August 30, 2024 • 57 mins
Ted Turner revolutionized modern media, and his story is as riveting as it is inspirational. From a raw and candid Playboy interview where he opens up about love and violence to the tragic suicide of his father that set him on a relentless path to success, you'll learn about the man behind CNN. This episode lays bare the complexities of Turner's life, shedding light on his controversial views and the personal trials that shaped his unyielding drive.
We also explore the profound influence of paternal figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s father and Turner's own. See how these relationships helped mold their destinies, with Turner reviving his father's business through ingenious, sometimes audacious strategies. From acquiring a UHF TV station in Atlanta to leveraging unsold billboard inventory for promotion, Turner's innovative tactics in the early television market reveal the importance of seizing opportunities in emerging industries.
Ted Turner's entrepreneurial spirit didn't stop at television. His foresight in acquiring sports rights, like the Atlanta Braves' TV rights, and his bold moves in the realm of free agency in baseball were game-changers. Discover the intricate process of establishing the first satellite transmission for WTBS, marking the dawn of nationwide broadcasting. This episode captures Turner's indomitable spirit, highlighting his ability to navigate technological and competitive challenges to leave an indelible mark on the broadcasting landscape. Join us in celebrating the legacy of Ted Turner, a maverick who forever changed the media world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, everybody wants to be loved, right?
In fact, most criminals and sexperverts and weirdo creeps were
just rejected somewhere alongthe way.
Son of Sam, or whatever hisname is, couldn't get a girl, so
he went out and shot them.
People who are in love neverwant to hurt anybody.
You know that it's only hornypeople who shoot people.
(00:24):
If people get all the sex theycan handle, they're so happy and
content.
They just sit around and smile.
I mean, you never feelaggressive just after you got
laid right.
Lots of sex for everybody.
That's the solution to theworld's problems.
This was an excerpt from aninterview that Ted Turner did
(00:44):
withinct Like towns of Atlantaof old Swatch.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Tell you just how we speak.
Tell them both when you fromCozone.
What number is your policeprecinct?
Uh yeah, tell you just how wespeak, where you from, what
number is your police precinct?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Cozone what's going on y'all?
This is the atlanta formula.
I am zettler the fourth, gladto be back to this party.
Just recently, celebrated thebirthday, feeling tremendously
(01:42):
blessed.
And one time I've realized inmy time here on this earth space
time journey is that everymoment is ripe with new
opportunities.
There is no such thing asgetting older when you're always
refreshing.
You did so the other day.
I received an anthology book ofplayboy interviews entitled
(02:03):
movers and shakers.
And looking at the table ofcontents, lo and behold, there
were not one but two interviewswith Robert Edward Turner III.
One was printed, as I statedbefore, in August of 1978 and
the other in August of 1983.
And being that we are in Augustof 2024 now I just love when
the coinkidink come together of2024, now I just love when the
(02:27):
coink and dink come together.
Both of these interviews, y'all, were outstandingly absurd and
phenomenally telling 65 pages ofhim saying what seemed to be
whatever he wanted to say.
He came across with all thecharm, all the wit, all the
drive and all of the zany thatpeople have come to expect from
the creator of Cable NewsNetwork and Turner Studios and
(02:47):
TNT and Cartoon Network and manyother economy builders.
Truly one of a kind, and, as Isaid in that last episode, you
cannot talk about AtlantaWithout diving into the maverick
of the South of the South,alright, y'all.
(03:08):
So, at the risk ofoversimplifying the effect of
Ted and I'm going to refer tohim as Ted for the rest of this
interview because that's what hewanted to be called he has an
autobiography out called Call MeTed, and a hat tip to Founders
Podcast, david Sinterer.
He did an episode on this book.
I highly recommend you go checkit out.
(03:30):
I'm not going to go into thebook in depth like he did, but I
am going to go into specificchapters more in depth than he
did, like I said, I want to talkabout him acquiring the station
.
I want to talk about himacquiring the braids, I want to
talk about him rebranding and Idon't want to make this strictly
a chronological,autobiographical or biographical
(03:52):
account, right, because thereare certain little random bits
that I want to include in thisthat doesn't fit neatly into a
story, but hopefully it's goingto fit to y'all in a way that
makes sense.
First of all, he is the son ofRobert Edward Turner II, who was
an advertising magnate.
He was a millionaire and he wassuccessful, but he came up on
(04:13):
some hard times financially andhe kind of started to become.
You know, he came apart alittle bit toward the end of his
life.
He was gaining weight, startedsmoking a lot and he made a
business deal.
He sold off a lot of assets tohis company.
That left his son, ted Turner'sson.
So Ted was like in his 20s, Ithink he was like 23, 24.
(04:34):
And he sold his business, apart of his business, and his
son tried to talk him out of itand his dad said you know well,
no, no, well.
And then his son said hey, youtold me all my life about not
being a quitter, but here youare quitting.
So now this is a very importantpart of the story because what
happens next is going to shapethe rest of his life.
(04:55):
His dad, one morning he'sbreakfast, gets up, walks into
the restroom, walks into theshower and shoots into him,
walks into the shower and shootsinto him.
So now young Ted, 24 at thetime, loses his dad, who he
calls his best friend, and hehas to pick up the pieces.
(05:16):
So this thing about fathers,right.
Every time I read these storiesabout these successful people
and you read their father'sstory.
You always just come acrosswith the thought that the story
of the father plays out throughthe son.
The story of the son wasprecursored by the father.
(05:38):
I'm currently reading thisbiography on Dr Martin Luther
King Jr and it talks about hisdad, who they call Dad the King.
And you know his dad's journeyis amazing.
You know, native of Stockbridge.
You know, left for Atlanta as ateenager and was illiterate.
You know, hooked up with hiswife's father, who was a pastor
(06:01):
of Ebenezer Baptist Church andyou know, ended up marrying his
daughter.
His daughter was a highlyintelligent, only child of two
educated theologians and theybirthed three children, the
second being the one whoseholiday we celebrate every
(06:23):
January.
But Martin Luther King Jr doesnot.
I mean, it's the same thingwith Ted Turner, right you?
There's no way that you cantalk about Ted Turner without
going to the story of his father.
Same thing with Martin LutherKing Jr.
You know the father, you know,shaped this children's lives in
(06:44):
ways for good and ill sometimes.
And Ted talks about his dad alot in this book.
