Ted Turner, CNN founder and Atlanta booster, dies at 87

Ted Turner, the combative Atlanta entrepreneur who built CNN and helped remake television, died Wednesday at 87, ending a career that turned one Southern city into a global media capital. CNN said he died after a news release from Turner Enterprises. He had been living with Lewy body dementia, a diagnosis his family said he received in 2018.

Turner’s lasting importance rests on three institutions he changed in durable ways. In 1980, he founded CNN in Atlanta and made 24-hour news a permanent feature of American life, proving that cable could deliver breaking coverage around the clock. He also built Turner Broadcasting into a larger empire that included TBS and TNT, helping establish the superstation and cable-network model that expanded the economics of television far beyond local broadcast reach. And he made Atlanta itself part of the story, using business, sports and philanthropy to recast the city as something more than a regional headquarters town.

That civic imprint remained visible long after Turner stepped back from the spotlight. In 2015, Atlanta renamed part of Spring Street as Ted Turner Drive, from Whitehall to West Peachtree streets, with support from figures including Andrew Young, Xernona Clayton and former CNN president Tom Johnson. The gesture reflected how deeply Turner had become tied to downtown Atlanta’s identity and to the city’s ambitions. By then, his stature was already larger than any one company. He had become one of Atlanta’s most recognizable boosters and a symbol of its rise.

Sports were a central part of that legacy. The Braves played their final game at Turner Field on Oct. 2, 2016, before moving to Cobb County for the 2017 season, a departure that stung many of Turner’s allies because the stadium and team had long stood as visible markers of his influence. Turner celebrated his 80th birthday in Atlanta in 2018, a moment that underscored how much civic and cultural weight he still carried in the city where he had built his empire.

National obituaries described Turner as a major force in journalism, conservation, philanthropy and professional sports. But his most enduring legacy may be simpler: he made it normal for Americans to expect news to be constant, cable to be expansive, and Atlanta to matter on a national stage.