Ted Turner dies aged 87: Billionaire founded CNN and was married to Jane Fonda

Ted Turner’s death at 87 closes a chapter that remade how the world witnesses history. He inherited a shaky billboard company after his father’s suicide and turned it, through audacity and risk, into a sprawling media empire. CNN, launched in 1980 and mocked as “Chicken Noodle News,” became indispensable during the Persian Gulf War, when its live coverage pulled an anxious planet around a single glowing screen. Turner’s vision didn’t stop there: TBS, TNT, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network all sprang from the same restless imagination.He was loud, impulsive, sometimes reckless, but also a philanthropist who gave billions to causes he believed might outlast him. His decade-long marriage to Jane Fonda fused Hollywood glamour with media power, even as it ultimately unraveled. Battling Lewy body dementia in his final years, Turner watched the industry he helped create fracture and multiply. Yet, as CNN’s chief said, he remains its “presiding spirit” — the risk-taker who proved that news, like life, never really goes off the air.