And you know he's a part of thetribe.
You know he became a part ofthe I'm missing my dad's tribe,
you know, at a very early age.
You know, a lot of people losetheir fathers earlier than that,
some a little later than that,you know.
But nevertheless, you know, heknow he, like I, chris rock, few
(07:08):
others right, we miss our dadsand he's no different.
But anyway he picks up thepieces and he tries to get his
father's business back.
And the guy whose dad made thatbad business deal which said
hey, you know I admire yourfather, you know I admire you,
but there's no way in the worldI'm backing out of this deal.
So what Ted ended up doing isfinding loopholes and fighting
(07:30):
and ends up acquiring a companyback through clever financing.
And that's just the story ofhow his career goes.
He always finds a way to getthese deals done in these
unconventional ways and do thesethings that a lot of business
advisors around him just look athim and shake his head about.
In fact, two of his closestadvisors who his dad knew they
(07:50):
left.
Ted was making these businessdeals that just didn't make
sense to people and two of themleft.
And while he said it hurt, healso realized that he had a
vision that couldn't be deterredfrom.
So, alright, he acquires thestation by the late 1960s.
Now I'm reading from his umautobiography, so let me
backtrack to the playboyinterviews that, um, I ordered I
(08:15):
read those before I got thisbook.
I read these interviews I said,wow, I gotta get this book now.
So, uh, amazon ordered it, cameto my house in a couple days,
shot the prime and, um, I readthrough these three sections and
it's about 90 pages total, kindof like what I'm going to go
through a little bit.
I'm not going to go throughlike 90 pages of work, but I am
going to condense it tosomething that we can all
(08:38):
understand through this podcastbecause, you know, I really
recommend you read the bookbecause, like it's like a book
in a movie.
The book always contains thingsand I ain't going to be able to
tell you all the stuff in thebook, but nevertheless, all
right here.
By the late 1960s we owned fiveradio stations, but I was
frustrated to be based inAtlanta and not have one there.
I looked around but it wasclear that there weren't going
to be any 24-hour stations forsale anytime soon.
(08:58):
So you know about that time.
Later on he noticed an ad onone of these billboards for a
UHF TV station called WJRJChannel 17.
He wasn't following thebusiness much back then, but you
know, because he didn't evenwatch TV.
He said and UHF stands forultra high frequency.
This was something that youknow most people couldn't see
(09:22):
because the antennas couldn'treceive it.
All right, so, but the businessintrigued them, no, and the VHF
stations the very highfrequencies.
So you had ultra high frequencyand very high frequency.
Those VHF stations in Atlantawere all strong network
affiliates that were probablyworth more than his entire
company, right.
But since the VHF stations wereso strong because they split the
(09:42):
market three ways, he figuredhe might be able to get his
hands on the UHF competitor at aprice he could afford.
So here it is.
He's a business owner.
He's looking for something hecan bring in at cost so that he
can even start to makeinterroads to building his
empire, right, building hisbusiness.
So he asked around town andrealized that this station was
not doing well, right, and theymight be for sale.
(10:05):
And the did get in.
The TV business was exciting,he said, and he wanted to bet on
a medium that looked like itwould grow.
So that's another thing too,for the entrepreneurs who are
listening, that you know youwant to get into an industry
that is going to grow.
You don't want to get into asaturated industry.
Radio was not growing at thattime.
You don't want to get into asaturated industry.
(10:26):
Radio was not growing at thattime.
No, the radio industry wassaturated, but TV was.
Tv is a relatively new mediumas far as advertisers were
concerned.
Businesses weren't.
They had not realized how to, Iguess, maximally make money
through it.
Yet through creativeprogramming, through creative
like.
It was all very much new, itwas in its infancy.
It was all very much new, itwas in its infancy.
So he said Chyna 17 was owned byRice Broadcasting, but the
(10:48):
station was bleeding cash.
And he realized that.
You know, he found another way.
On an average month about 50%of his billboard inventory went
unsold.
So with signs all over Atlantaquote I could put the unsold
ones to use promoting ourstation, just as we had done to
(11:09):
promote our radio station.
The more I studied this deal,the more I wanted to do it All
right.
So he went and tried to buy itand they said hey, all right,
look, we'll give you the station, but it's for $2.5 million and
(11:32):
the rest of the time his companywas probably worth about $7.5
million.
So $2.5 million, $7.5 million,that would be a big deal.
That's significant.
There's no way we could paycash, he said.
So we negotiated a stock swapthat would leave me as the
largest single owner in thecombined company but would drop
my percentage ownership to about47%.
(11:53):
My board of directors continuedto raise objections, but they
knew I had voting control of thestock and in the end my
enthusiasm wore them down.
Enthusiasm, that's another bigthing.
Steve Jobs Not Sergey Brin,larry Page, those Google but
Jeff Bezos those are men who areknown for enthusiasm and
(12:16):
putting across their ideas.
Enthusiasm, passion, passion,passion.
You can't substitute it.
And according to this book andaccording to those Playboy
interviews, he had that inspades.
He just knew how to conjure upemotion when it came to
communicating with people.
So he ended up getting theboys' blessing and the deal
ended up getting done.
It took some time because theyhad to go through some legal
(12:37):
things, but he ended up gettingit in January of 1970.
As soon as they got it, theychanged his call letters to WTCG
for Turner Communications Group.
I had a lot to learn about theTV industry, so I dove in
headfirst.
I bought a couple books aboutthe industry and subscribed to
(13:00):
TV trade journals, and that'sanother thing in his life too.
Of course, I'm not going totell you that, but he was a
voracious reader.
This is a key theme, you know.
It is what it is.
If y'all hear, my voice.
I'm going to say something aboutreading Because that's just I
know how important it is.
If y'all hear my voice, I'mgoing to say something about
reading Because that's just Iknow how important it is for me,
and everywhere I read aboutthese people who do these
(13:20):
wonderful things, they all,without exception, were
voracious readers, alright,unfortunately, the more I
learned about TV stations, themore I realized that ours was a
disaster.
So he acquired this company andthey were just a mess.
Most of the 35 employeesinherited were either lazy on
drugs or both.
The terrible work ethic startedat the top.
(13:42):
He ended up firing everybodybut two people a year later.
A year later, there was onlytwo people there who was there
when he bought it the custodianand the receptionist.
Our shows were weak, so Idecided to make programming my
top priority, and this is wherehe got real clever.
