60 Minutes rewind. Ted Turner is like Dracula. You have to drive a steak through his heart to stop him. And though many have come close, he's back. Though he's gone from being a really rich man to a mere billionaire, he's maintained the manic energy that drove him to change the landscape of the information age by creating CNN and 24-hour News. The uncompromising competitor who won the America's Cup. The ex-husband of Jane Fonda. The batty billionaire who challenged his archenemy, fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch to a boxing match. Once described as both genius and jackass, he's now decided to reflect on a tumultuous life and more or less tell all in a memoir.
Ted Turner is the largest individual land owner in the United States, owning 2 million acres across 12 states. We caught up with him at one of his Montana ranches. This lonesome cowboy who hates his own company.
You hate being alone. I don't like being alone. These are big places to be alone. I tell you, come out here and spend the night by yourself sometimes. You know the coyotes out there howling, it's pretty scary.
Out here at the Snow Crest Ranch, Ted Turner is not alone. He keeps company with bison, horses, and a stream full of ruby river trout.
Mama mia, that's a real nice fish.
Life is good for Ted Turner. He's not your average old-age pensioner. This most restless of men jets round the world, promoting good causes, dreaming up new business ventures, and dropping in on his dozens of properties scattered about the hemisphere. And now, as he turns 70, he's written his book. So, after his morning ride, the man who proudly says he never looks back decided to do just that to let Ted reflect on Ted.
I've had the good fortune to have a much more diverse life than most people with professional sports and television and news and movies.
And a fairly spectacular private life, too.
Well, it's been a lot of fun.
Ted Turner burst on the scene in 1977 when he captained Courageous, the yacht that won the America's Cup. As a blotto Turner celebrated, Captain Outrageous emerged. But it was his groundbreaking creation of CNN that put Turner indelibly on the map. But his company's rapid growth and ballooning debt nearly bankrupted him.
I was going to go broke if I didn't get things turned around real fast. But I was able to get it refinanced without government help, I might add, unlike what's going on today. But we made it by the skin on our chinny chin chin. Two years later, we made a run at CBS. Unsuccessful, but we did take a swing.
Instead, Turner went on to create his own broadcasting powerhouse. And when he merged his company with Time Warner in 1996, his status as media visionary was confirmed.
I didn't care how much adversity life threw at me. I intended to get to the top.
The adversity started at infancy, shipped off to boarding school at the age of four, followed by years of military school for discipline. He says his alcoholic father did everything he could to toughen him up.
You had a pretty tough father.
So what? You know, lots of people have tough fathers.
No, he didn't beat me up. He spanked me.
Spanked me with a wire hanger.
But that's pretty traumatic stuff.
It was. But he was doing it to make me better.
And you think it made you better?
At age 21, he began working for his father's outdoor advertising business. But shortly after an event that both shaped and shattered Ted Turner.
Your father's suicide, that would strike me as something that would be awfully difficult for anybody to get over.
Were you out to prove something to him even though he was gone?
He wanted me to be a big success and all my life I've tried to be a big success. So that his influence was huge.
That success has plastered all over the walls of his Atlanta office. CNN made Turner into a statesman of sorts, hobnobbing with world leaders. But he may be best remembered for the impolitic things he said, insulting Christianity, fellow billionaires, even the Italians.
The Italians. Imagine the Italians at war. I mean, they'd rather be involved in crime and just making some wine and having a good time.
His utter inability to self-censor earned Turner the nickname the mouth from the south. But to some, it was evidence of true mental instability. Turner admits he took the drug lithium for a while, but said it had no effect. But that didn't stop his rival, Rupert Murdoch, from questioning his sanity during their legendary war of words.
His newspapers were pretty brutal in attacking you. They called...
Nuts. I think they said...
He had detectives following me around at times. At least I think he did. I never had any proof of it.
You once said that Murdoch was the most dangerous man in the world. You still believe that?
No. I think George Bush is the most dangerous man in the world. I've made peace with Rupert. We had lunch together a few months ago. Now there's not anybody I don't like, but after this interview's over, I may not like you.
Vintage Ted Turner, as was his joy when he agreed to AOL's merger with Time Warner.
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 that kind of...
He was now worth $10 billion. But shortly after the merger, Turner was pushed aside by Time Warner brass, vice chairman of nothing, even though he was the company's largest individual stockholder. Then the internet bubble burst and AOL Time Warner stock went into freefall.
You were losing nearly $10 million a day for two and a half years.
A million a day for two and a half years.
