Ted Turner

We will not see Ted Turner’s visionary likes again. He broke free of the bounds of broadcast scarcity and recognized the opportunity to use satellite and cable to build national–then international–networks and brands: not just CNN but his “superstation.” He invented 24-hour news.

Out of nonstop, round-the-clock news came a host of good–and bad–outcomes. We had news on demand, the ability to witness events as they happened with journalists the world around, a new Times Square ticker to gather ’round. Turner invented a genre and industry copied in many nations.

The bad? I’d argue 24-hour-news was the original doomscrolling, addicting us to Turner’s screen before Jobs’. CNN begat its evil twin, Fox, and all its ails. And 24-hour-news skewed our–the public’s and journalists’–sense of perspective and priority, making us see news as an endless stream.

Neil Postman and James Carey legendarily analyzed the impact of the telegraph on society: irrelevance made relevant; instantaneity valued over consideration; regional voices flattened into a national sameness. 24-hour-news accelerated all that, alongside its children, the internet and now AI. From my book, The Gutenberg Parenthesis:

I’m saddened that Turner lost control of his child, CNN, in the epochal mess that was AOL-Time-Warner. Now I hate to think what might happen to it under the thumb of the Ellisons and the likes of Bari Weiss as state media. Ted will be spinning in his grave.

But let us take this moment to pay tribute to Ted Turner and his vision–for media, for democracy, for peace, and the planet.

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