See I remember those TV guysthey had, like you know, 6.30 to
(14:03):
7.00, this show came on.
7.00 to 7.30, this show came on.
But Turner realized that, hey,why don't I start my show five
minutes after, so that when theother shows end and people are
flipping the channel, they'llpass my channel and we'll
already have, we'll have, a showplaying Right.
And that increased viewershipsignificantly.
(14:23):
So he would start his shows at635 and at 705, you know, 705 to
735.
I remember seeing that back inthe day but not understanding
why.
But I know now and nobody elsewas doing that.
So that's another thing, thatability to not care about what
was conventional at the time butto go forward with what he
(14:44):
thought would be advantageous togrowing his business.
I made a lot of programdecisions.
I look around to see whatcompetitions are running and I
figure out whose tastes aren'tbeing met and provide them with
an alternative From watching thecompetition.
I believe that most of what thenetworks were airing was
garbage, full of gratuitousviolence, sex and stupidity.
(15:07):
Knowing how quickly TVviewership was growing, it
troubled me to see how much junkpeople were watching.
Alright, so after six months,until our ownership of WTCG you
know, bankrupt UHF station andCharlotte went on the market, I
skipped that part.
Basically, he ends up acquiringthat Charlotte station in
Charlotte, which you know.
That's what set in place isthat close friend of my dad who
(15:32):
served on the board, and, afterdoing everything he could to
keep me from buying the Atlantastation, the Charlotte deal was
the last straw he resigned fromthe board.
Not long after he left, anotherguy who was running the company
day to day decided he had hadenough too, and he resigned as
well.
These were big blows, given allwe had in front of us, but I've
always considered myself to begood to to be a good, open field
(15:55):
runner, and I was moredetermined than ever to make it
work.
So and these next few pages area testament to how relentless he
was about recruiting talentright and this is another
commonality we see in thesetitans and founders they just
were ceaseless in their effortto getting the best talent
(16:17):
possible.
You know, rockefeller was saidto have hired people based off
sight, not on need.
So it wasn't as if he saidstandard oil, we need six people
in this position.
He said, no, we're going to.
If I see somebody that'sextremely talented, I'm just
going to get them.
I'm just going to get them.
I'm just going to get them.
I'm just going to get them.
I'm just going to get them.
I'm just going to get them.
I'm just going to stockpiletalent.
(16:37):
And Ted Turner was no different.
So he would talk to people andresearchers and pick their
brains and then say, hey, whydon't you come work for me, why
don't you come work for me?
And he was able to bring themover through his enthusiasm,
through his passion, because youknow, you work for me.
You're not working to makemoney, we work for purpose.
Right, we're building somethinghere.
We're building something we'redifferent.
(16:58):
We're building a station herethat nobody else is showing.
We have a vision and when thispays off, you're going to be
leading for a missionary-likecause, as opposed to being a
mercenary for a check.
I think what Jeff Bezos said youwant to hire missionaries, not
mercenaries.
You can say it's a con thingthat business people do to get
(17:21):
people on their side.
Or you can just say that, hey,they realize that to get
people's total buy-in, you gotto get more than just their
skills, their talents.
You got to get their hearts.
You got to get their sustainedeffort, because we ask you to
put in hours we ask you to putin, push yourself beyond what
you would push if you had notmet me.
(17:42):
So you've got to have somethingelse that you're working for,
so that when you're tired you'renot thinking, ah, you're
thinking, all right, it's apurpose, it's something to be on
the other side that we can getfrom this extra effort, all
right.
So he talks about how he, youknow, went about building his
television stations.
(18:03):
He got the Andy Griffith show,which ended up being a huge hit
for TBS.
He talks about how his firstyear under ownership the
stations lost about $2 milliontotal but made a significant
progress.
Then something happened thatwas real fortuitous for him.
Out of the blue, watl went offthe air.
(18:24):
One other competitor in Atlantamarket was WATL, but they ended
up getting off the air becausethey was losing money, just like
that.
They were the only station intown.
They were the only independentstation bidding on syndicated
programming rights for Atlanta,just that virgin territory thing
.
I think Warren Buffett orCharlie Munger, one of them,
(18:45):
said something to the extent ofyou don't want, a key part to
your success is low competition.
You don't want to go where thecompetition is.
You want to find a market, agroup of people whose needs
aren't being met go there andthat seems so obvious, but it's
not common in actuality, becausea lot of people go to where
(19:09):
it's popping right.
Very few people want to go andbuild something, because that
takes effort, that takes capital, that takes time and it's much
easier to jump on a rising stockthan to buy a stock low and
wait it out for a certain timeperiod.
When you're looking to makemoney now, who has?
(19:31):
Because you know who has timeto sit and wait for, you know,
for dollars to come in.
We got expenses.
So it takes a certain kind offoresight.
It takes a certain kind ofpatience.
It also takes you know, ittakes knowledge Right If you, if
you are reading and researchingdifferent areas, different
(19:53):
areas, you realize that that isthe way of things.
To get wealthy in this country,in this world, you have to start
something or invest insomething very early.
There is no other way toachieve wealth in this country,
in this world.
You've got to create somethingand build it, build a market, or
(20:18):
you need to invest in somethingelse very early.
It's amazing how much this isforgotten.
So, through ingenuity, throughhustling, through getting on the
phone, ted Turner builds andbuilds, and builds and then you
(20:39):
know he would do things like youknow.
He would test big networks, youknow, not caring about
litigation, not caring about youknow the legality of things.
So he talks about a story abouthow, you know, the big three
networks made money by sellingnational ads that ran across
their stations.
They wanted this programming toair on as many affiliates as
(21:00):
possible to deliver coveragenationwide to a large audience.
But because of conflictingprogramming commitments,
especially with locally producedshows like pro sports,
affiliated stations wouldsometimes preempt national
programming, costing networkcoverage in that market.
So once I learned this, he said, I got an idea.
I decided to call the networkpeople in New York and offer to
(21:22):
air their shows on channel 17Whenever they were preempted by
their Atlanta affiliate.
It took me a while to trackdown the right people but when I
did they said yes, theypreferred to have their
affiliate clear their shows.
But we were better than nothing.
When we reached the point ofhaving four preempted nbc shows
running in our daytime lineup, Ihad our people put up the
(21:43):
billboard saying the nbc networkmoved to channel 17 in really
big letters.
