Nov. 9, 2008
Ted Turner Looks Back
Media Mogul Talks About His Life, Loves, Personal Struggles And Business
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Play CBS Video Video Feeling Alone On The Range Morley Safer speaks with Ted Turner about his financial losses after the merger of Time Warner with AOL, his feud with Rupert Murdoch, his relationship with women, and his relationship with his father.
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Video 1977: Ted Turner Walter Cronkite contributed this report on the America's Cup sailing race, in 1977, and met a very determined captain, Ted Turner.
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Video 2003: Ted Turner Ted Turner spoke to Mike Wallace, in 2003, about his initiative to donate $1 billion to the United Nations.
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Ted Turner (CBS)
Though he's gone from being a really rich man to a mere billionaire, he's maintained the manic energy that drove him to change the landscape of the information age by creating CNN and 24-hour news.
The uncompromising competitor - who won the America's Cup, is the ex-husband of Jane Fonda, the batty billionaire who challenged his arch enemy, fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch to a boxing match, once described as both genius and jackass - has now decided to reflect on a tumultuous life and more or less tell all in a memoir
Ted Turner is the largest individual landowner in the U.S., owning two million acres across 12 states. 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer caught up with him at one of his Montana ranches.
This lonesome cowboy hates his own company: he admits he doesn't like being alone.
"These are big places to be alone, I'll tell you. Come out here and spend the night by yourself some time, you know, the coyote's out there howling," Turner says, howling. "You know, and it's pretty scary."
At the Snowcrest Ranch, Ted Turner is not alone. He keeps company with bison, horses and a stream full of Ruby River trout.
Life is good for Turner. He's not your average old-age pensioner: this most restless of men jets around the world promoting good causes, dreaming up new business ventures, and dropping in on his dozens of properties scattered about the hemisphere.
And now, as he turns 70, he's written his book. After his morning ride, the man who proudly says he never looks back, decided to do just that: to let Ted reflect on Ted.
"I've had the good fortune to have a much more diverse life than most people would, professional sports and television and news and movies," he says.
And he says his personal has been a lot of fun.
Turner burst on the scene when he captained "Courageous," the yacht that won the America's Cup.
But it was his groundbreaking creation of CNN that put Turner indelibly on the map. But, his company's rapid growth and ballooning debt nearly bankrupted him.
"I was gonna go broke if I didn't get things turned around real fast. But I was able to get it refinanced, without government help, I might add, unlike what's going on today, but we made it. But by the skin on our chinny chin chin. And two years later we made a run at CBS, unsuccessful, but we did take a swing," he says.
Instead, Turner went on to create his own broadcasting powerhouse, and when he merged his company with Time Warner in 1996, his status as media visionary was confirmed. "I didn't care what, how much adversity life threw at me. I intended to get to the top," he says.
The adversity started at infancy. Shipped off to boarding school at the age of 4, followed by years of military school for discipline, he says his alcoholic father did everything he could to toughen him up.
"You had a pretty tough father," Safer comments.
"So what. You know, lots of people have tough fathers," Turner replies.
"Well, he beat you up," Safer points out.
"No, he didn't beat me up. He spanked me," Turner says.
Turner says he was spanked with a wire hanger a couple of times, and admits it was traumatic, but says, "He was doing it to make me better."
Asked if he thinks it made him better, Turner says, "I think so."
At age 21, he began working for his father's outdoor advertising business. But shortly after, an event took place that both shaped and shattered Ted Turner: his father committed suicide.
"Were you out to prove something to him even though he was gone?" Safer asks.
"He wanted me to be a big success. And all my life I've tried to be a big success. So his influence was huge," Turner says.
Produced by Deirdre Naphin
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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See all 113 CommentsHe owns more land than anyone else, but guess what...he''ll donate it back to "we, the people" when he''s gone, so what''s to hate there?!?
Okay, so Jane Fonda made some BAAAD choices way back when, but isn''t that exactly what we Americans have always fought for...freedom of expression?? Of course, she was dead-wrong, but she was, I''m convinced, working from a peace-maker''s point of view, but just went about it badly. We''re now in an even worse "bad war," but few seem to protest, except recently at the ballot box. At least now we "hail" returning troops, so perhaps actions like JF''s taught us all a good lesson!
Money isn''t everything. It helps smooth out some of the bumps but it isn''t everything.
well, boo friggin'' hoo! lonesome my arse!
Maybe The hero of Chappaquiddick, your bosom buddy, can come out and you two can go for a drive some evening?
guns don''t kill people, oldsmobiles kill people....
Are you still thinking that people like you and the above mentioned ****** buddy of yours since you are both so wealthy?....did either of you, not to mention ex-wifey, ever have an honest job, like the people you all hosed?Suffer, ya ***!
Just another booty call.
"...he touches me deeply, deeply."
Oh yeah: the Nielsens can count me in on this one.
With lines like "Come out here and spend the night by yourself some time" and "I would be there (for Ted) in a blue minute," this sounds like a tearjerker not to be missed! (Please...)
Maybe but the same goes for Bush who put us in an unjust war by lying over WMD''s.
Please stop with the Jesus stuff. It''s BS, cultish and if there was a Jesus there is probably some type of copyright infringement.
Much of the farm subsidy payout goes to individuals
and companies that clearly do not need taxpayer help. A
Washington D.C. think tank has posted individual farm
subsidy recipients on its web page at to
illustrate the unfairness of farm welfare for the well-to-do.
Farm subsidy recipients include Fortune 500 companies,
members of Congress, and millionaires such as Ted Turner
One of the reasons our Government is broke.
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"
-Jesus Christ
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