Ted Turner, the entrepreneur who fundamentally changed how the world receives its news by founding CNN, died on Wednesday at the age of 87. The network confirmed his death, attributing it in part to complications from Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder he had publicly disclosed in 2018. Mark Thompson, chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, called Turner "the giant on whose shoulders we stand" and "the presiding spirit of CNN."

Born Robert Edward Turner III in Cincinnati, Ohio, in November 1938, Turner grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and attended Brown University before being expelled. He took over his father's struggling advertising firm at the age of 24 after his father died by suicide, and proceeded to transform it into a media conglomerate. His first television acquisition came in 1970, when he purchased a struggling Atlanta broadcast station and eventually turned it into WTBS, a satellite "Superstation" beaming movies, sports and entertainment across the United States. It was in 1980, however, that Turner made his most lasting mark: the launch of CNN, the Cable News Network, the world's first round-the-clock television news channel. Critics dismissed it as the "Chicken Noodle News Network," but it swiftly proved its worth, delivering live coverage of the Tiananmen Square protests, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and most consequentially, the 1990–91 Gulf War — broadcasting in real time from Baghdad even as the city was under bombardment. That coverage cemented CNN's global reputation and earned Turner Time magazine's Person of the Year in 1991.

Turner's empire expanded to include TNT, Turner Classic Movies, and the Cartoon Network, while he also owned the Atlanta Braves baseball team and skippered the US yacht Courageous to victory in the 1977 America's Cup sailing race. In 1996, he sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner in a deal worth $7.3 billion, becoming vice chairman of the combined company. The subsequent merger of Time Warner with AOL in 2001 — then the largest corporate merger in history at $165 billion — proved disastrous, and Turner, the biggest individual shareholder, lost billions as AOL's value collapsed. He later said he never fully recovered from watching his media empire slip away.

Beyond business, Turner was a prominent philanthropist and environmentalist. In 1998 he donated one billion dollars to establish the United Nations Foundation, which has focused on climate change, sustainable development and global health. He became one of the largest private landowners in the United States, preserving roughly two million acres and building up a herd of more than 50,000 bison — a species he helped pull back from the brink of extinction. He was married three times, including to actress Jane Fonda, from whom he divorced in 2001. He is survived by five children, fourteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Turner's legacy extends well beyond CNN itself. His 24-hour news model directly inspired competitors including Fox News — founded by his longstanding rival Rupert Murdoch — as well as MSNBC and a vast array of rolling news channels around the world. At a moment when the relationship between journalism and entertainment is once again fiercely debated, Turner's insistence that "the news is king" remains a touchstone for the industry he helped create.