The owners of the nbc CoxBroadcasting threatened a
lawsuit and our attorney advisedme to have them taken down.
Meanwhile, the controversy wasmentioned in Cox's own Atlanta
(22:03):
Journal-Constitution newspaperand we got some free publicity
out of it.
That is brilliant, y'all.
The Atlanta ABC station carriedthe Hawks' basketball games so
that during the NBA season theyhad a bunch of preemptions in
the primetime.
This gave me the sameopportunity I had with NBC, and
ABC's executives were more thanhappy to have us clear Atlanta
for them.
We even got to air the 1971premiere of Brian's song.
(22:26):
So this movie had an abilitywith James Caan.
You know it's a teaser.
It's a real teaser.
It's one of the classic movies.
It was one of the biggestmade-for-TV movies of its time.
Y'all, this is brilliant.
That's one of those.
You know we all ask forforgiveness.
We're not asking for permission.
Ted Turner is the ultimateask-for-forgiveness, not
permission, guy.
(22:46):
Alright, so he's growing hisstation, and then he says this I
knew we needed sports to reallyjump to the next level.
I'd already taken professionalwrestling From the ABC station
(23:07):
and while these shows did well,getting big league rights Would
really put us on the map.
The Atlanta Braves wererelatively new in town, having
moved from Milwaukee in 1966.
We talked about this lastepisode.
Go listen to it.
Shout out to the late HenryAaron.
But the Braves were popular, hesaid.
If we could somehow get theBraves on our station it would
be a huge coup.
(23:28):
Not only would our ratings goup, but also we figured that
many Atlantans who didn't havethese UHF antennas will buy one
just so they can see the Bravesgames.
With more of these antennas inplace, the potential audience
for all of our shows will growautomatically.
It was widely known that theBraves had lost money since
moving to Atlanta Some said asmuch as one mil a year and as a
(23:50):
result I was confident that anoffer of more money for their TV
rights would at least get theirattention.
Wsb was paying the Braves$200,000 per year for the right
to show 20 away games.
Back then many teams hesitatedto put too many games on TV,
particularly the home games,fearing that this exposure would
hurt ticket sales.
Because it was so bad.
I say she was turning thecorner for profitability and I
(24:11):
was willing to pay for an assetas valuable as rights to a major
sport.
I called Bill Bartholomew, thelate Bill Bartholomew, who led
the group that purchased theMilwaukee Braves and moved them
to Atlanta.
He lived in Chicago and wasalso a seller, so we knew some
of the same people, had a lot incommon.
From our mutual friends I alsolearned that he was a
trustworthy stand-up guy.
(24:32):
I met with Bill and said wewould offer the Braves $600,000
per year three times WSB's feesIn return.
We wanted 60 games instead of20.
All right, so while they'retalking he realized something
else Given the team's broadrelationship with Cox
Communications CoxCommunications owned the Braves'
(24:53):
flagship radio station.
In addition to theirlanguage-owned constitution, the
paper the Braves counted on forextensive and hopefully
positive coverage of the team,bill felt the right thing to do
was to give them a courtesy callbefore they had heard about
this deal secondhand.
All right, so they make a deal.
The Cox people obviously werefurious, right, they said this
dude Ted's a nut and thisstation is a Mickey Mouse
station and you better not dothis deal.
(25:14):
But he ended up doing a dealbecause, you know, bill came
back to Ted and said, hey man,they don't like this deal, can
we back out?
But Ted said, hey man, youalready said you would do it.
Ain't you a man of your word?
And Bill was like, yeah, I'm aman of my word.
And they did the deal and thecompany was up and running.
Ted goes.
The Braves were a huge shot inthe arm for us.
Ratings for the games werestrong and our ad sale teams had
(25:35):
solid success selling them.
He talks about how bad theBraves were when he bought them.
The Braves in the early 70swere pretty bad, but after
posting consecutive losingrecords our first two seasons
carrying the game, 72 and 73,they started turning things
around in 74.
So he hadn't got a team yetright, but he had gotten the
Braves contract.
(25:56):
He'd gotten the right to showadvertising in Braves games and
he's building a relationshipwith the Braves.
He wouldn't buy the Braves foranother.
Let's see when did he get withthe Braves as an ad guy?
He got with them in 1973.
1971.
(26:17):
1971.
1973, 1971, 1971.
He wasn't about to braze until1976.
How?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
was that Really you think so?
Yeah, it was a great parade.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Alright, you ready to hit?
Yeah, come on my girl.
Yeah, it was a race.
It was a race, all right, youready to hit?
Yeah, come on my girl.
So Ted calls the Braves,locking in with them, allowing
them advertising a huge shot inthe arm.
(26:52):
Ratings for the games werepretty strong.
It went up.
They started losing less moneyto the point where they actually
started making money.
So then he starts talking abouthow the Braves were when he
first got sinked in with them.
On the advertising tip he saidyou know, as helpful as the
Braves were, we'd have beenbetter off if the team had won
(27:14):
more games.
Advertisers like beingassociated with the Major League
franchise, but they prefer thatteam to be a winner.
The Braves of the early 1970swere pretty bad but after
posting consecutive losingrecords, our first two seasons,
carrying games 72 and 73, theystarted turning things around in
74.
72 and 73, they started turningthings around in 74.
As you know, in 74, that waswhen the mighty Henry Aaron, you
(27:39):
know, showed up.
All the haters and want to bekillers and did his thing and
you know he talks about that, ofcourse and that team won 88
games for the season and hecalls Atlanta being really
excited about baseball.
Nearly a million fans went tothe ballpark and our ratings
(28:01):
improved.
But the team did a total 180degree reversal in 1975.
They traded Hank Aaron toMilwaukee the very season he
broke Baybrook's record, lost 94games and saw their attendance
drop almost in half.
Lost 94 games and saw theirattendance drop almost in half.
He went to those Fulton CountyStadium games and he talked
about how there were barely 600people in the stands at times.
(28:22):
The Braves were losing and itwas obvious their fans weren't
the only ones who packed it in.
The players had too.
The whole experience wasdepressing.
He talks about that and he saysyou know what?
I'm going to go up and see theteam president.
So he goes up to the teampresident and say hey, look, I
consider us to be partners andwe need to add more excitement
(28:43):
next year.
What are we going to do to getthe team on track?
