Ted Turner changed the way news works. For better and worse | Opinion
Ted Turner changed the way news works. For better and worse | Opinion
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona RepublicWed, May 6, 2026 at 5:42 PM UTC
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It is almost impossible to overstate the impact Ted Turner, the founder of CNN and thus the person who created the 24-hour TV news cycle, had on modern media.
Turner, truly a larger-than-life figure, with all the good and bad that implies, also did about 100 other notable things, including (but hardly limited to) winning the America's Cup, investing hugely in environmental causes, donating $1 billion to the United Nations, marrying Jane Fonda, founding the cable "superstation" and, for one game only, managing the Atlanta Braves, the Major League Baseball team he owned.
But it's his part in revolutionizing TV news, and by extension all other news coverage, that is, as they say, the first line in his obituary (see above).
It should be.
People thought Ted Turner was crazy when he founded CNN
He was also known as the "Mouth of the South" and "Captain Outrageous," earning both nicknames. A lot of Turner's obituaries use words like "brash" and "impulsive" to describe him. Which is true, in part. Words like "boorish" and "loutish" are also accurate.
Turner certainly wasn't the first billionaire to say and do controversial and offensive things in the pursuit of more money and power (or just because he felt like it). Perhaps some of his more outrageous antics and offensive statements ― and there were plenty ― aren't much remembered or reported on because the 24-hour cable-TV news cycle didn't exist until he invented it. There was no TikTok or X to repeat his every insult, and what is social media if not the logical extension of an ever-growing hunger for content (if you'll excuse the loathsome term) all the time?
The idea of a 24-hour news station is so run-of-the-mill now that it is genuinely hard to believe how crazy people thought Turner was for coming up with the idea. People just didn't watch TV that way before 1980, because they couldn't.
There was a time, to jump into the wayback machine, when cable didn't exist and most TV stations actually went off the air late at night, after a rousing rendition of the national anthem. (Seriously.) And people definitely didn't consume news in the same way they do now ― again, because they couldn't. TV news was limited to half-hour broadcasts in the evening and night, half-hours that also included sports and weather.
The thing is, audiences seemed fine with it, in the same way they were willing to wait for the newspaper to hit their doorstep the next morning to find out what was going on in the world. It's just the way things worked. People like Turner, who recognized that the news didn't stop when reporters went off the air, are never satisfied with how things work. So he created something new.
The first Gulf War was when CNN really took off
CNN has been called a lot of things since it began. "The Communist News Network" was popular among conservative critics, as was "The Clinton News Network" when Bill Clinton was president; it enjoyed a revival when Hillary Clinton ran for the office. But when Turner started it, doubters called it the "Chicken Noodle Network," not as a political statement but to deride the very idea of its existence.
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How'd that work out?
It took a while, though. Cable wasn't ubiquitous, at all. CNN didn't really become a major media player until Jan. 16, 1991, when, during the first Gulf War, the network's reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman and Peter Arnett hunkered under a table in a hotel room and reported on U.S. bombs falling on Baghdad, and all around them.
In 1996, Fox News and MSNBC, now called MS NOW, launched their own 24-hour cable-news networks. The race for eyeballs and attention spans was on, and it's never slowed down.
Is his legacy of a 24-hour news cycle a blessing or a curse?
This isn't always a good thing. The biggest challenge of a 24-hour news cycle is that it is, well, 24 hours. That means a lot of time to fill, which has led to some rather odious personalities dominating ratings, as well as ridiculous roundtable food fights and straw-man arguments. You can, in some ways, blame Turner for that.
But when true breaking news happens, the 24-hour cable-news networks generally snap to attention and cover it. There is no need to wait around to find out what is happening ― we can see the coverage in real time, on our TVs. And you can definitely thank Turner for that.
Is it worth the trade-off? Overall, sure. The rush to fill time can lead to sloppy journalism and diminished attention spans. A figure like Donald Trump, who genuinely understands the craving for attention and for the spotlight, can exploit it to his own ends. But the expansion of the newsroom into far-flung parts of the planet shrinks the world a little bit, which is a good thing. And it's nice to know what's going on out there.
Overall, the invention of the 24-hour-news cycle, a perfectly Turner-like invention, is like a life vest on one of Turner's yachts. You don't want it around all the time, but it sure is nice to have when you need it.
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Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Media commentary with a side of snark? Sign up for The Watchlist newsletter with Bill Goodykoontz.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ted Turner changed news game in great and terrible ways | Opinion
Source: “AOL General News”
