Okay. Thank you, Doc. Now, if you haven't heard about Ted Turner, you've obviously been living in a monastery for the past decade or so. Hardly a week goes by or a day where you don't read about him in a magazine or a newspaper or he's on television. He's got CNN in the United States, Australia, Europe, Japan, and Central America. He's got WTBS, the superstation out of Atlanta. He's just taken over MGM. He owns the Atlanta Braves, the Atlanta Hawks. He won the America's Cup. Now he's doing the Goodwill Games in Russia, which kind of rivals the Olympics. How he got the time to come here tonight, I don't know. Would you welcome Mr. Ted Turner?
That's the way you get around. I've never seen anybody come on stage quicker and sit down here.
You're in constant motion, aren't you?
I think your wife said you were hyperactive as a child, and she says you're still hyperactive.
Well, I don't know. I'm active.
Yeah. But you're active all the time.
What was your day like today? Just give me an idea what some of the things you did this week.
Well, this was a big week. I spoke to the Africa Travel Council in Atlanta Monday morning. Then I flew to Washington and I spoke at George Washington University Monday afternoon. Then I got up early Tuesday morning. Had breakfast with Jack Valenti of the MPAA. Flew to New York with him. Spoke to the International Radio and Television Society with him at noon in New York. Then I flew to Detroit and watched the Detroit Pistons beat the Hawks that night.
It's all right. And then the next morning I made calls on all the major automobile companies trying to sell them some advertising. And I flew back to New Haven, Connecticut Wednesday night and spoke at Yale.
Spoke at Yale. And then I drove down last night and stayed at the airport across from Kennedy Airport and flew out here today. We just had an announcement with Sid Sheinberg, the president of MCA. We're going to carry the Beaver show before I got over here over at Universal. So that's this week so far.
So far. I saw the profile 60 Minutes did on you Sunday. Sitting home watching it, how did you react to it? Were you happy?
I thought I can't say it wasn't fair. I'd like to... considering if I think if they had made it as favorable as I think it should have been, they probably would have gotten fired by Mr. Reisman. And they took their chance with their jobs as it was anyway. I'm not going to complain about it.
Yeah. You at one time, less than a year ago, were attempting to take over CBS, right? To purchase CBS.
Which is a publicly held corporation with many thousands of stockholders. What were you going to try to raise to buy that?
I can't remember. I think we offered $175 a share. It was around 5 billion.
Well, we raised about a billion and a half to buy MGM. So it's just three times as much.
Yeah. Good figuring. Can I read you something from Time magazine and see if this is how you would describe yourself? I think they wrote this in '82. It says, 'Ted Turner is sometimes cunning and guarded, then unnervingly straightforward. He can be vulgar and abusive to his close associates, yet passionately loyal. He cherishes honor and courage, but is a far better loser than winner. Gallant in defeat, gloating in victory. He is perhaps the most openly ambitious man in America. Yet he admits my desire to excel borders on the unhealthy.'
I don't think that's very accurate.
Didn't you ever say that your desire to excel borders on...
Yes. But I don't push my associates around. That's wrong.
But I mean, you know, it's public opinion.
Well, it was just one writer's opinion, right? Now, about the other thing. Oh, the ambition. Well, what drives you? What really drives you?
Well, your position. You're in your middle 40s, I guess, something like that.
Late 40s. Okay. It's all right, Ted. It's not downhill from then on. There is hope. A lot of people at your age say you're very successful. You've got all these things going. A lot of people say, 'Okay, that's fine. I'm going to take it easy.' But you have this drive obviously, and it intrigues me.
Well, my father and my schools told me that, you know, you live in America, you might as well go as far as you can. Like Dale Murphy has in baseball, like you have in late night television, you might as well make as much out of your life as you possibly can. Do as much as you can. I mean, that's all I've tried to do.
Yeah. And you have all these varied interests, right?
Now, your father had a big influence on your life because I've read your biography and he passed away relatively young for a man. He had a great influence. Was it the discipline, the idea that you wanted to please him? I think you said in one of your...
Well, everybody who knows their father and is close to their father, their father has a big influence on them. My mother did too. So did my schools, my teachers, and just the whole American competitive free enterprise system and freedom. It all had a big influence on me.
Yeah. We're products of our environment. Now, you mentioned about network television. One of the things they quoted on 60 Minutes, you've said yourself you've made some statements sometimes rather outrageous. You had once said, now correct me if I get this out of context, you thought the presidents of the network should be shot for treason.
Well, I think... well, you want me to...
Sure, let's follow up on that.
Follow up on that because that 60 Minutes piece was edited, you know. You do that...
No, we don't edit now, whatever.
I know. Okay. Well, first of all, I think all the... I don't know how many tens of thousands of murders the average child sees on television before they enter the sixth grade, but it's literally tens of thousands of murders. And I think the dramatic rise in violent crime and just crime in general in our society in the last 20 years, I think the incidence of crime is up 400% in the last 20 years. And I've got to put the major blame on the violence on television and in the motion pictures because that's really the only thing that's changed. People are still the same as they were 20 years ago.
Yeah. But what evidence do you have to support that? The fact that the psychologists and the doctors, you know, it's... well, like I said, we're products of our environment.
When we were kids, I went to the movies on Saturday morning, one day a week. I saw Tom Mix and Lash LaRue shoot it up.
I like Buck Jones myself.
Right? For two hours, but it was only two hours a week. Now kids watch maybe two or three hours of television a day. The average kid does, which is unfortunate because parents should keep them from it, but you know, it's very hard to keep children away from it. And it's the massive amount of it that they see. And there are a lot of violent programs on during prime time on network television and a lot of kids see those shows. They shouldn't be seeing them in my opinion. It's too much murder, too much crime, too much sleaze. That's what I was basically talking about. I think it's been a very, very serious drag on our country and on our society and on our young people.
Yeah. But do you think Leave It to Beaver is...
MCA is producing a continuation of it. There's no question about that. Leave It to Beaver is a good show for children to see. Or The Brady Bunch or Andy Griffith. There's millions of them compared to say Miami Vice.
Yeah. Do you think Miami Vice is too violent?
That I tell you, I've never watched Miami Vice. Not one time.
Well, then how do you know it's too violent?
Oh, come on now, Ted. That's not fair.
Well, I don't know whether it's fair or not. I have three networks. You know, and I don't have time to watch the programming on my own networks. I want to make sure that my stuff is straight, but I have Bob Wussler, former president of CBS, working for me, and he watches them all. And I have my wife who watches them all. And I have my kids who are teenagers that watch it.