Team president at the time DanDonahue, you know, looked at him
and said well, I don't knowwhat you're going to do next
year, but I know what we'regoing to do we're selling the
team.
He said what?
And this is the beginning ofhow Ted Turner acquired the
Braves.
So he says to him hey, youcan't sell the team.
(29:05):
The Braves mean a lot to mybusiness.
You're not selling this team,so who are you going to sell it
to?
Donahue said you, me, me.
So then he goes on to talk abouthow his dad Taught him early in
life that long termrelationships, when your
customers and partners Areimportant, because you just
never Know Down the line howthey're going to help you the
(29:25):
guy who you're Friendly withtoday might be able to help you
out Tomorrow.
My dad said that too, and he'sright.
Dads are right Sometimes.
For the past few years Ted saysI demonstrated to Braves
management that the team wasimportant to me and now they
were offering me first lookchance to buy the franchise.
So he goes talks to him.
He says how much you gonna sellthem to me for?
(29:47):
They say $10 million, $10million.
So for a business that waslosing $1 million a year, $10
million is out the question.
So he said I can't lose thisteam.
I'm sorry.
We can't allow this team tomove out of Atlanta.
So we got to find a way to getthis team and he realized that
he had to come up with somecreative financing way to do it,
(30:08):
and that ended up happening.
He ended up getting a team foryou know, he put $1 million down
and then assumed $9.65 milliondebt and lo and behold, well,
they were halfway home.
They had to get the sign off onthe Major League Baseball
owners.
Ted wasn't a typical owner atthe time.
Right, and as we go seethroughout the chapter, he says
(30:29):
I think I was the first personto try to buy a team with less
than 100% cash.
Some were also concerned aboutmy ultimate intentions on the TV
side of things.
I would just be the secondowner who controlled both the
team and its broadcast stationand I had made a few comments
about distributing WTCG on cableoutside Atlanta.
(30:50):
Some owners worried about whatthis might mean in terms of TV
competition in their homemarkets.
But the Braves were such a badteam in a relatively small
southern city I didn't thinkmany of them saw me as a threat.
So he goes into full hustlemode and calls people and gets
vouchers for him being the ownerand they end up signing off on
(31:11):
on him and he became the ownerin January of 76.
So now everybody's thrilled.
However, there's one problemTed didn't know the difference
between a bulk and an infieldfly.
He didn't know anything aboutbaseball, so he had some
research to do.
And it gets interesting righthere because later on in this
(31:34):
chapter, terry McG mcgirt, whoended up being, you know, a high
ranking um executive in thebraves organization.
He talks about how, for springtraining, he was sent with the
team to be a quote-unquoteplayer invite.
But his real intention therewas to see what was going on
(31:56):
with the team and get some intel.
And I read this and to me thatsounded too much like snitching
Right For all the good and forall the heroic endeavors that
our boy Ted has done.
I mean, come on now, right?
So McGurk talks about how hewent through it and you know,
(32:17):
finally, I think like the lastday or something like that, he
came clean with other playersand coaches and let them know
that he was heading back to hisreal job in Atlanta and what he
was there for.
He said they had some goodlaughs over the whole thing and
they went out for dinner and youknow he made it sound like it
was all ha-ha, all's well, thatends well.
But I got to imagine, right, ifsomebody in my squad in the
(32:39):
locker room with me and they'rereporting back to the boss, but
it did not seem to affect theplayer's attitude towards Ted
Turner.
From all reports it seemed tolike them, seemed to love them,
and you know, because he didthings like you know jump over
the railing when the team hitthe home run.
He said he talked about how hisfirst game as an owner, I think
(33:00):
and somebody hit a home run andhe jumped over the rail and
zapped the plate, you knowcelebrating with them.
Of course he heard soon afterthat hey, that's not cool.
The commissioner of baseballhit him up and said hey, you
know that's not cool.
Commissioner baseball hit himup and said hey, you know,
that's that's not cool, you knowso he would do things like that
.
But you know so Ted was justoff the wall guy, you know that
that was.
(33:20):
You know that was him.
It's somewhere in his bookwhere he was doing a pitch to
somebody and they said that atone point he jumped on the table
and In another pitch meeting hewas on all fours.
He was just that excitable.
His energy was not repressible.
So he's with the Braves.
(33:42):
He's learning about the Braves.
He realized they suck.
He realized that they had toget some talent.
And this is around the timewhere free agency starts to
become involved.
Shout out to Kurt Flood, whowas the first to buck the system
and got his career endedbecause of such.
But after he bust down the doors, there was two players, I
(34:04):
believe, that ended up being thebreakthrough players that the
Supreme Court said that you knowwhat free agency is allowed in
baseball.
One of them was this guy namedAndy Messerschmitt.
So Ted Turner ends upoutbidding the Yankees to
acquire him, and then he getswith somebody else and he says,
(34:26):
hey, the owner of the Giants.
He's had a cocktail party withthe owner of the Giants and
other owners too, and he startstalking saying, hey, you know,
I'm going to outbid you for oneof your players.
I'm going to outbid you and I'mgoing to win.
And he ended up signing theplayer, but that's a big no-no
in sports because they call thattampering and result resultedly
(34:51):
, he ended up becoming the firstowner, I believe Well, not the
owner of his first owner, but Idon't know he may have been the
first owner who got suspendedfor a year by Major League
Baseball.
I know George Steinbrennerended up getting suspended later
on and you know, some otherowners might have gotten hot
water for things they said, buthe got suspended for tampering
and right after he got suspendedfor tampering he acquires the
(35:14):
Hawks for the same reason thathe acquires the Braves.
They were about to leave townand he was able to, you know,
work out a deal with Tom Cousins, you know real estate magnate
of Atlanta, and he was able toacquire two professional Atlanta
sports at the same time.
(35:35):
Then I want to end this bit onhis rebranding of channel 17.
So I talked about how he youknow the company that the
station was, wtcg.
He acronymed it, calling itwatch this channel grow and they
were making money and with them, making more money over the
years he was more confident everthat television was quote where
(35:55):
I wanted to be.
But even as we moved out of thered I was concerned that our
options for meaningful growthwere limited.
In the mid-70s, channel 17 wasthe only independent station in
a major southeastern marketoutside of Florida and the
Braves were the only majorleague baseball franchise in the
region.
I knew that our programmingwould be of interest to viewers
(36:17):
outside of Atlanta.
