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Posted by pseudolus 3 days ago

Ted Turner has died(www.cnn.com)
293 points | 242 commentspage 3
arian_ 2 days ago|
Ted Turner built a 24-hour news network when everyone said nobody would watch news at 3 AM. Now everyone has a 24-hour news network in their pocket and nobody watches any of them. He was right about the demand but wrong about who would supply it.
sleight42 3 days ago||
On the lighter side, and as a sort of RIP, https://youtu.be/uVzLzClY2E8?si=Erm6_WlW0xiEgVnk
burnt-resistor 2 days ago|
Delete the ?si=... part because it's tracking you personally and is unnecessary.
schlauerfox 3 days ago||
Someone needs to update the simpsons wiki : ( https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Ted_Turner
westurner 3 days ago||
Now we can make a "Captain Planet" movie to honor Ted.

Captain Planet and the Planeteers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planete...

bsimpson 3 days ago|
TIL Turner was a creator of Captain Planet.
daveslash 3 days ago||
I think I heard somewhere (can't find reliable source right now) that he created Captain Planet as a revenge. He had some renewable energy initiative/deal that he was trying to get pushed through that got clobbered by big oil lobbyists. So he created Captain Planet as some revenge scheme.
bitwize 3 days ago|||
Relevant: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uVzLzClY2E8
westurner 3 days ago|||
Hadn't heard that.

Oil price shock and a curiously delayed hostage situation displaced Carter in the 1980 election. And we've debt-financed trillions in oil commodity market manipulating wars since.

From "The surprising story behind the making of 'Captain Planet'" (2021) https://grist.org/culture/captain-planet-planeteers-real-sto... :

> “Our mission was to inspire and to educate the next generation of environmental activists,” Pyle said. She and producer Nicholas Boxer made it a point to slip as much planetary realness into the show’s fantastical plotlines. In fact, Pyle says many ideas were taken directly from the Global 2000 Report to the President, a 1980 paper commissioned by Jimmy Carter that warned of environmental disaster should policies fail to account for the world’s booming population growth.

The Global 2000 Report to the President (aka "The Doomsday Report") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_2000_Report_to_the_...

Looks like it was predictively close on population estimates, but the 100% increase in food price production wasn't accurate (though we do have soil depletion and foreign mineral depletion instead).

FAO Food Price Index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Food_Price_Index

Unknown how much affect there was on the indicator due to calling attention to the indicator with such report.

/? oil disasters prior to 1980: https://www.google.com/search?q=oil+disasters+prior+to+1980

Ixtoc I oil spill in 1979 (2nd after Deepwater Horizon, which also resulted in dying dolphins and fish and birds on the beach) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill

Earth Day (April 22nd) was created in response to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day#1969_Santa_Barbara_o...

Big oil lobbyists haven't paid their bills for foreign wars.

Over the estimated interval of 1980 through 2000, Gross National Debt to GDP ratio grew from 35% to 59%. GND-to-GDP is approximately 120% in 2026.

The Carter plan for renewables would've saved trillions of dollars and many lives compared to the 1980-1992 Reagan-Bush debt-financed oil wars.

FWIU the Limits to Growth report is more accurate than the Global 2000 report that - TIL - led to Captain Planet and the Planeteers for us kids back then.

joshuaxls 2 days ago||
This is still my favorite Onion article ever: “Ted Turner Sends Self Back In Time To Prevent AOL Time Warner Merger”

https://theonion.com/ted-turner-sends-self-back-in-time-to-p...

sameers 3 days ago||
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48036974
psychanarch 2 days ago||
He had a "Doomsday Video" made for CNN to play when the world ends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Doomsday_Video
rao-v 3 days ago||
There is a good case to be made that he (rather impulsively) caused more impactful charitable giving than any other person.

He essentially created the modern “billionaire giving to global causes” movement by deciding to donate a billion dollars during a speech.

https://x.com/NickKristof/status/2052038692949406188?s=20

deferredgrant 3 days ago||
Whatever one thinks of cable news now, CNN was a huge shift in how people experienced world events. The medium changed the emotional cadence of news.
Henchman21 3 days ago|
I'd say it changed it extremely negatively. Before CNN, the news was reported when it happened. AFTER CNN, creating "news" to fill the gaps between news actually worth reporting happened. This was the start of the slippery slope to the news being little more than entertainment.
washadjeffmad 3 days ago|||
When CNN was sold to Time Warner, we lost the last voice in cable news from outside of New York.
jcgrillo 3 days ago|||
It seems like a powerful lesson in good intentions and their unintended consequences.
Henchman21 2 days ago||
It does seem like that. But it isn't a lesson as we won't learn anything from it.
seizethecheese 3 days ago|
If you’re intrigued by the comments here, I highly recommend his memoir Call Me Ted.
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