The highlights on this one are very lengthy, as this turned out to me one of my all time favorite auto-biographies. Ted Turner is one of the most colorful characters I got to “know,“ and his charisma and optimism screams off the page. I often found myself smiling after reading passages.
One such example, was the very last sentence of a book he published at age 70: “As I complete this, my first book, I intend to accomplish enough in the next several years to warrant a sequel!“
Onward and Upward :)
Highlights
Preface
People have been after me for years to tell my story, but I was always too busy living my life to consider stopping to write about it. I’ve also resisted because I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the past or thinking about myself. In fact, one of the reasons I think I’ve been able to accomplish as much as I have is because I prefer to live in the present while spending my spare moments thinking about the future. p5
1: Early Years
I’d be bent over, sweating up a storm, and my friends would come skipping by and say, “Ted, you want to go fishing?” I hated having to tell them I still had three hours more work to do. It was such drudgery that to this day I don’t like to do yard work. I might have been out of school, but summertime for me was not a vacation. p11
Oftentimes he’d use a razor strap and he would say that it hurt him more to beat me than it would if I were hitting him.
I had no way of knowing if this was true but one time when I was only about six or seven years old he decided he’d prove it to me. I’ll never forget it. He handed me the razor strap, lay face down on the bed, and told me to spank him. I tried to obey him but I couldn’t. I loved him so much that I dropped the strap and broke down and cried. p12I shared a bunk room with three other kids and on my first night there I announced to my roommates that I was going to be “the boss.” They seemed to be okay with my plan but what I didn’t consider was that there were four more kids on the other side of the bathroom that we shared. They were considered part of our group, and after sizing them up I figured I could handle them, too. When I let these guys know I would be their boss as well, they took the news a little differently. After looking at each other for an instant, all of a sudden they jumped me. Three of them held me down while the other one kicked me in the head. I thought they were going to kill me. p14
2: McCallie
By the time I was twelve, during my summers my father had me working forty-two-and-a-half-hour weeks at his billboard company. Being the boss’s son didn’t get me special treatment—in fact, I did a lot of the toughest jobs. […] In later years I spent more time with the salespeople and traveled around town with a briefcase full of presentations. But in those earlier summers I got a sense for how the tough, physical side of the business got done. p22
My training in debate would later provide a great foundation for my career, and looking back on the way we reinterpreted that resolution, I can now see the roots of the way I tackled many of my business challenges. Confronted with a problem I’ve always looked for an unconventional angle and approach. Nothing sneaky, nothing illegal or unethical, just turning the issue on its head and shifting the advantage to our side. p28
3: College and the Coast Guard
As best I can remember I was the only guy in my entire fraternity who didn’t drink and, as a result, if guys wanted to put a bottle somewhere for safekeeping they’d leave it with me, knowing I wouldn’t touch it. It so happened that right after I got the letter cutting off my allowance, somebody dropped a bottle off in my room. To the guy’s surprise, I asked him if he minded if I had a drink and he said no. I had just turned nineteen and on that night I got drunk for the first time and I smoked my first cigar. I’d lost the bet with my dad. p36
Insisting that we were going to outwork every other company there, I put my leadership abilities to the test. As coxswain of our surfboat team, I decided we needed to hit the water for practice an hour before everybody else. This meant we’d have to get up at 5:30 A.M. every day instead of 6:30 like the others.
[…]
While we were beating the thirteen other companies in most areas of the competition, we were still weak in military drill. We had thirty minutes off every night after dinner—our only free time of the day—and I decided that was a perfect chance for us to get in some extra practice. Not everyone in our company shared my enthusiasm for this idea, and things got so contentious that a big Italian guy from New York City even took a swing at me. Our fight was broken up quickly and when things settled down I sat everyone down as a group. I said, “Listen, if we’re going to win Honor Company every week, we’ve got to do better on military drill. The only way we’re going to do better is through extra practice, and the only time we have for extra practice is after dinner.” I told them we’d vote on this plan as a team and the majority would rule.Fortunately, morale was high and I managed to talk the majority into voting for the additional practice. p39
“Oh, I know that everybody says that a college education is a must. Well, I console myself by saying that everybody said the world was square, except Columbus. You go ahead and go with the world, and I’ll go it alone.” p43
4: Billboards
For years, the two billboard companies in Savannah had been pursuing this elderly woman who had wound up owning a home right in the middle of the Sears Roebuck parking lot. Years before, when she refused a sizable cash offer to move out of her house, the developer simply built around her. She was a strong, stubborn woman, and after refusing a lot of money to move, a little money from a billboard leasing agent couldn’t convince her to allow for a sign that would cover up all the windows on one side of her house.