I also saw that in places likeAlbany and Macon, georgia,
people were signing up for a newservice to get local stations.
They were unable to tune inwith their antenna and or a
better picture for stations theywere already receiving.
This technology was oftenreferred to as CATV for
community antenna television or,more simply, cable TV.
(36:41):
I concluded that our next bigopportunity would be to push
WTCG's distribution beyondAtlanta to become an independent
station that serve the entiresoutheast, and we would use
cable to get us there.
So then he goes on this.
(37:02):
Okay, listen, there's no reasonwhy I can't get this station
across the nation using thisantenna.
And he does what he does best.
He researches, he goes to hisfirst National Cable Television
Association meeting.
He learns about experimentsundertaken by broadcasters and
cable operators to use microwavetechnology to relay signals
from broadcast towers to thecable plant.
I'm not going to even flex likeI really understand this.
(37:22):
But here's the most importantpart the hustle.
He came across this guy namedDon Anderson.
He was a researcher for theNational Cable Television
Association.
He found out researcher for theNational Cable Television
Association and he mined Dunn'smind and he found out that these
(37:45):
new technologies offer a lot ofpromise for aggressive
independent broadcasters.
So he realized he needed Dunn'sexpertise.
He hired him and put him incharge of figuring out how he
could move microwave technologyto expand his territory and
market our service to the youngcable industry.
So he goes forward.
He does, you know, goes tothese conferences, he reads
these books.
He comes across these people,right, and, you know, aggressive
(38:09):
.
But he comes with a roadblock.
Guess what the roadblock is?
Roadblock, guess what theroadblock is.
It's no different for folks onthe corner selling drugs who got
a market on it, or apharmaceutical industry selling
a product and somebody elsecoming to the market hey, you on
my turf, you can't get on turf.
So he faced a lot of resistancefrom the big three stations.
He faced resistance from otherteams because now he's
(38:32):
threatening to put the Braves inareas where you have a
Cincinnati or you have a Chicagoor you have a Boston.
It's like what are you doing?
This is our territory.
Nobody had ever done thisbefore.
This is like a baby coming intoan industry, but he's not
acting like a baby.
He's not acting like a babybecause one, he's prepared, he's
(38:54):
researching, he's constantlyresearching, he has more energy
than you and he knows how totalk to people, so he's not
acting like a baby.
He's not acting like a babybecause one he's prepared, he's
researching, he's constantlyresearching.
He has more energy than you,right, and he knows how to talk
to people.
So he's working the phones,he's researching.
He realized he comes across howthis thing called Home Box
Office, hbo he talks about thatin this chapter and I'm reading
the section of.
He says a relative, a relativelynew pay-per-view channel, was
planning to start distributingtheir signal via satellite and
(39:18):
that Western Union would betheir distributor.
I called Western Union'smarketing director and set up a
meeting at his office in NewJersey.
They sent a car to pick me upat Newark Airport and it was
clear that they wanted mybusiness.
Shortly into the meeting, Iunderstood why.
Not only was HBO their onlyother television client, their
deal was short-term and as soonas RCA launched their satellite,
(39:39):
hbo planned to switch over tothem.
I learned a lot from thismeeting.
The guy who he met themarketing director's name was Ed
Taylor.
I learned a lot from Ed duringthat visit and, unfortunately
for Western Union, I wasconvinced that we had to be on
the same satellite as hbo as hboat the time, satellite
receiving antennas cost cableoperators about 100 000 a piece,
(40:01):
but if I teamed up with hbothey'd get two channels for the
price of one.
Creative thinking right.
So I decided to try tocoordinate efforts with the head
of hbo, a guy named jerry levin.
I met jerry once before andshortly after he's going for
work for time warn, warner, timeInc.
Hbo's owner.
In the past few years sincethen he has become passionate
advocate for satellitedistribution.
So this is like early adopterguys, guys who kind of
(40:24):
understood what things weregoing before.
Many others didn't.
And when you have that kind ofadvantage, this cerebral
cognitive advantage in any fieldyou're going to have, you're
going to, you're going to beable to do things.
Cerebral cognitive advantage inany field, you're going to be
able to do things.
You're going to be able to getthat first money right, that
initial seed money that nobody'seven thinking about getting,
because you know they have theintel, they have the creativity
(40:50):
and you know just the huevos I'msorry to my Latin brothers and
sisters if I'm pronouncing thatwrong Huevos, that's what I
think it's pronounced.
Anyway, you know what I'msaying.
You got to have them things tobe able to be a first mover in
the industry.
(41:11):
So he talks about talking topeople and then he gets to this
sticky situation so I'm going tostart here.
Sticky situation, so I'm gonnastart here.
So he goes to negotiate a dealwith with rca and realized there
was one big problem before youcould distribute a channel via
satellite, you had to get yoursignal up to the satellite in
the first place, and to do thisrequired the use of a send
station or uplink at thesignal's origination point.
(41:33):
So again, I again I'm not goingto flex like I truly understand
this but basically they'resaying look, you can't just walk
through this market.
You got to get a third-partysignal up to the satellite and
that costs money.
He said how much it costs about750 racks.
So I asked him him talking ifthere was anyone in Georgia who
(41:54):
could build one for me.
And they suggested I contact acompany named Scientific Atlanta
.
Now Scientific Atlanta y'allwas, I believe, a company built
by Georgia's tech students andthey had a bit of a reputation
but it was kind ofunderground-like.
But the people in the industryknew them and they recommended
(42:16):
them to him.
So by now I was determined tomake this work and I quickly set
up a meeting with Sidney Topoland this is a theme in this book
too.
He's always talking about assoon as he gets a hunch or as
soon as he gets information,intel about something, he's
setting it up right then.
He's setting it up right then.
And I read something recently,and I've always heard in my life
throughout that the more thatyou reduce the gap from idea to
(42:40):
execution, the more likely thatexecution will be favorable for
you.
And this book is a proof ofthat, because I've heard it at
least eight times in his book.
He said, hey, I got informationand I quickly set up a meeting.
I think he used quickly atleast 20 times in his book.
(43:00):
All right, so anyway, he set upa meeting with Sidney Topol, the
CEO.
He said that while theyexpected satellite technology to
be a big part of their business, they had yet to build an
uplink.
I asked him how much he thoughtthis would cause.
He said he would have to dosome research and get back to me
.
