Ted’s Excellent Adventure Unexpected Zigs, Zags Highlight Maverick Businessman’s Career

Like a racing sloop furiously tacking back and forth against the wind, former championship sailor R.E. “Ted” Turner’s life and business career is a history of unexpected zigs and zags.

In the 1970s, Turner was the loudmouthed “Captain Outrageous” and the “Mouth of the South.” He sat in the dugout of his Atlanta Braves once to personally manage the team, and fell off a chair in a drunken stupor in front of television cameras during a news conference celebrating his America’s Cup victory.

Turner’s metamorphosis in the 1980s and 1990s to a media visionary couldn’t have been more drastic. The 56-year-old maverick proved that he could put news on television 24 hours a day, built a profitable TV channel from a film library everyone said he’d go bankrupt buying and married actress and liberal activist Jane Fonda when she seemed to be his ideological opposite.

Another unforeseen zig occurred Wednesday when media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. disclosed that it is negotiating to buy the Turner Broadcasting System company he heads for $8.5 billion in stock, proving again that the most predictable thing about Turner’s future is its unpredictability. No one in the media and entertainment business is more capable of surprise, changing course and proving doubters wrong.

“In a business that has gotten exceedingly corporate, Ted is one of the few real showmen left,” said David Tenzer, a television agent at Creative Artists Agency in Beverly Hills, Calif. “He’s very entrepreneurial in a way that harks back to studio moguls of the past.”

Plenty of skeptics on Wall Street and in Hollywood remain convinced the story is far from over, and that Turner’s fate will once again tack sharply in a surprising new direction. They see Turner eventually balking at the deal, or another bidder emerging.

“Why would Ted want this?” asked one bewildered senior Hollywood executive, noting that the deal seemingly flies in the face of Turner’s longtime dream of owning a television network.

The point is well taken. It’s hard to imagine an entrepreneur worth $1.6 billion - who has publicly declared in his frequently bombastic style that he wants to own the world - working as an employee of Time Warner. From his base in Atlanta, Turner has built an empire with nearly $3 billion in annual revenue with TV programming viewed by 160 million homes in more than 200 countries.

At times, Turner has complained so bitterly that Time Warner, which owns 18 percent of Turner Broadcasting, has tied his hands when it comes to buying a network that few are convinced he’s given up that dream for good.

The list of possible scenarios for Turner being discussed around Hollywood was seemingly endless Wednesday. One has General Electric Co. trumping Time Warner with a bid for Turner, or even making a huge bid for Time Warner itself. Another is that Turner was initially skeptical of Time Warner’s overtures, but warmed to the idea because he has an eye on possibly running Time Warner himself someday. Regardless, Turner’s fate remains largely in the hands of TCI and its chief executive, John Malone, who has yet to give a deal with Time Warner his blessing.

Or maybe, just maybe, Turner has changed his goals and the proposed merger is just what it seems. People close to Turner insist that he was profoundly influenced by the recent flurry of media mergers - capped by the $19 billion Walt Disney Co. deal for Capital Cities/ABC announced in late July. Turner, they say, realizes that he must be part of a big conglomerate to compete.

“The Disney-ABC deal was a wake-up call to all of us,” said one senior Turner executive.

A former Turner executive said that he believed Turner realized that he cannot get the money to finance a bid for a network without investors who would undoubtedly rein him in.

“He probably looked at his smaller army, and said commanding the Northern troops in this version of Ted’s Civil War is a better place to be,” the executive said.

Some see the potential deal with Time Warner as typical of Turner’s brash moves in the past.

“Ted is an extraordinarily smart, adept player so successful because he’s a buccaneer rather than a corporate type. He’s got real vision, is tremendously entrepreneurial, and is willing to take enormous risks,” said Peter Chernin, Chairman of Fox Films Entertainment.

In 1976, Turner revolutionized cable television when he began transmitting the signal of his local Atlanta UHF station, which he bought in 1970, nationwide to cable systems hungry for new programming. People in Idaho could watch Turner’s Atlanta Braves, which he bought earlier in 1976, and would soon watch his Atlanta Hawks basketball team.

A Civil War fanatic, Turner appeared in a cameo role as a Confederate officer in the film “Gettysburg” that his company financed. His love of “Gone With the Wind,” a film he acquired when he bought the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library in 1986, is shown by a painting of Clark Gable as Rhett Butler outside his office. Turner named his son “Rhett,” and would have named a daughter “Scarlett” if his wife at the time hadn’t objected.

In 1980, Turner made his biggest bet to date when he started Cable News Network amid conventional wisdom that it would drive him into bankruptcy.

“I remember being at a baseball game with Ted,” recalls New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. “There was a group of us, and he was saying he wanted to broadcast the news all day long because he had to wait until 6 and 11 to get news. I said to myself, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’ But damn if he didn’t do it.”