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Media Man
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Media Man

Ted Turner's Improbable Empire

Ken Auletta
W.W. Norton, 2004
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8

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Recommendation

How does a guy who sells billboards create a media empire? In 2001, author Ken Auletta won a National Magazine Award for his profile of media mogul Ted Turner in The New Yorker. In this book, he expands this profile, giving colorful detail about the remarkable life of the colorful, outspoken and complicated business cowboy. Auletta shows that Turner is shocking, abrasive and driven, but he rarely goes more deeply into Turner’s motivations than to explain his rebellion against his father. The book might have been titled The Rise and Fall of the Turner Empire. It chronicles Turner’s revolutionary, meteoric creation of a cable empire, including the nation’s first cable superstation, and the founding of CNN. It follows Turner as Time Inc., gobbles up his thriving company. Auletta takes a hard look at the personalities that engineered the formation of AOL Time Warner, then the world’s biggest media company. Unfortunately, at this point, Auletta becomes preoccupied with the dealmakers and - like AOL TW - places Turner on the back burner. This is just a detour, however, from his compelling portrayal of a corporate superstar who ran his business from his gut. getAbstract.com recommends this fascinating read.

Summary

Life with Father

Robert Edward (Ted) Turner III was born in Cincinnati in 1938. His tyrannical father, Ed Turner, was a successful businessman who battled depression. When Ted was 15, his younger sister, Mary Jane, contracted a deadly strain of lupus. He helplessly watched her deteriorate and lost his faith when she died. Ted tried desperately to impress his hard-to-please father, excelling at debating, boxing and sailing. He attended Brown University, but spent much of his time partying and getting into trouble. Ted joined Ed’s outdoor advertising business after Brown kicked him out during his junior year.

Shortly after Ted joined the company, Ed Turner lost his battle with depression and took his own life. The business did not stimulate Ted. He dreamed of building a media empire. In 1968, he began to buy radio stations and UHF TV stations. When RCA launched a communication satellite in 1975, Turner - then the owner of a small Atlanta UHF station - and Gerald Levin of Home Box Office separately saw amazing potential in the new technology. Levin envisioned offering movies to subscribers and distributing programming via satellite. Turner understood that the new technology...

About the Author

Ken Auletta has been writing a column about the communications business for The New Yorker since 1992. He wrote four best-selling books, served as a political commentator for WNBC and WCBS in New York, and produced a documentary on Rupert Murdoch. Auletta won a National Magazine Award for his 2001 profile of Ted Turner.

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