But I made it my mission to be the one to finally make this deal. I decided to start by getting to know her. She was a widow and that summer I spent a lot of time with her, almost like I was her adopted son. When I explained that we figured out a way to build the board so that it would cover only the windows on the upper floor of her two-story house, she was still unmoved. I had to come up with an angle that no one else had thought of. Spending all that time at her home I discovered that it had poor air circulation, and being surrounded by an asphalt parking lot in the middle of a Savannah summer, the place got really hot. I talked it over with my father and he agreed that in addition to the usual cash offer, I could tell her we’d pay for and install an air conditioner for her. Pleased by my thoughtfulness and partly as a personal favor to me, she finally said yes. p52
Once, to drive home a point about the difficulties of attracting good, loyal employees, he told me, “Heck, Jesus only had to pick twelve disciples and even one of those didn’t turn out well.” One of his favorite mottos was one I’ve used myself ever since: “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise!” p53
The billboard company was my father’s and as long as I worked there I’d be Ed Turner’s son. But sailing was mine, and on a boat I could be Ted Turner and earn a reputation on my own merits. p56
When I drove him back to the airport, he said, “Son, you’re starting out where most men finish,” meaning that here I was twenty-one years old and running a business. A few days after he left I got a letter from him telling me what a great job I was doing and how proud he was of me. My father was usually very sparing with his praise, and nothing he ever did before or after that day ever made me feel so good. p59
5: Tragedy
Despite my father’s obvious ambition, it’s clear to me now that reaching new heights in business and material wealth actually could have undermined his mental state. He told me a memorable story on the subject. He was preparing to enter Duke University just as the Depression hit. His parents lost nearly everything and they struggled to tell him they could no longer afford his tuition. At that young age he consoled his mother, saying, “Don’t worry, Mom. When I grow up, I’m going to work really hard and I’m going to be a success. I’m going to be a millionaire and I’m going to own a plantation and a yacht.” Given their circumstances at the time these were very lofty goals, but by the time he shared this story with me he had achieved all three. He said that having now checked off each of these goals, he was having a really tough time reevaluating things and coming up with a plan for the rest of his life.
He then told me something I’ve never forgotten. He said, “Son, you be sure to set your goals so high that you can’t possibly accomplish them in one lifetime. That way you’ll always have something ahead of you. I made the mistake of setting my goals too low and now I’m having a hard time coming up with new ones.” p63
My phone rang, and it was my father calling from South Carolina. He’d gone there to spend the week with his wife, Jane. I had hoped he was relaxing there but I soon realized he wasn’t. He said he was calling to tell me that he was selling a large chunk of the company—all the recent acquisitions and major market operations—to Bob Naegele.
I couldn’t believe it. I was stunned and I tried to talk him out of it. I told him we were finally in the big time, that the company was doing well and there was no doubt in my mind that we could make our debt payments and then some. When it was clear I wasn’t getting anywhere my shock gave way to anger and I said, “Dad, all my life you’ve taught me to work hard and not be a quitter and now you’re the one who’s quitting! What’s happened to you? How could you do this?” Dad remained surprisingly calm and unmoved. I hung up the phone dazed and disappointed.
Just a few days later I got another call from South Carolina, but this time it was my stepmother, Jane. Dad was dead. After Jimmy Brown had served him and Jane a relaxed breakfast, my father walked up to his bathroom, climbed into the tub, and shot himself.
As worried as I’d been about him, I never thought it would come to this. I felt I had lost my best friend. p65
6: Picking Up the Pieces
Heading back to the airport, instead of giving up I kicked into a higher gear and came up with another way to complicate the sale. It was aggressive and hostile, but it was the only card I had left to play. Before boarding my plane, I called the head of our five-man leasing department back in Atlanta. This group had grown loyal to me and I knew they’d help me out if I asked them to. Fortunately, Naegele neglected to place noncompete clauses on any of our employees so there were no legal issues holding us back. In the billboard business, a company’s leases are its most valuable assets, and if you really wanted to foul up a competitor, “jumping” the leases was a great way to do it. I explained my plan to the team in Atlanta and they agreed to help me execute it. p70
If I agreed to return all the leases and simply go away, he would pay me $200,000 cash. This was 1963, I was twenty-four years old, and that was a ton of money (more than $1 million today). My other option, if I wanted to retain the General Outdoor assets, was to pay $200,000 to Naegele and for this price he would tear up the agreement he had reached with my father. I’m sure Naegele thought I’d jump at their offer to buy me out. But without considering how in the world I would come up with another $200,000, I agreed on the spot that I would take the second option. This was my chance to save the business and I wasn’t going to blow it for $200,000.
