because i knew what it meant in terms of his development, as a person, to have had such a really, really difficult early life. after the war ended, ted s dad relocated the family to savannah, georgia. he bought a small billboard company and renamed it turner advertising. he insisted ted not yet a teenager, learn the business. i worked a full 40-hour week. when i was out of school in the summer. the first year when i was 12 years old, he paid me 10 cents an hour. tensions grew between father and son and the family fell apart when ted s sister, mary jean, passed away after a long battle with lupus at age 17. her death tested ted s faith. at one point i was going to
thousands of dollars in our networks negotiation. i said, wait, that s not how it works, ted. from the clubhouse, ted was there. he even put on the uniform and managed the team for a day. i figure this is a good time for me to figure out what goes down here on the field. i think he might have had the shortest career as a manager that managed the game. from 1991 the team has gone from worst to first. four years later, they were world series champs. when they won, i ll just never forget. it was one of the great highs of our time together. as ted built his super station, he was dreaming up an even bigger idea, a 24-hour news channel. this news service will be called the cable news network. i work until 7:00. and when i got home, the news was over. so i missed television news completely. and i figured there were lots of people like me. you can do so much more in 24
in 1960, ted turner left college and his father couldn t have been more pleased. he thought i was wasting my time. so you leave brown, and you go into your dad s billboard business. right. ted was a natural from the beginning. and his dad quickly made him manager of the company s macon, georgia branch. he was running the billboard company there. building more billboards, selling more billboards. making lots of money for his father and for the company. already one of the biggest billboard companies in the south, ed turner took a risk to make it the biggest. he borrowed $4 million, bought out his largest competitor and then, lost his nerve. he had kind of a nervous breakdown. fear of defaulting on the loan consumed him.
ted was flush with cash. head of the media empire. and husband to jane fonda. but coming up, the bottom drops out. none of us in our wildest dreams at that moment knew that it could end like it did. (vo) this is not a video game. this is not a screensaver. this is the destruction of a cancer cell by the body s
ted had been married for four years. and his hectic schedule was taking a toll on his young family. ted was married to his first wife, had two children. but you know, he spent all his time, working, trying to save the company, build the company. so it didn t work out. divorced, then remarried, ted eventually had three more kids. but wasn t much of a family man. dad really wasn t around very much. he was either off sailing or he was building his empire. he s not really good at atta-boys. you know, i don t think my dad told me he loved me until i was 30. yet ted always wanted the best for his family. even if that meant a change of scenery. my father got us out of atlanta. when we were preteens, getting to the age where diversions come along and so he thought it would be good for us to be raised in the country.