Ted Turner, the founder of CNN and ex-husband of the actress Jane Fonda, died on Wednesday morning. He was 87 years-old.
Turner Passes Away
“Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgement,” CNN CEO Mark Thompson said in a statement obtained by People Magazine. “He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN. Ted is the giant on whose shoulders we stand, and we will all take a moment today to recognize him and his impact on our lives and the world.”
In September of 2018, Turner revealed to the world that he was suffering from Lewy body dementia. This is a debilitating brain disorder that greatly affects memory and other cognitive functions.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1938, Turner moved to Savannah, Georgia when he was 9 years-old. There, his father ran a billboard advertising company known as Turner Advertising. After his father’s death in 1963, Turner took over the family business. He entered the world of television in 1970, when he acquired the struggling Atlanta-based station UHF.
In 1975, Turner invented the “superstation.” It used a satellite to broadcast the TV channel that went on to become Turner Broadcasting System, or TBS.
Turner Launches CNN
Turner will always be best known for inventing 24-hour news when he founded CNN in 1980. CNN was such a success that Turner Broadcasting was able to found other networks, including CNN Headline News, CNN International, TNT, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies.
In 1996, Turner sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner for $7.3 billion in stock. He stayed on as vice president of the company until 2003 before resigning from the board in 2006.
Aside from his business achievements, Turner was also known for his philanthropy. In 1990, he founded the Turner Foundation with the goal of supporting environmental causes. In 1997, Turner pledged to donate $1 billion to the United Nations. The next year, he created the United Nations Foundation, the goal of which is to create a more just world. In 2001, Turner founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative to protect the globe from nuclear weapons.
Turner’s Personal Life
In his personal life, Turner was married and divorced three times. He was first married to Judy Nye from 1960 to 1964. Turner then married Jane Shirley Smith in 1965, staying with her until 1988. He finally married Fonda in 1991, and they divorced in 2001.
In her 2005 memoir, My Life So Far, Fonda wrote that Turner contacted her as soon as he heard that she was divorcing her second husband Tom Hayden.
“There were times when something would set us to laughing so hard we’d sink to the floor, like the night when our guffaws collapsed us at the foot of the Gone With the Wind staircase at his plantation and we had to crawl up to bed on hands and knees,” she wrote.
After marrying Turner, Fonda retired from acting.
“I left for 15 years, when I married Ted Turner, and I did not think I was gonna come back, ’cause when I married him, I thought it’d be forever,” Fonda told Entertainment Tonight in 2023.
Unfortunately for Fonda, she learned that Turner was cheating on her soon after their wedding. She’s admitted that she turned to drinking to dull the pain from this, and that her marriage to Turner wasn’t a happy one.
Turner’s Lewy Body Dementia Diagnosis
Turner revealed his Lewy body dementia diagnosis in a September of 2025 interview with CBS Sunday Morning.
“It’s a mild case of what people have as Alzheimer’s,” Turner said at the time. “It’s similar to that. But not nearly as bad. Alzheimer’s is fatal.”
“Thank goodness I don’t have that,” he continued. “But, I also have got, let’s — the one that’s — I can’t remember the name of it.” After a momentary pause, Turner said, “Dementia. I can’t remember what my disease is.”
Turner is survived by his five children. His survivors also include 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Rest in peace, Ted Turner.