I like Topol and I trusted him,so I told him that if he
offered me a reasonable priceI'd do the deal with him.
(43:23):
I can't exactly remember whatprice he came back with, but it
seemed okay and we reached anagreement.
We bought a small piece ofproperty in a remote area on
Atlanta's northwest perimeterthat would serve as our site and
the scientific Atlanta.
People got to work.
So go, they do that.
The uplink is completed and thenanother problem comes.
My lawyers explained to me thatthe FCC had rules against
(43:43):
broadcasters sending their ownsignal outside their broadcast
house footprint.
Microwave distribution passedmuster because the cable
operators owned the relays, butin the case of satellite
distribution our company wasn'tallowed to own the uplink or the
lease for the satellitetransponder.
Again, listen, I'm learningsomething new too.
A third party is the mostimportant part.
(44:06):
A third party or common carrierwould be required.
We looked at different scenarios, like putting the uplink
company in my wife's name, mychildren's name, but the lawyers
made it clear that thedistributor had to be completely
independent from thebroadcaster.
I had to find someone to run anindependent satellite uplink
company.
So I called the first person Imet in the satellite business,
(44:26):
western Union's Ed Taylor.
I explained to Ed that I needto set up an independent company
to carry the TBS signal andasked him if he would leave
Western Union to own and run ourcomic carrier.
So with that he got more talent.
He always had a knack of findingpeople who knew exactly what
they were doing.
(44:46):
Steve Jobs would call thathiring A players.
That's a talent, that's a truetalent, to be able to recruit
the best and not only spot thebest, but be able to talk to
them and convince them to comebe with you.
You know, I got a cousin whoowns a very successful business
(45:07):
and we were talking and hetalked to me about how he was
able to plug people from othercompanies.
Not because you because, hey,we ought to pay you the most, or
we just got it all lavish overhere.
He was able to get them becauseof this messianic sense of
purpose that his businessoffered that other businesses
didn't.
While you may be making lessfor me now, you're going to be
(45:30):
working for a passionate group.
You're going to be workingtoward a purpose and it's going
to mean something.
Ted was like that.
He was able to get people basedoff.
Hey, this is where we are now,but we're going to be here Like
it's going to happen.
And this is why it's going tohappen, because I've talked to
so many people and this is amedium that nobody's really on
to yet, but I am.
(45:51):
I am and people you know, theybought it right.
So anyway, they end up goingthrough this process and they
ended up getting the satelliteup.
(46:12):
The first satellite transmissionof WTCG Watch, this Channel
Grow, occurred on December 17,1976, months before someone in
our promotions department hadcome up with the idea of calling
the local station Super 17.
I liked that a lot, but once wewere beaming the signal off the
satellite, I thought we neededsomething more.
I was playing around with theword super and when it just came
(46:33):
to me Super Station, the namehad a great ring to it and would
convey to people exactly whatit was.
I also decided to change thestation's call letters, since we
had moved into the broadcastmedia.
We changed our corporate nameto turn on broadcasting system
inc.
And I decided to convert towtbs, which is the station which
I saw growing up.
This is me talking Zettler IV.
(46:55):
I saw WTBS on the screen allthe time.
I had no idea what went into it, because I'm a child and these
things like that wasn't thatimportant to me to research.
But I read this now and I'mjust I'm like, wow, okay, so now
that we were competing on anational level.
I also like that TBS soundedlike CBS and we were soon
(47:18):
referring to the channel asSuperstation TBS.
So once it became clear thatTurner Ted you know he's about
it, he's serious he startedgetting national distribution
for a local station, which hadnever happened before National
(47:39):
distribution for a local stationthat was losing money.
Six years prior we ran intoproblems with our program
suppliers.
Our syndication deals withHollywood gave us rights in
Atlanta market only, and so Idon't know if I discussed this.
But when he bought the stationhe bought a whole bunch of movie
(47:59):
rights and started playing oldmovies on his station.
So syndication did whatHollywood gave us rights in
Atlanta market only.
When they expanded beyond that,it kind of got to this legal
thing.
Like I said earlier, you're onour turf now and it's not like
he did anything wrong per se.
(48:19):
He just pissed off the wrongpeople.
Pushing farther into theSoutheast via microwave didn't
seem to bother them, but goingnational on the satellite
certainly got their attention.
As for the Braves, major LeagueBaseball knew when I bought the
team that I had beenconsidering broader distribution
, but I don't think they thoughtit would really ever happen.
(48:42):
It was one thing for Bravesgames to be beamed to places
like Montana or New Mexico wherea competing franchise didn't
exist.
It's quite another to go into aMajor League market like
Detroit or St Louis and competefor viewers against their home
marketing.
He said I'm going to come intoyour turf.
I'm going to come into yourturf.
What you going to do about it?
(49:02):
We will also carry Atlanta hostgames at this point, and the
NBA raised similar concerns.
Local broadcasters also linedup in opposition to us, claiming
that the Superstation violatedestablished rules about the
redistribution of the local TVsignals.
So now you got this kind ofcollusion cartel thing going on.
Alright, y'all, we gotta getthis little man out of here.
(49:22):
Right Now.
He's becoming a nuisance, andthat's what's happening right
here.
They claim that since theSuperstation beamed into their
territory with shows that theyhad licensed for that market, we
were violating their rights toexclusivity.
In a short period of time, wemanaged to alienate Hollywood,
the sports leagues, thebroadcast networks and local
(49:43):
stations all over the country.
Each one of these groups hadbig time lobbying presence in
Washington and, with the FCC andCongress ultimately presiding,
washington became a primarybattlefront and I started
spending a lot of time there.
I participated in numeroushearings and tried to be on a
first name basis with as manyinfluential politicians as
(50:04):
possible.
You know he talked about hisearly training as a debater.
He was a debate champion inschool growing up and talked
about how that served him wellin his congressional hearings
and his strategy was to go onthe offense.
If there are any real thieveshere, he says in the hearing one
time, it's ABC, nbc, cbs.
(50:26):
They're the ones who convincedthe government to hand over
incredibly valuable VHF licensesall over the country completely
free of charge.
They've used the publicairwaves to make a fortune and
never once paid a dime for thatright.
I'd go on to argue that no onewould ever dream of letting a
paper company cut timber onfederal land or an oil company
drill offshore without puttingthose rights up for bid.
(50:48):
So why should TV companies getthese rights for nothing?
