Ted Turner: 'Less talk, more news'

by Mark Silva

Here's a brilliant idea, from the founder of CNN:

"Less talk, more news.''

Ted Turner, a billionaire yachtsman whose financial sails have been trimmed - he still has about $700 million in Treasury bills and suggests that one really can get by with "a billion or two'' - has no doubt about what he would do with the Cable Network News that he founded in 1980 if he were in charge of the control booths today:

"There'd be less fluffy news and more international news," Turner said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "Less talk, more news."

On the day after the great balloon chase -- the afternoon cable news marathon tracking of a wayward helium balloon said to hold a six-year-old boy - and on another day on which the White House finds itself embroiled with a cable commentator whose calling card is talk and more talk - the entrepreneur's longing for a day when news carried the day carries a certain appeal.

In the interview, Turner tells of the pain of losing his job at Time Warner Inc., his wife, actress Jane Fonda and $7 billion. "It was like having my heart ripped out," Turner said in an interview in New York. It's not all gone, though: The founder of Turner Broadcasting System and CNN has "a couple billion" dollars left, including $700 million in T bills - but no Jane Fonda.

"I'm working on the issues that are life or death for us," says Turner, 70, co-chair of a Nuclear Threat Initiative with former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia. "What I'm trying to do is stay relevant."

Turner quit the media business three years ago when he left the board of Time Warner, which bought Turner's cable channels, including TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network, in 1996, making him its largest individual shareholder. Turner lost $7 billion when Time Warner's stock collapsed in the wake of a 2001 merger with AOL, the Internet business which Time Warner now is now shedding.

On the growing value of cable networks in the U.S., Turner said, "I feel like a dummy." Mocking himself, he sings, "You let the big one get away."

(Ted Turner, chairman of Turner Enterprises Inc., is pictured above during the interview in New York. Photo by Daniel Acker / Bloomberg. Jane Fonda is pictured above starring in the film Barbarella, 1968. )

Before Time Warner lost so much value, Turner gave away a lot of money - his largest gift a $1 billion pledge in 1997 to establish the United Nations Foundation. He says he has given $750 million so far.

"If you were around at the time, I gave everybody a hundred thousand dollars if they came up with anything," Turner said. "I just couldn't hold onto it. I wanted to keep it moving. I get a dollar, I give it to you, you spend it, somebody else gets it. You know, pass it around. You know, it's kind of like a joint -- you just pass it around, light it up, you know, share with your friends....

"To drop out of that league, that was hard to do," Turner said. "I've had the experience of being on top and riding the roller coaster down again, nearly to the bottom. You know, if you economize and don't buy new airplanes or long-range jets, or that sort of thing, you can get by on a billion or two."