They were so surprised by my response that they asked for a few days to think about how they wanted the deal for tax purposes. Now they were the ones who were stunned and I had them back on their heels. p71
Working through these challenges, I learned a lesson that would stick with me throughout my career. When the chips are down and the pressure is on, it’s amazing to see how creative people can be. And with a ninety-day clock ticking, we had to get really creative very fast.
[…]
Nearly all of the $200,000 cash payment to Naegele and his other partners would go straight to the government. Since their deal with my father was only a couple of weeks old, this payment would be treated as a short-term capital gain and would be taxed as ordinary income. Back then, guys like Naegele would have been in a 90 percent tax bracket so taking the cash would not have been much of a deal for him. Armed with that knowledge and short on cash, we went back and offered to pay them $200,000 in Turner Advertising stock. That way, they could hold their value in equity as long as they needed to shield themselves from the heavy tax on short-term gains. p72
7: On My Own
The company would be sold at auction out of the deceased owner’s estate. I figured that Cummings assumed he’d be the only bidder, and not wanting to disabuse him of this notion, I did everything I could to make sure my Knoxville visit went unnoticed. I rented a car under an alias and drove around the town to check out his signs and locations but never went near the offices for fear of being spotted. The company clearly needed some work but it looked to me like an opportunity worthy of at least a lowball bid. Our Atlanta attorney found a Knoxville lawyer to represent us at the auction and I gave him explicit but unusual instructions.
“I want you to put on the crummiest suit you have,” I told him, “and right before the deadline you walk in there looking like the poorest guy in town. Drop the bid on the lawyer’s desk just a few minutes before the noon deadline on the final day.” When he asked me how much I wanted to bid I had to think about it a little. I can still remember staring up at the ceiling in my office. This was a one-time, sealed bid auction so I thought it might help us to bid an uneven amount. I also figured that Cummings wouldn’t go in for more than about $50,000, so I picked the number $50,300 out of the air, wrote it down on a piece of paper, and handed it to the attorney.
Sticking to our script, our Knoxville lawyer walked into the auctioneer’s office just before noon, dressed in a cheap, unpressed suit and scuffed-up shoes. Cummings was sitting there in the lobby with his lawyers, and thinking they would have no competition they had yet to submit an offer. When they realized that this scruffy-looking guy was walking past them to submit a competing bid, they panicked. After a flurry of activity between him and his team, Cummings scribbled down a number, stuffed the paper in an envelope, and handed it to the lawyer for the estate.
A few minutes later the bids were unsealed. Sure enough, Cummings had offered $50,000. He had lost by $300 to Turner Advertising of Atlanta and he was stunned. He called me later that afternoon screaming bloody murder. He told me he’d pay me $110,000 for the business—doubling my money in a matter of hours. I let him know that I was serious about the Knoxville market and wouldn’t sell to him for anything less than $250,000. He said that was too rich for his blood and he passed. p77
I remember one time when a marketing person at Coca-Cola declared that billboard advertising was old hat and that they were going to redirect their dollars into television. They were one of our biggest customers and probably had about a hundred signs in Atlanta alone.
By coincidence, around the time they made this announcement, rumors were circulating that Coke was considering moving its headquarters to New York. Their executives vehemently denied this but the stories wouldn’t go away. That gave me an idea. I went to our creative department and told them to draw up a simple billboard design that said, “Goodbye Coca-Cola, We’ll Miss You!” I figured this would stir up some controversy and when it did, it would prove to Coca-Cola that people really did pay attention to billboards! Our lawyer at the time, Tench Coxe, convinced me that this was not a good idea. We argued about it and even though we’d already had several signs printed, those boards never did go up. (The lawyer was probably right. p78
“Dad makes the most of every moment while Jimmy was a little more laid-back. We did a lot but it wasn’t at the frantic pace of my father. With Dad, when it was a weekend or a vacation the term was “maximum fun.” His view was that if you didn’t get it all in you’ve wasted time and haven’t had your maximum fun.” p83
8: Sailing Gets Serious
From my early misadventures I realized that when conditions were good, you couldn’t tell how strong your crew was. Heading out and singing chanteys everyone looked great, but once the going got tough, the weaker guys would fold. p89
9: WTCG: “Watch This Channel Grow!”
