The Big Lead

Ted Turner is alive and well enough to watch the Max documentary about his life before everyone else

By J.P. Hoornstra

Cable TV mogul Ted Turner, left, came to Nashville Nov. 4, 1982, to address members of the Tennessee Cable Television Association meeting at Opryland Hotel. He is join by Viacom Cablevision vice president and general manager Kurt Jorgensen.
Cable TV mogul Ted Turner, left, came to Nashville Nov. 4, 1982, to address members of the Tennessee Cable Television Association meeting at Opryland Hotel. He is join by Viacom Cablevision vice president and general manager Kurt Jorgensen. / Dale Ernsberger / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK
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The history of sports media cannot be told without Ted Turner, the maverick founder of TBS, and CNN, and the shortest-tenured manager in the history of Major League Baseball (he bought the Atlanta Braves in 1976, named himself manager for one game in 1977, and lost).

The history of Ted Turner can be told without the whole sports-media part. That was certainly part of the appeal to Joni Levin and Keith Clarke, the documentarian couple behind MAX's new six-part docuseries, "Call Me Ted," that will air starting Wednesday.

For anyone too young to remember life before cable television, it's as useful a history lesson as it is entertaining. Turner moved the needle visibly, forcefully, in the evolving marriage between sports and television in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as much as any public figure.

Turner used a satellite to air programming on WTCG, the Atlanta-based television station he owned, to local cable providers around the country beginning in 1976. He brought the Atlanta Braves, rebranded his station as "TBS," and by the 1980s Braves games were being broadcast around the country too, becoming a national brand.

Later, Turner bought WCW, a competitor to Vince McMahon's WWF, whose Monday Nitro battled McMahon's Monday Night Raw in the Nielsen ratings from 1995-2001.

Although Turner lost much of his fortune in the wake of the disastrous merger between AOL and Time Warner, his fingerprints on the television business left a lasting mark.

Now 85, Turner has been living with Lewy Body Dementia for more than a decade. And he's reportedly seen "Call Me Ted" already.

In a statement provided to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Turner Enterprises’ chief communications officer Phillip Evans, Turner said he was “deeply impressed and grateful for the colossal amount of work that went into this biopic... I’m ecstatic about the results!”

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