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And he overreacts to that strain.
Some of his misbehavior is relatively innocent, if unjustified, familiarity. But it can lead to ugliness. When he pinched the wife of former Atlanta Braves Pitcher Dick Ruthven, the player made the incident public and demanded, successfully, to be traded. Jane Turner keeps her opinion of such exploits to herself.
A friend sees Turner's behavior as evidence of anxiety: "Ted does these bold things in business, puts everything he has on the line. The pressure can get almost unbearable. The way he reacts is to get loud and hyper and irritating. The nervousness comes out in this compulsive attraction to women. If a pretty girl walks by, I might peek out of the corner of my eye. When Ted is in one of those pressure-filled moods, he is likely to jump out and follow the pretty girl down the street."
The pressures on Turner must be considerable. Like his father, he has expanded his business, taken on debt and risked all on having judged the market aright. Unlike his father, he refuses to retrench. Much of his personal property is pledged as collateral for loans, and nearly all of his worth is tied up in 87% of the Turner Broadcasting System's stock.
Yet he keeps on spending. He plans to build a $31 million movie and TV production studio in Atlanta next year and start making his own features. Already he is financing Jacques Cousteau's exploration of the Amazon in exchange for television rights, and the Superstation makes original shows, including Nice People, documentary profiles of community benefactors, and Winners, American real-life success stories.
Turner knows he faces an uphill battle. He knows too that there are a lot of corporate buzzards circling overhead, hoping CNN will falter so they can pick its carcass clean. But Turner has built a unique career on being an optimist. And on being right.
Says he: "Sure, I'm worried. But I'm not that worried. As soon as I earn me my billion dollars, I am going to buy a network. I am going to find the new Frank Capra and set him to making movies. I can quit whenever I want to. I am not worried about what people think.
But I am the right man in the right place at the right time, not me alone, but all the people who think the world can be brought together by telecommunications."
The man who has taken on the sports Establishment, the federal regulatory bureaucracy, the old-money yachting elite, the networks and, perhaps most daunting, his own exacting demands of himself, ponders a moment when asked who he really is and dredges up yet another heroic memory.
"Charlemagne," Ted Turner replies, at least half-seriously, "saving Christendom from the infidels." —By William A. Henry III. Reported by B.J. Phillips/Atlanta