I went to see him and my visit confirmed that the business was indeed in bad shape. They had just gone public (the market for new issues was really hot at that time), but the station was bleeding cash. This wouldn’t be the worst thing, though, since our radio and billboard businesses were quite profitable and we could use these losses to lower our tax obligations while we turned the station around. I also came up with another way our company could squeeze value out of this deal. In an average month about 15 percent of our billboard inventory went unsold. With signs all over Atlanta, I could put the unsold ones to use promoting our station, just as we had done to promote our radio stations. p97
While our decision to buy Channel 17 was looking worse by the day, television was still where I wanted to be and I was determined to give it a try. […] I bought a couple of books about the industry and subscribed to the TV trade journals. I also talked to a lot of people, including general managers of other stations and anyone else I could think of who had some knowledge to share. Even my local competitors were pretty forthcoming. I was kind of like Jimmy Brown getting information from those skippers; they didn’t see me as much of a threat and they didn’t mind telling me what they knew. p99
Most of the thirty-five employees we inherited were either lazy, on drugs, or both. The terrible work ethic started at the top. When I’d walk into the GM’s office he’d be sitting there with his feet propped up on the desk reading The Wall Street Journal. […] We hired new people, bought some new equipment, anything we could afford to help turn things around. Of the thirty-five people who were on the payroll when we took over, only two were still there a year later—the custodian and the receptionist. p100
I loved movies and figured there had to other people out there who would prefer to watch them instead of talk shows. Sure enough, when we put films on in late night, our ratings improved. Sunday mornings were a similar story. The other stations all ran religious programming and I knew there had to be viewers who would appreciate another option. […] I’ve made a lot of programming decisions this same way ever since. I look around to see what the competition is running, figure out whose tastes aren’t being met, and provide them with an alternative. p100
We were also aggressive and creative when it came to ad sales and I personally went on a lot of calls. When potential advertisers criticized us for running old black and white shows when color TV was all the rage, we’d tell them that our black and white programming would help their color commercials pop out of the clutter. Others would say that since our shows were older and old-fashioned that our viewers were probably that way, too—not as smart or wealthy as the people watching our competition. I’d tell them they had it backward—our viewers were actually much smarter than our competitors’ because you had to be a genius to figure out how to pull down a UHF signal! p104
Ted told us he had just bought a station in Charlotte. “I’m losing $50,000 a month,” he said. “It’s a total disaster and I need a couple of guys to pick up and go there to help straighten things out.” Everybody ran into the bathroom or hid under their desk. Sitting in the back of the room I raised my hand and said, “I’ll go.” p105
I decided to call the network people in New York and offer to air their shows on Channel 17 whenever they were preempted by their Atlanta affiliate. It took me a while to track down the right people but when I did they said yes. They preferred to have their affiliate clear their shows, but we were better than nothing. When we reached the point of having four preempted NBC shows running in our daytime lineup I had our people put up some billboards saying “THE NBC NETWORK MOVES TO CHANNEL 17” in really big letters (smaller letters mentioned what these four shows were). The owners of the NBC station—Cox Broadcasting—threatened a lawsuit and our attorney, Tench Coxe, advised me to have them taken down. Meanwhile, the controversy was mentioned in Cox’s own Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper and we got some free publicity out of it. p107
Bill met with me again and asked if I’d reconsider releasing him from our deal. I said, “Bill, I’ve been told that a handshake from you is as good as a signed contract and that’s why I agreed to let you talk to Cox before our announcement.” He just slumped over his desk and said, “You’re right, but it would really be best if we just forgot about our deal. WSB is willing to give me the same deal you are.”
I said, “Look, a deal’s a deal,” and that was that.
