The Greening of Ted Turner

By Richard Zoglin

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. "The demand for classic movies was unrecognized even by our 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.

With reporting by Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta