He has always been a hard man to avoid, but these days Ted Turner seems to be everywhere. His thriving TV empire, which started as a single Atlanta UHF station, has grown to four nationwide cable networks. The newest of them, Turner Network Television, has been an unexpected hit, more than doubling its audience after just 15 months on the air. CNN and Headline News, his two all- news channels, grow in resourcefulness and credibility with each passing world crisis. Turner has launched a publishing company, and is shopping for a movie studio (though negotiations to purchase MGM/UA have come to a halt). Visitors to his Atlanta headquarters can even browse through the Turner Store, which sells everything from CNN T shirts to Wizard of Oz beach towels and Scarlett O'Hara chocolates.
But talk to Ted Turner about business today, and he will probably steer the conversation into something closer to his heart. Like the folly of spending $300 billion a year on defense: "I think we can get by easily with a $75 billion military budget. These bombers and all of this stuff is an absolute waste of money and a joke." Or industrial pollution: "We get more information every day that toxic poisons are a greater threat to us than anyone ever thought. Intelligent people now know that we are really in trouble." Or East-West relations: "Gorbachev has probably moved more quickly than any person in the history of the world. Moving faster than Jesus Christ did. America is always lagging six months behind."
It's vintage Turner, a mix of bluntness and good-ole-boy bluster. But people don't laugh condescendingly anymore at the man who was once dubbed the "Mouth of the South." The raffish and unpredictable outsider has become an industry leader, and the critics who once forecast his demise have for now been silenced. The Turner Broadcasting System, which three years ago was close to collapsing in debt, showed an operating profit for the first nine months of 1989, the first time it has emerged from the red since 1985. Turner, meanwhile, has become an advocate for a range of liberal causes. In an industry in which executives are careful to keep political views to themselves (except perhaps for flag waving during Bicentennial celebrations), Turner is that rare bird: a TV chieftain with an outspoken conscience.
On the business front, Turner's turnaround has been impressive. After his abortive 1985 attempt to take over CBS and his costly acquisition of MGM's library of 3,300 old films, Turner appeared to be in financial trouble. In desperate need of cash, he turned for a bailout to a group of cable-owning companies (among them Time Inc.), which bought a large share of Turner Broadcasting. His stake in the company has been reduced from 80% of common stock to just over 40%, and for the first time he must get approval for major decisions from a board of directors.