As hard as it was for him, Bill was a man of his word. He stuck by his guns and we got the Braves. p110
My presence at home was not consistent. The obvious question is why and it’s not an easy one for me to answer. I’m a product of my environment and I grew up with an intense desire to achieve and to be successful. My father was a driven man who instilled in me an intense work ethic and the schools I attended also stressed discipline and achievement. From an early age I always had a lot of energy and when I became an adult, my drive and that energy were channeled toward trying to be the best in sailing and business. p112
10: The Braves
I’d become successful in billboards, broadcasting, and sailing through dedication, motivation, smarts, and plain old hard work. I assumed that baseball would be no different. I figured I’d simply go in there, fire up the team with enthusiasm, and we’d be tearing up the league in no time. p118
In every business I’ve ever been in it’s been clear that doing even the smallest things to take care of your customers is essential and running a ball club was no different. p123
One reporter asked me how I could justify signing a pitcher to a million-dollar deal, and then turning around and saying I wouldn’t find money to pay for nice hotel rooms. My answer was simple. The million dollars spent on Messersmith could help us win games, put fans in the seats, and pull in viewers. If anyone could show me that bigger rooms for front office staff would help us accomplish any of those things, I’d have paid for those as well. p127
At the press conference in 1976 when we bought the team I promised that we’d win a World Series within five years. After our four straight last place finishes, the Braves beat reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called me and said, “Well, Turner, this is year five coming up. Are you going to win this year?” This was back during the Cold War when the Soviet Union was rolling out all those five-year plans that never panned out so I said, “No, I’m going to be like the Russians and start a new five-year plan!” p130
11: The SuperStation
Back then, broadcasters saw cable operators as the enemy. For many years, local TV stations had a monopoly and they viewed cable operators with fear and suspicion. It was one thing when cable helped them improve their signals and get full penetration of their home markets, but quite another when they started importing distant stations. p134
The best products to sell via direct response are unique little gadgets and gizmos whose producers have trouble getting retail distribution. This allows you to call them “Exclusive TV Offers!” and say things like “Not Available in Stores!” p135
"Ted asks himself the question, “If a rule doesn’t let me do something that’s so logical, it must be a bad rule. And if it’s a bad rule I ought to be able to change it or it should just go away.” He’s always had that kind of basic, almost childish, logic about him that refuses to accept artificial impediments. I think one of his big secrets of success over the years is that the things that most of us would sit there and ponder—all these regulatory and legal reasons why it might not be something you could do—Ted would just say, “Oh, hell, you can overcome those kinds of things,” and he’d just go do it. p140
My early training as a debater served me well at congressional hearings. My opponents had skilled lobbyists and a strong case against me. Logic was not always on my side so I had to be passionate and appeal to people’s emotions. p142
My hope was that if I could just keep moving and stay on the offensive, we might have a chance to pull it off. I was working as hard as I could. I’d go all out during the day, working on sales, distribution, regulatory issues, whatever the battle happened to be, and I’d work right up until it was time to fall asleep. I had a pull-down Murphy bed in my office and I would literally work until the point of total exhaustion. Then I’d put my head on the pillow at night worried about problems, then wake up and spend the entire next day trying to solve them. p143
Once again, direct response advertising could be a solution to our problems. Since many of our orders for direct response products came in the form of personal checks mailed directly to our Atlanta offices, we could tell where they were coming from based on the postmarks. Every day, Bob would bring in a mail sack and dump it out on the conference room table. He and a couple of others would then sort the mail—one stack for letters postmarked in Atlanta, and another with letters from places outside Atlanta. […] This was hardly a bulletproof scientific process but it was the best we had. Part of the fun was watching how quickly the “non-Atlanta” stack grew, going from just a handful of letters at first to a pile that ultimately dwarfed the size of the local one. p144
While sorting this mountain of mail I also came up with a way to save the company a little money. Occasionally, I’d find letters whose stamps had not been processed by the post office and before tossing these on to the pile, we’d carefully remove the stamps and use them again on our company’s outgoing mail. I don’t remember what regular stamps cost at the time, but there were days when we’d collect almost $20 worth. Every little bit helped at that point. We were really strapped for cash and I had to do everything I could think of to keep us above water. p145
What we were doing was so new and so unique that everyone was slow to adapt, but once a few of the bigger players validated our concept, the rest began to follow. p147
Once we were being measured we tried everything we could think of to grow our ratings and as I was looking at the listings in TV Guide, it occurred to me that every other channel started and ended all their programming at the top and the bottom of the hour. Why don’t we try to break out of the crowd, I thought, and instead of ending a show just before 7:00 and starting the next one on the hour, what prevents us from extending a program through the end of the hour and starting the following one at 7:05? I envisioned that people watching our competition would start flipping around at the end of their show and while the other channels would all be running commercials, we’d be showing programming! […] Another benefit of this strategy was that we got our own little slot in every program guide. A group of channels would be listed together at the top and bottom of the hour, but we were all by ourselves on the :05 and :35. We tried it and immediately our Nielsen ratings improved. Before long, people referred to this practice as “Turner Time,” and it provided another way for us to stand out from the crowd. p148
12: The America’s Cup
When I suffer a setback, I don’t think of myself as losing, I’m simply learning how to win. p155
13: Cable News Network
