Ted Turner’s Journey From College Dropout To Media Mogul

Robert Edward Turner III, better known as "Ted", has died at the age of 87. The billionaire media, baseball, rancher, environmentalist, conservationist, yachtsman, and philanthropist has been reported to have Lewy body Dementia (a progressive brain disorder).

Turner left Brown University without getting a degree and joined his father's outdoor media empire that the younger Turner turned into a radio, television and movie empire after his father's suicide.

Ted Turner was called "The Mouth of the South" for a good reason. He was outspoken, controversial, rash, brash and successful at most everything he attempted. The Cincinnati native will be most remembered as the founder of the 24-hour cable news network CNN, the man who brought major league baseball to the south with his purchase of the Braves, the man who turned WTCG, a small time UHF television station in Atlanta, into WTBS "The Superstation" nationwide via satellite and as the husband of actress/activist Jane Fonda.

The 1991 TIME Magazine "Man of the Year" created a massive media empire that included Turner Network Television (TNT) and the acquisition of MGM/UA, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and the Cartoon Network before merging with Time Warner in 1996. He used the nationwide satellite coverage of his superstation to make the Atlanta Braves into "America's Team".

As an internationally known yachtsman, Turner captained the yacht Courageous to a 4-0 victory in the 1977 America's Cup. Known for his fiery, intense leadership, Turner was a four-time US Sailing Yachtsman of the Year.

"I ran my company the same way I ran my boat," he wrote in his autobiography. "I found the best people I could to run our businesses while I stepped back to keep an eye on our overall strategy and what our next move should be."

He even became the manager of the Braves one season until MLB told him he couldn't own and manage the team.

As a philanthropist and internationalist, Turner once game $1 billion to the United Nations to, as he said at the time, build a better world.

Turner moved to Montana and bought copious acres of land and eventually owned more than 40,000 Bison. It was those Bison that gave him the idea of starting a restaurant chain, Ted's Montana Grill, which had a restaurant in Hoover for several years.

Turner once visited Tuscaloosa to speak to a group of advertising executives.

He is survived by five children, 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Once asked what he wanted written on his tombstone Turner replied, "These days I'm leaning toward 'I Have Nothing More To Say'".