Ted Turner, the swaggering billionaire who reshaped global television by creating CNN and ushering in the 24-hour news cycle, has died aged 87, surrounded by family.
A towering figure in media, philanthropy and conservation, Turner leaves behind a legacy that stretched far beyond broadcasting, from professional sports ownership and championship yacht racing to vast wildlife restoration projects across the American West.
But in the hours after news of his death broke, it was the deeply personal tribute from actress and former wife Jane Fonda that captured the heartbreak of his passing.
In an emotional Instagram post, Fonda, 88, remembered Turner as a “gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate” with “a big life, a brilliant mind and a soaring sense of humor”.
“Ted Turner helped me believe in myself,” she wrote. “He gave me confidence. I think I did the same for him.
“Men like Ted aren’t supposed to express need and vulnerability. That was Ted’s greatest strength, I believe.”
Fonda said she loved him “with all her heart”, painting a poignant image of Turner reunited in heaven with the countless species he helped save from extinction, from black-footed ferrets and bison to Mexican gray wolves and prairie dogs.
“They’re all gathered at the pearly gates applauding and thanking him for saving their species,” she wrote.
Her tribute was both loving and honest, reflecting on the complexity of the man behind the bravado, a fiercely ambitious visionary whose outsized personality often masked vulnerability, and whose life touched countless people, including the five children he leaves behind.
Turner’s signature achievement was the launch of CNN in 1980 – a radical idea at the time that news should be available whenever audiences wanted it, not only at scheduled bulletin times. The network’s defining moment came during the 1991 Gulf War, when CNN’s live reporting from Baghdad changed war coverage forever.
Before that, Turner had transformed a modest billboard company inherited after his father’s suicide into a global media empire. His holdings eventually included major cable networks, Hollywood film libraries, the Atlanta Braves, the Atlanta Hawks and pioneering channels such as Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network.
He later turned much of his energy, and fortune, toward causes he believed could save the planet.
Turner donated US$1 billion to United Nations charities, launched major conservation programs across more than two million acres of land, built the nation’s largest bison herd, and championed nuclear disarmament and climate action.
In later years, slowed by Lewy body dementia, he stepped away from public life, devoting himself largely to philanthropy and environmental work.
Tributes have flowed from across politics, media and business, with US President Donald Trump calling Turner “one of the greats of all time”, while David Zaslav described him as “a visionary and a trailblazer” whose willingness to take risks changed media forever.
Ted Turner lived loudly, dreamed impossibly big and left the world altered by his ambition.
He once said he wanted to become “the world’s greatest sailor, businessman and lover all at the same time”.
In many ways, he spent a lifetime trying – and came remarkably close.
Image: Instagram