When Massachusetts representative Ed Markey asked me if it was accurate that we were airing news “at three or four in the morning,” I answered, “That’s accurate, and we have 100 percent share of the audience then!” p165
I usually came home around 8:00 and since I got up so early in the morning I’d be asleep around 10:00. I wound up getting most of my news from newspapers and weekly magazines and I figured that my experience was not unique—there had to be other people whose work hours were not conducive to watching the evening news. I also knew of the success of all-news radio and if it could work on radio it would work on TV. p166
It would have been a disaster to invest in a new start-up only to have to compete with a larger, well- financed competitor. […] Jerry let me know that they had studied the concept seriously but couldn’t see how it would make financial sense. Their research showed that the news departments at ABC, NBC, and CBS were each spending between $200 and $300 million a year just to put on a thirty-minute telecast at night and morning shows like Today and Good Morning America. This led them to conclude that twenty-four hours of newscasts daily would simply cost too much. p166
Clearly, the companies for whom the economics of twenty-four-hour news would have made the most sense were the Big Three broadcasters. They already had most of what was needed—studios, bureaus, reporters, anchors—almost everything but a belief in cable. […] I’ve often compared business strategy to a chess game, and when it came to Turner vs. the networks, they might have had more pieces on the board but they only thought about their next move while I was planning ten moves ahead. p166
Henry Ford didn’t need focus groups to tell him that people would prefer inexpensive, dependable automobiles over horses, and I doubt that Alexander Graham Bell stopped to worry about whether people would prefer speaking to each other on the phone. If viewers liked watching news on television, why wouldn’t they want the option to do it at any hour of the day? p167
Instead of looking at what the networks were spending and adding to that number, we started with how much we could afford, then tried to back into a feasible plan at that level of expenses. p168
Although I hadn’t watched much television news, I did have some strong opinions about what I wanted CNN to be. While the networks and local news stations seemed to follow a “if it bleeds, it leads,” rule centering their broadcasts on murders, car wrecks, disasters, and the like, I wanted us to do more serious journalism and to go deeper into the more important issues of the day. I also wanted to present the news in an unbiased fashion. At that time, some of the evening anchors, including Walter Cronkite, were injecting their own opinions into the telecasts and I just didn’t like it. Schonfeld and I decided that on CNN, news would be the star, not our on-air people. p171
Just as it had in the past, my outsider status only made me want to work that much harder and to succeed that much more. p173
14: Fastnet
Ted was really tough that night. I was watching him and he was so strong that I didn’t get frightened. I thought, “If he’s all right, then things must be okay.” The harder it got, the better he was. I think it was his finest moment. p180
It was really scary that night, but as dangerous as things became for us, I refused to get too worried. If I had, I might have slowed up—there were eighteen other people aboard and as their skipper I had responsibility—but I felt that our boat was strong enough and I continued to press on. Even at the height of the storm, I was more concerned about winning than I was about dying. p181
Under the worst conditions, ocean racing can become a game of survival and the tougher the game is the more Dad likes it. One of the lessons he taught me is that in these situations, “You are in control of your own situation until you give up. Do not panic or you will die.” p182
Bad weather was part of the sport, I explained, and competitors need to be prepared. p183
A couple of times I even commented that the British should be thankful for weather like this, explaining that it was a storm like this one in these very waters that helped keep the Spanish Armada from invading England in the sixteenth century. “If it weren’t for this kind of weather,” I explained to the British press, “you’d all be speaking Spanish!” p183
15: CNN Launch
Our backs were against the wall, but that also played to our advantage. I’m convinced that one of the reasons I’ve been successful is that I’ve almost always competed against people who were bigger and stronger but who had less commitment and desire than I did. p189
We did many things differently, and we managed to attract some great talent. We didn’t often get people who were at the height of their careers but we did find some promising up-and-comers who were attracted by CNN and the chance to be on the ground floor of something new, ambitious, and exciting. p191
“Everybody was completely energized. When I met Ted he didn’t know me from Adam but he greeted me like a long-lost brother. His enthusiasm was infectious and he was absolutely the definition of charismatic. He was in super sales mode and explained to me that CNN was going to be the greatest thing in the history of Western civilization! My visit didn’t leave me feeling like this would be the case, but I was convinced that win, lose, or draw this would be a wonderful thing to be a part of.” p192
At one point in the negotiations I actually got down on the floor on my hands and knees and begged for forgiveness. I clasped my hands together and said, “You gotta let me sell this station or I’m a goner!” Somehow, between Hank Aaron’s support and my demonstration of genuine contrition, we got the negotiations back on track and worked out a deal. p193
16: A Dagger Pointed at Our Heart
I began to contemplate how we could combat such a competitive threat. I had purchased a 4,200-acre property in South Carolina called Hope Plantation in 1979, and it became a perfect place for the long walks I take when I need to clear my head and to think through strategic challenges. Sometimes I walk by myself and on other occasions I engage in debate with people whose opinions I value. p200
I also tried to set a personal example for all my children when it came to hard work and appreciating the value of hard-earned money. My kids obviously saw the hours I put in at the office and at the height of my wealth I still drove around Atlanta in a Ford Taurus and bought my clothes off the rack. In fact, I was so thrifty that someone at the company once said, “Ted Turner could squeeze Lincoln off a penny!” p207
“Dad, when we were down at Hope Plantation I don’t understand why you drove that Jeep with the top and the windshield down. Remember? You’d be freezing, with snot going down your mustache and gloves; you could hardly hold on to the steering wheel.”
