Turner Enterprises issued a statement saying that Ted Turner, the founder of Cable News Network (CNN), passed away on the 6th local time with his family by his side at the age of 87. Turner is survived by five children, 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
In 2018, one month before his 80th birthday, Turner publicly stated that he suffered from Lewy body dementia, a progressive degenerative disease of the brain. In early 2025, he was admitted to the hospital for treatment due to mild pneumonia, and then transferred to a rehabilitation center to recuperate.
Turner entered the media industry at the age of 24 and took over the family's outdoor advertising company "Turner Outdoor Advertising" after his father committed suicide. He was not satisfied with simply promoting products for his clients, and later successively acquired a number of radio stations. In 1970, he entered the television industry and bought Channel 17, a local television station in Atlanta that was in trouble.
In 1976, Channel 17's signal was transmitted via satellite, becoming the first so-called "superstation" in the history of cable television, with cable subscribers throughout the United States. Since then, Turner has successively purchased the Atlanta Braves of the American Professional Baseball Team and the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA, partly to lock in and maintain the long-term television broadcast rights of the team's games, and partly out of his personal interest.
On June 1, 1980, CNN, the world's first 24-hour news channel, officially launched, ushering in an era of live broadcast of television news around the clock. After the success of CNN, Turner promoted the creation of a number of non-news cable channels, including Turner Television Network (TNT), Turner Classic Movies (TCM), Cartoon Network, etc., further expanding its territory in the television and content industries.