Ted Turner has died - Hacker News

Posted by pseudolus 3 days ago

293 points | 242 commentspage 4

BoingBoomTschak 3 days ago|

The same man that supposedly wanted to "serve" Bill Clinton (possibly play Minitrue)? (cf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRs46IfC2ls&t=89s)

NDlurker 3 days ago|

That's a clip from my favorite documentary, Spin

https://youtu.be/BcKhnzEd6x0

thrownaway561 3 days ago||

cnn email alert was how I learned that 9/11 was happening. love or hate the man and the news outlet, but you have to admit that they ushered in the news era of the internet.

dylan604 3 days ago||

CNN was how we watched Desert Storm in '91

antonchekhov 3 days ago|||

Nowadays, almost any news org can have journalists reporting from across the planet in real-time. But back before internet connectivity was ubuquitous, StarLink satellites, smartphones and streaming video everywhere, CNN had a few reporters who had the then-very-rare satellite phones (I think they were almost small-backpack sized) who could report from Iraq on-site during Desert Storm, and it was revolutionary. CNN's ratings went through the roof during that war, and after the war was over, it was reported they raised their ad rates over 1000%, because they had this new giant audience. It really felt like a transformation of public news media.

dylan604 3 days ago||

It wasn't just the sat phones, but they had cameras with satellite links as well. Plus, CNN was the only team that stuck around in Baghdad when everyone else left town. From their hotel room, we watched with them the unedited footage as all of the tracers from the AA lit up the night sky in a way few outside of military service had ever seen. The DoD provided additional footage of missiles through windows, but CNN was the place where everyone watched the live views.

This was a pivotal time for news coverage. The only thing that is at the same level was the JFK assassination. Until then, newspapers were the main source of news. The JFK coverage is where TV took over with live coverage instead of reading yesterday's news. Throw in the live coverage of Oswald being shot, and it was pretty much a standing 8 count with the internet being the final TKO for newspapers. PBS did a special on this called "JFK: Breaking the News"[0]

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7yAaUmKwKs

SirFatty 3 days ago|||

Well, that and Wayne's World...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi_t54HNeIg

7373737373 3 days ago|||

Here he is as 9/11 happened: https://youtu.be/yD5ZSEzriLI?t=1435

dexterdog 3 days ago|||

And then you couldn't get to their home page because they got hammered by traffic. They eventually slimmed the page down to just the main story and you could get it to load eventually.

macintux 3 days ago||

I remember waking up in the middle of the night for some reason, turning on CNN, and finding out we had invaded Panama.

Growing up, TV stations shut off around midnight. Quite the sea change.

enahs-sf 2 days ago||

What’s going to happen to all that land he owned?

drfloyd51 3 days ago||

He died at 8:05 EST.

burnt-resistor 2 days ago||

RIP.

If anyone wanted to hear interesting Ted Turner anecdotes, they're found throughout Keith Olbermann's podcast.

ingen0s 3 days ago||

RIP legend

InTheArena 3 days ago||

It's also worth remembering that Ted Turner also funded and asked for editorial changes to the the movie version of Gods and Generals, which downplayed slavyer and embraced the Confederate "lost cause" ideology. Most historians consider that as denial-ism on the same order as holocaust denial and the "stabbed in the back" claim that Hitler's used to seize power in the first place. He also attacked his own employees because of their religious beliefs. He later apologized for much of this, but if you want to find some of the reason for the modern return of fascism, you have to consider this.

bitwize 3 days ago||

I was just talking about Ted Turner. I was at the in-laws' the other day and I said to my father-in-law, "Ted Turner—you probably already know this because you probably met Ted Turner, but he used to run an evening cartoon block for adults on TNT with old Looney Tunes and all the racist jokes and sexual innuendos preserved." And he was like "Yep, I met him several times." Because he was a big-deal media lawyer in the 80s and 90s.

Here's to you, Mr. Turner. Captain Planet was blatant propaganda, but you were largely responsible for my nerdy interest in animation.

RyanZhuuuu 3 days ago|

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