor advertising company. From this, he seemed to take off with new successful ventures year after year.
- He bought a failing Atlanta independent low-power television station, Atlanta’s Channel 17, naming it WTCG (Turner Communications Group) then turned it around. Then he made that station into a national network in 1976, Turner Broadcasting System. He called it a “superstation” and started bouncing signals off satellites so that people around the entire nation could be his viewers.
- To provide low-cost programming for his station, he bought the Atlanta Braves baseball team, creating Braves’ fans in all the states, becoming “America’s team.” He instituted 24 hour-around-the-clock television, because as he saw it, “some people work late and don’t have anything to watch in the late hours.”
- Perhaps his most far-reaching move was next: In 1980 he launched a 24-hour news channel, Cable News Network, to the skepticism of broadcasters. But he made it work, and completely changed the world’s television business, with CNN becoming a major force internationally.
- Continuing thinking in new directions, he launched other cable networks, notably Turner Classic Movies, buying a vast portfolio of movie titles, to fill his channels.
- From the start, he was an environmentalist. I first knew him when the Atlanta Gas Light Company sponsored the Peach Bowl, who invited media to the game. We watched Turner as he drove off, folding his six-foot-three frame into a small four cylinder Datsun. Years later he would amass over two million acres of land in North America, and become a major contributor to restoring buffalo herds on his lands. He considered bringing back buffalo herds as his greatest accomplishment. His herd at one time numbered 45,000 head. Later he started Ted’s Montana Grill, a chain of restaurants.
- Turner became super rich after selling his media empire to Time Warner for $7.5 billion. Soon he gave $1 billion to the United Nations for peace, development and poverty relief programs. When announcing that gift, he said: ““I’ve never been happier or more pleased with myself than I am today.”
Of course, the above is only an overlay of Ted Turner’s great accomplishments. There’s much more, such as sailing to win the America’s Cup, buying the Atlanta Hawks, starting the Goodwill games, and on and on.
He once was quoted saying he would be perfect if he had just a bit of humility, and gave this assessment of his mental acuity: “I’m not that brilliant. I mean, basically I know what my IQ was. I was only in the 97th percentile. Three percent of the people in this country are smarter than me, and with 300 million people, that’s a couple — that’s millions of people that are smarter than me, basically.”
It’s good to see people like Ted Turner show the rest of the world how you can find major success, then give back and help others. He was a true American champion.
Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III (1938-2026): May you rest in peace.
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