Everything to know about CNN founder’s life, career, legacy

Ted Turner has died at the age of 87. The founder of CNN and one of the most important figures in the history of modern media passed away Wednesday, May 6, 2026. 

According to Turner Enterprises, He died peacefully, surrounded by family. He had been in hospice care.

No cause of death was given. Turner had been living with Lewy body dementia since 2018, a condition he announced publicly himself, just before turning 80.

Turner transformed television journalism by launching CNN, the world’s first 24-hour news network, reshaping how global audiences consume breaking news.

A Difficult Beginning

He was born Robert Edward Turner III on November 19, 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His childhood was not easy.

His father was a volatile man who disciplined his son with a leather strap. He later shot himself in 1963, leaving a 24-year-old Ted in charge of the family billboard company. His younger sister Mary Jean died after five years of suffering from a rare form of lupus.

“She hadn’t done anything wrong,” Turner once said. “What had she done wrong?”

He dropped out of Brown University after his father cut off his tuition. He went back to Georgia. He got to work. That became the story of his life.

Building a Media Empire

Turner bought a struggling Atlanta TV station in 1970. In 1976, he put its signal on a satellite and created cable TV’s first superstation. Then he bought the Atlanta Braves. Then the Atlanta Hawks.

On June 1, 1980, he launched CNN from a converted country club in Atlanta. The world’s first 24-hour all-news television network. The industry laughed as the critics called it “Chicken Noodle News.”

“If Alexander the Great could conquer the known world, why couldn’t I start CNN?” he once told Oprah Winfrey.

When the Gulf War broke out in 1991, CNN was the only network broadcasting live from Baghdad. The world watched through CNN’s eyes. This remarkable transformation of the media landscape prompted Time Magazine to name Turner its “Man of the Year” that same year.

He later went on to build 

• TNT, 
• Turner Classic Movies, 
• the Cartoon Network, 
• CNN International, 
• the Goodwill Games,
• a library of more than 4,000 MGM films. 
• Captain Planet to teach kids about the environment.

Turner’s one rule for his now one of the most acclaimed media channels was, “Be fair. That’s it.”

Fortune, Loss, and Jane Fonda

In 1996 he sold his media empire to Time Warner for $7.5 billion. The companies merged in 2001 in what is now known as one of the worst corporate deals in history.

The deal cost him his position at CNN. Turner’s personal life also took a hit the same year as his marriage to actress Jane Fonda ended the same year. The pair remained friends as Fonda described him as “favourite ex-husband”.

In an interview with Piers Morgan for CNN in 2012, Turner said, “I lost Jane. I lost my job. I lost my fortune, most of it. Got a billion or two left. You can get by on that if you economize.”

He resigned from AOL Time Warner in 2003 and went back to the media.

Philanthropy and Conservation

In 1997, Turner pledged $1 billion to the United Nations. One of the largest private donations in American history. He also co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative to push for global disarmament and became one of the largest private landowners in North America, with nearly 2 million acres across 28 properties.

He raised the world’s largest private bison herd, around 45,000 to 51,000 animals. Turner opened Ted’s Montana Grill in 2002 to make bison mainstream, in addition to founding the Captain Planet Foundation.

Final Years

In his later years, Turner spent most of his time at his Montana ranches, fishing, riding horses, and staying quiet.

He told the world about his Lewy body dementia in 2018. In early 2025, he was hospitalized briefly with pneumonia before recovering.

CNN Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson said he was “the giant on whose shoulders we stand.”

“He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN,” Thompson said.

Turner called CNN the “greatest achievement” of his life.

He is survived by five children, Laura, Teddy, Rhett, Jennie and Beau, 14 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Jane Fonda survives him too.