Tonight we take another look at the Maverick Ted Turner, Captain Outrageous, Terrible Ted, the mouth from the South. We've been spending time with him, following him around the past couple of months to find out what he's up to, what his plans are. This television pioneer who created CNN more than 20 years ago. Well, he is fascinating as usual, unpredictable as usual. He let us know that he didn't much like his job as vice chairman at AOL Time Warner, but he didn't give us a clue that he was going to resign from that job, which he did last week. We talked with him again yesterday, and you'll hear more about that later. First, come with us now as we walk with Ted on a Manhattan sidewalk outside AOL Time Warner headquarters and begin to learn what has been churning in Ted Turner's always volatile mind.
They've not iced you here.
What's that mean? I know what icing the puck is, but you mean put me on ice?
No, I'm not out. I have one foot in the door and one on the sidewalk.
See, here we're welcome to go in. Though, as we said, he resigned last week, Ted Turner still holds the title of vice chairman, and he will until May. As a vice chairman here at AOL, what does that mean? What is your job?
Vice chairman is kind of a title without portfolio.
Title without meaning, right? Like the emperor of Japan. He's in charge of just about nothing. He doesn't even have a voice anymore about the running of his baby CNN. He says his formal role has been that of advisor, but it's not really what he wants to be.
I'm trying to play the role that I've been given as good as I can.
But you're the guy who said...
And I'm on the board of directors.
So they pay attention to you.
Back when the plan to merge Time Warner with AOL was first announced, Ted voted for it with unbridled joy.
I did it with as much or more excitement and enthusiasm as I did on that night when I first made love some 42 years ago. It was very clear that it was going to go through, so I might as well have gone along with it.
And it was a big mistake. When the merger was announced, stock prices soared, giving Ted, the largest individual shareholder, billions. But since then, AOL Time Warner stock has gone south. Way south. How much did you lose from AOL Time Warner?
From the high to the low? 7 or 8 billion.
How did things get so bad? Well, it's been a long road and 60 Minutes has been there for much of the ride. Back in 1977, we first met the young Ted Turner on 60 Minutes when he sailed the Courageous to victory in the America's Cup race.
Ah, you know, it's just another sailboat race.
And then he had a little too much victory punch. But the yachtsman, Playboy, Bad Boy, was already on his way in large part due to his father, who ran a successful billboard company, but who was tortured by depression and tough on his son Ted.
I do not think my father was abusive. My father was a strict disciplinarian, but he and I were extremely close.
He used to beat you with a wire hanger.
With a wire coat hanger, he did. He did several times.
And then the story goes that he made you beat him.
He did. He made me spank him one night and that was very, very hard. It was much easier to be spanked than spank your father.
Then when Ted was 24, his father committed suicide. And that is when Turner swung into high gear as an entrepreneur and budding tycoon. By 1979, when my colleague Harry Reasoner talked with him, Ted had already created the nation's first TV super station.
Wayne, what do you think of this team? I like every one of them.
And he was the owner of the Atlanta Braves baseball team. And then the very next year, 1980, he launched CNN. This is CNN. It was dubbed the Chicken Noodle Network back then, but as CNN began to show it was a serious news operation, Turner's appetite got even bigger. In 1986, when Diane Sawyer interviewed him for 60 Minutes, Ted had just lost his bid to take over this network, CBS. Along the way, of course, there was his personal life, and that was another story. Turner has been married and divorced three times, most recently to Jane Fonda, to whom he remains deeply loyal. I read something Jane Fonda had said about him. She has said with all the love in the world, she says he has been severely, hauntingly traumatized. He always thinks something is to be pulled out from him with reference to your dad. Maybe he has no belief in permanency, stability. It is one reason I'm not with him.
I'm sure that she feels that way. She's told me that. I wouldn't say that I agree with that completely. I know that I have some insecurity problems. Most overachievers do.
But he's had other problems, problems that earned him those names. Captain Outrageous, Terrible Ted, and Mouth from the South. Much of it because he says what's on his mind. And you never know what that's going to be. And sometimes neither does he.
And I get in trouble because, you know, when you're speaking off the cuff and you aren't positive what you're going to say till you say it, you say things that taken out of context look pretty outrageous sometimes.
Like the time he took a swipe at religion or one particular religion.
Christianity is for losers. Terrible statement. I really regretted that from the time that it came out of my big fat mouth. I believe that you should live by your word.
And there were others like when he gave a speech some months after the World Trade Center disaster. Look, after 9/11, you said in a speech, 'Oh my god,' what was on your mind? And some had a problem with it and you apologized after. We all expressed regret for it. But let me repeat what you said.
The 19 young men who blew themselves up going in the trade center...
...that our administration called cowards. I mean, how are you a coward when you're willing to die for your country? I mean, I think they were brave at the very least, because I'm not going to fly my airplane. Brave was a bad word. But I do not think, because I know for instance, my father committed suicide and he was not a coward. He was very brave when he shot himself, in my opinion. That's why to a degree I said that.
Nonetheless, he regrets he said it.
A lot of times what you have in your mind is best left unsaid. Particularly if you're trying to be diplomatic.
Trying to be diplomatic. Ted Turner.