He said, “Son, I didn’t do that for me. I did that for you guys. I was working on making you tough.”
[…]
The hardness was difficult but the reward is he’s made us very competitive to want to succeed in the world, whereas a lot of wealthy people don’t raise their families in an environment that makes them competitive and they don’t succeed on their own. p208
17: World Citizen
After seeing Castro’s interest in CNN, I knew that we had a real opportunity to build an international news business. It wasn’t long before we were having meetings with leaders from all over the world and working on distribution deals to make CNN not only the first twenty-four-hour news channel but also the first global television network. p213
As the networks chased viewers with increasing levels of sex and violence, I liked the idea of counterprogramming with high-quality documentaries that might do some good for society. p213
18: The Goodwill Games
The mayor of St. Petersburg had sent his deputy to pick me up and escort us to dinner. His name was Vladimir Putin. He told us that his wife had just been hospitalized after a serious automobile accident. I said, “Don’t have dinner with us. Go home to your wife!” Putin was reluctant because entertaining us was his job but I talked him into going to the hospital. Years later, he told me he’d never forgotten that kindness. p223
19: CBS
To my continued amazement, even after missing the twenty-four-hour news opportunity, the networks stayed on the sidelines and watched the launch of other cable channels like Discovery, USA, MTV, and Nickelodeon. They were worrying more about the previous night’s ratings than the long-term future of their business. p225
Unfortunately, I accentuated my point by saying that Paley had turned CBS into a “whorehouse.” I still tend to speak my mind, but back then I really used to get carried away, and I’m sure this exaggerated analogy didn’t help my chances with CBS’s executive committee. p228
If they wouldn’t entertain a friendly deal, I’d have to find another way. I’d been an operator my entire career and didn’t know much about unfriendly takeovers but during that time—it was now the fall of 1984—they were happening left and right. I always try to learn from the best, and the most prominent guy in the world of takeovers then was T. Boone Pickens. We hadn’t met but when I called him he appreciated my vision, and agreed to a meeting. p228
I needed to act quickly. ABC was off the market and speculation was rampant that NBC, a subsidiary of RCA, and CBS were prime targets for takeovers. RCA was too big for me to take on and it’s practically impossible to make a hostile bid for a subsidiary. That left CBS but I was in a tough spot—on my own without big money behind me. I went to Hope Plantation to take some long walks and formulate a plan. p232
20: MGM
I hate being late (my father always said, “You can’t always be right, son, but you can always be on time”) p242
21: The Cable Operators
The publicity we generated from colorization was tremendous. It was more controversial than I had anticipated and when we announced our colorization plans, there was backlash from the Hollywood community. Some directors and producers—everyone from Martin Scorsese to Billy Wilder—were outraged that we would colorize classic films without input from their original creators, who were mostly deceased. We were accused of “cultural vandalism.” Woody Allen said that what we were doing was “criminal” and showed “a total contempt for film, for the director, and for the public.”
I was undeterred. It was okay for people to write negative things about me just as long as they spelled my name right—and I really didn’t think we were doing anything wrong. After restoring original black and white prints the colorization was done on a duplicate video copy, so the originals themselves weren’t altered, and by breathing new life into these old movies we attracted audiences that wouldn’t have seen them otherwise. p254
These victories were reassuring to me as they supported one of my fundamental beliefs about running a business: when you own an asset, your job is to maximize its value. For Turner Broadcasting, that might mean using unsold billboards to promote our radio stations, airing the Braves on the SuperStation, or disappointing some film purists by updating old movies. Our competitors had more resources than we did and we had to do everything we could to get the most out of what we had. p255
Meeting Jane Fonda
In addition to luck, there were a number of different factors and personal behaviors that worked in my favor, but none of them is really a secret. For one thing, I’ve always had a lot of energy. Ever since I was little, my mind and body were active and I couldn’t stand sitting around. Even today, I’m constantly moving. Purgatory for me would be spending twenty-four hours with nothing to do but to be alone with my thoughts. I do a lot of thinking when I’m out walking, riding horses, or fishing, and at mealtime debating and discussing ideas with others. p258
My desire to use time wisely has even extended to what I wear on my feet. For most of my adult life, I’ve never worn lace-up shoes. Most of my shoes are slip-ons, so instead of spending time stooping over tying my shoes, I do something else that’s productive. p259
Some of my passion for efficiency comes from my experience in sailboat racing. Races are won and lost by picking up a second here and a second there, and I learned a lot about how small things matter. Racing also contributed to my skill at delegation, an ability that’s been of vital importance to my business success. Once you begin racing bigger boats, it becomes impossible for one person to do it all. Instead, you have to have good people, assign them responsibilities, and then let them do their jobs. As skipper, you steer the boat, plot strategy, and issue orders. p260
23: “Give Me Land, Lots of Land”
Being outdoors is my chance to unwind, clear my head, and think. The time I spend in nature refreshes and recharges me and reminds me how much raw beauty exists in the world—and how careful we should be to preserve it. p271
24: The Gulf War
The meeting was on a Thursday at 10:00 in the morning and I figured it would run about two hours or so. Instead, it lasted about seventeen minutes and was interrupted four times by phone calls. I think two of those were from Jane Fonda.
