Ted Turner, the outspoken media tycoon who founded CNN and transformed rolling television news, has died aged 87 in Lamont, Florida, Turner Enterprises has confirmed.
The company said the CNN founder, whose wealth was most recently put at about $2.5 billion (£1.83 billion), died 'peacefully, surrounded by his family' on Wednesday after a long struggle with Lewy body dementia.
How Did Ted Turner Die And What Happens To His $2.5 Billion Legacy
The news came after a long period in which Turner had quietly withdrawn from the frenetic dealmaking that made his name. Once known as 'The Mouth of the South' and 'Captain Outrageous' for his boisterous public persona, he spent his later years between doctors' appointments and his vast ranches, surrounded by children and grandchildren.
Turner had disclosed in 2018 that he was living with Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurological disorder, and one source article also said he had been hospitalised with a mild case of pneumonia in early 2025 before recovering at a rehabilitation facility.
Turner Enterprises said a private family service will be held, with a public memorial to follow.
He is survived by five children, 14 grandchildren and two great‑grandchildren. They inherit not only an estimated $2.5 billion (£1.83 billion) fortune but also sprawling landholdings across the United States and Argentina, a chain of Ted's Montana Grill restaurants, and a web of charitable foundations focusing on conservation, nuclear disarmament and the United Nations.
CNN Founder Ted Turner And The Birth Of 24‑Hour News
Turner's death has revived scrutiny of the single decision that defined his career: the decision to build CNN.
In 1980, when network news was still an evening half‑hour filmed in New York or Washington, he launched a 24‑hour cable outlet from Atlanta, betting that audiences would watch live coverage at any time of day.
Many in the US media establishment thought he was delusional. Former colleagues recall him admitting he knew 'diddley‑squat' about news. What he did know was television economics. Having inherited and expanded his father's billboard company, he had already turned a struggling Atlanta station into cable's first national 'superstation', packed with old sitcoms and live sport after he bought the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks.
CNN's early years were scrappy. Technical hiccups were frequent and some in the industry sneered at 'Chicken Noodle News.' Turner, who said he lived for a decade on a couch in his office inside CNN's Atlanta headquarters, kept pushing.
The payoff came during the 1991 Gulf War, when the network's live reporting from Baghdad made it, in Time magazine's phrase, 'the video medium of record' and earned Turner the magazine's Man of the Year title.
Ted Turner, the CNN founder who reshaped the modern news landscape, has died. Pictured here as TIME’s 1992 Man of the Year, Turner was recognized for transforming how the world receives information—bringing 24-hour news into homes across the globe and leaving an indelible mark on… pic.twitter.com/MXrhDf0E2L
— TIME (@TIME) May 6, 2026
Inside the company, his influence was unmistakeable. Mark Thompson, the current chairman and chief executive of CNN Worldwide, described him this week as 'an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgement', adding: 'He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN.'
Rivals did more than watch. Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News in 1996, explicitly competing with CNN's model. The two moguls clashed in public, with Turner once saying he looked forward to 'squishing Rupert like a bug.'
Murdoch's statement after Turner's death was gentler, calling him a 'great American' whose 'vision for 24‑hour cable news transformed the media industry and gave viewers everywhere a front seat to witness history unfold.'
How Ted Turner Bet Big, Lost Billions And Recast His Legacy
Born Robert Edward Turner III in Cincinnati in 1938, he took over the family billboard firm at 24 after his father died by suicide. He expanded into radio, then television, then national cable, creating a portfolio that would eventually include CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies.
In 1996 he agreed to sell Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner for about $7.3 billion (£5.36 billion), largely in shares. When Time Warner merged with internet giant AOL in 2001, the combined company briefly looked like the future of media. The subsequent dot‑com crash turned it into one of corporate America's most notorious flops.
Turner, the largest individual shareholder, later told The New York Times he had lost around $8 billion (£5.87 billion), or about 80 per cent of his net worth. 'I lost 80% of my worth and subsequently lost my job,' he said, reflecting that they had checked whether he was 'the biggest loser of all time'. He eventually resigned as vice‑chairman in 2003 and left the board three years later.
Rather than retreat, he shifted focus. At a black‑tie gala in 1997, he stunned diplomats by pledging $1 billion (£730 million) to support United Nations programmes for refugees and children, a promise he completed in 2015 despite his market losses. In 2001 he also gave the US government $31 million (£22.75 million) to help pay down arrears owed to the UN.
He poured money into conservation, becoming, by his company's count, the second‑largest individual landowner in North America, with about two million acres overseen with the stated aim of 'economically sustainable and ecologically sensitive' management.
On those ranches he assembled the world's largest private herd of bison and funded efforts to rescue endangered species through the Turner Foundation and the Turner Endangered Species Fund. He even co‑created the children's series Captain Planet to promote environmental themes.
A Final Chapter Marked By Lewy Body Dementia
By the time Turner spoke publicly about his Lewy body dementia diagnosis in 2018, the man who once drank rum, hunted, argued politics with Fidel Castro and skippered a winning America's Cup yacht had already eased himself out of day‑to‑day corporate life.
He described the disease as 'a mild case of what people have as Alzheimer's', adding that forgetfulness bothered him most.
Colleagues noted that even as he worried about CNN becoming, in his words, 'too much' about politics and not broad enough in its agenda, he remained proud of its global reach.
David Zaslav, chief executive of Warner Bros Discovery, which now owns CNN, praised his 'entrepreneurial spirit, creative ambition and willingness to take risks', arguing that Turner 'did not just disrupt media. He transformed it.'
In his 2008 memoir 'Call Me Ted', he wrote that his father had urged him to set goals so lofty they could not be completed 'in one lifetime'. Near the end of his own, Turner sounded surprisingly content with how far he had got, writing: 'If I had to live my life over there are things I would do differently. But it's been a remarkable ride. I have very few regrets.'
Ted Turner, the CNN founder who reshaped modern television news, died on Wednesday aged 87, Turner Enterprises said in a statement released on 6 May, adding that he was surrounded by family at the time of his death.
His former wife, actor and activist Jane Fonda, called him 'a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate' in a lengthy Instagram tribute, saying: 'I loved Ted with all my heart.' The pair, married from 1991 to 2001, remained close. Turner himself once told CNN she was probably the great love of his life and that he doubted he would ever get over her.