At one point Ted said, “Tom, would you take the job as president of CNN?”
I said, “Ted, you need to know more about me and I need to know more about the job and about you.”
And he said, “Well, can you let me know by Monday?” If you take out the time for the phone calls, the amount of actual conversation time with Ted was about three minutes, and now he was asking me to let him know Monday morning if I would take the job. p273
Ted once offered a baseball player a contract for a million dollars and told him he needed to know right away if he would accept. A few days passed and when Ted was told the guy hadn’t made up his mind yet, Ted said, ‘Tell that goddamn guy if he can’t make up his mind he has no place in our organization!’ and he withdrew the offer.” p280
26: Networking
When I did go to meet with him at his office I was shocked by his physical energy. He couldn’t sit still and as we talked through how a merger might work, every time we agreed on something he’d give me a high five! And honestly there really was a lot to agree on. p297
27: Time Warner Merger
He’s a wild optimist and I count myself the same. He’s always thinking about how the pieces can come together in a different way. We both love decisions that seem crazy to other people but then they wake up five years later and see why it was obvious when at the time it seemed weird. In the media business, Rupert Murdoch is often thought of as a good long-term thinker, but even Rupert would say that Ted’s in a league by himself. Ted’s a major wizard in terms of having a whole new way of thinking and doing things. p312
28: The New Time Warner
Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I can see that the personal differences we experienced when business was good should have warned me about how we’d get along when times got tough. p325
30: Transitions
He says things in the heat of the moment and often underestimates the permanence of what he says. p325
31: AOL: Phased Out and Fenced In
The dot-com bubble had burst and a downturn in the ad market was hurting Time Warner businesses across the board. Companies like Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting had weathered many ups and downs in the ad market over the years, but in this case, for AOL, the situation was extreme. Their stock price was driven by very ambitious sales targets, which had relied heavily on selling ads to other dot-com companies, which, by this point, were dropping like flies. p363
Nearly all of my life I’ve slept like a log, but now I was tossing and turning almost every night. Eventually, I came up with a technique that helped. After spending my days dealing with all the things that were going wrong, at night I’d put my head on the pillow and try to think about the things I was thankful for, especially my family. In my mind, almost like a slide show, I’d picture my children and their families and think of each of their names. I’d start with the oldest, Laura, and picture her, then her husband, then their kids. Then I’d go to Teddy, the next oldest, and do the same with him and his family. Once I’d worked through Rhett, Beau, Jennie and their children, I’d go back in the reverse direction. Picturing my family helped calm me and cleared my head of worries as I slowly drifted off to sleep. p365
32: Stepping Away
Over the past two and a half years my net worth had gone from nearly $10 billion down to about $2 billion. To put this in perspective, I lost nearly $8 billion in roughly thirty months. This means that, on average, my net worth dropped by about $67 million per week, or nearly $10 million per day, every day, for two and a half years. Losing that much money so quickly might have been a record, but it obviously wasn’t the kind I was hoping to set. p373
33: Onward and Upward
Sometimes these problems can seem overwhelming, and when they do I remind myself of a conversation I had many years ago with Jacques Cousteau. I asked him if he ever got discouraged or worried that the problems he was working on were insurmountable. He looked at me and he said, “Ted, it could be that these problems can’t be solved, but what can men of good conscience do but keep trying until the very end?” p394
I’m particularly thankful for my father’s advice to set my goals so high that I can’t possibly achieve them during my lifetime. That inspiration keeps me energized and eager to keep working hard every day, not only on philanthropy but on new business ventures as well. As I complete this, my first book, I intend to accomplish enough in the next several years to warrant a sequel! p396