A free license might have madesense in the beginning, when the
business was just gettingstarted.
But what about now, when thesebroadcasters were making
millions?
Right?
When these licenses come up forrenewal every three years, why
not put them up for bid?
So you know?
He argues that.
You know it's a monopoly, it'slike a small group monopoly,
(51:11):
oligopoly, right, it's notAmerican.
This is not American.
This is supposed to be the landof opportunity, but what you're
doing is patently anti-American.
When it came to the sportsleagues, I painted a picture
that the owners basically sataround a table a long time ago
and said okay, I'll take NewYork, you get St Louis, and the
(51:33):
guy over here gets Chicago.
They colluded to create localmonopolies.
I said, and I thought that oneof the roles of government was
to regulate monopolies.
And he goes on and uses ananalogy.
I asked legislators to imaginea world where the heads of Ford,
gm and Chrysler sat down andthe Ford guy says I get
everything east of theMississippi.
(51:53):
General Motors, you get west ofMississippi.
Chrysler, you can have thestate of Michigan.
If we agree to this, weeliminate competition and we can
charge $10,000 for a carinstead of $2,000 and we'll make
a lot more money.
Baseball Commissioner Boy Coontried to counter by saying that
the portation of games intoother markets would disrupt
(52:14):
things to the point where theleague's Viability might even be
threatened.
How is that possible, I ask?
The owners are all millionaires.
We're paying millions to ourplayers and guess who gets left
holding the bag?
Our fans.
And whenever I debated leaguerules in Washington, I always
tried to conclude my point bysaying the law of the land takes
precedence Over the law of theleague.
And he talks about this andeventually you know, haha, and
(52:37):
eventually you know ha-ha, loand behold, hard work pays off.
The FCC ruled that as long asour signal was distributed by
that comment carrier that wetalked about earlier, the
Superstation could continue toexist as is.
So now he can broadcast hisgames all over the country and
there was nothing anybody can doabout it.
But he fought for it.
He fought for it A lot of folksI don't know if a lot of folks
(52:59):
would have had the temerity todo it or the intelligence to do
it, or, you know, like that'sjust the and I hope you know
everybody who's listening tothis.
And I get inspired by thisbecause I understand like it's
that grit.
It's that grit.
You know, that is the thingthat nobody can write your story
(53:20):
for you.
And he clearly realized thatbecause of all the stuff that he
did just to get TBS all overthe country.
So he says the programmersmight not like what we were
doing, but over time we workedout terms In many cases
increased license fees thateveryone could live with.
The sports leagues werefrustrated but eventually
(53:42):
learned to live with the ideathat Atlanta games would be seen
all over the country.
Yeah, tough right.
Meanwhile, cable operators werethrilled to add a wholesome
high quality channel to theirlineup.
And, as I predicted, inWashington, consumers wound up
being winners too.
So then there's this other thing.
Right, it's like problem afterproblem after problem, and it's
(54:05):
just.
You know, he talks in his bookjust how.
He just bulldozes through allof them.
So the next thing is his beefwith Nielsen.
So Nielsen is the company thatcharts the ratings for shows,
but they refuse to documentAtlanta Braves audiences outside
of Atlanta.
They claim that it wasprohibitively expensive for them
(54:26):
to measure a channel whosedistribution was so spotty
across the country.
But I just turn talking now.
But I was suspicious that theirreal motivations was to avoid
upsetting their customer basethe broadcast networks and local
stations that were ourcompetition.
So he's basically operating offlack of sight into data.
You know, that could clearlyhelp his business.
(54:49):
If he doesn't know how manypeople are watching games in New
Mexico or Montana, st Louis,how can he plan Right?
So he had to come up with somekind of rough, dirty, rough and
dirty measure.
So what he ended up doing washire a creative recess, I'm
sorry, hire a creative researchspecialist from Cox
(55:12):
Communications named Bob Sieber.
Specialist from CoxCommunications named Bob Sieber
and realized that once again,direct response advertising
could be a solution to ourproblems.
Since many of our orders fordirect response products came in
in the form of personal checksmailed directly to our Atlanta
offices, we could tell wherethey were coming from, based off
postmarks.
So they would have one stack ofletters postmarked in Atlanta,
(55:34):
then they'll have another withletters from outside of Atlanta.
So as the Superstation gaineddistribution, not only did the
overall volume of lettersincrease.
Postmarks from places inAlabama, mississippi and Florida
were soon joined by others asfar away as Illinois, hawaii and
Alaska.
And with Nielsen reporting,only the viewership level was
Atlanta.
Bob and his team would countthe number of letters mailed in
(55:55):
locally, then tally the numberof letters we received from
elsewhere and back into a roughestimate of what the size of our
non-Atlanta audience was.
This was hardly a bulletproofscientific process, but it was
the best we had.
That's another thing beingresourceful, being creative with
meager resources.
Part of the fun was watchinghow quickly the non-Atlanta
(56:16):
stack grew, going from just ahandful of letters at first to a
pile that ultimately dwarfedthe size of the local one.
The mail bags started to get sofull they looked like Santa
Claus's in Miracle on 34thStreet.
So he talks about this andeventually you know lo and
behold.
You know Nielsen ended upagreeing.
(56:37):
But Nielsen didn't agree to dothis after the litigation was
threatened.
And with that y'all, I'm out.
Hat tip to David Sinner ofFounders Podcast.
Shout out to Coach Collectivefor the vision.
Win on the track Maydale Ray.
Check out our prior episodes attheatlantiformulacom, where all
(56:59):
podcast platforms are.
The episodes are Especially,check out the last one before
this Hank Aaron 50th anniversary.
When I did it with my 10 yearold son, that was not only crazy
for me, but I feel likeeverybody else will get
something from it as well.
Y'all go out and be great.
Don't be a hater.
Be blessed.
This is the Atlanta Forum.
Well, everybody wants to be loved, right?
In fact, most criminals and sexperverts and weirdo creeps were
just rejected somewhere alongthe way.
Son of Sam, or whatever hisname is, couldn't get a girl, so
he went out and shot them.
People who are in love neverwant to hurt anybody.
You know that it's only hornypeople who shoot people.
(00:24):
If people get all the sex theycan handle, they're so happy and
content.
They just sit around and smile.
I mean, you never feelaggressive just after you got
laid right.
Lots of sex for everybody.
That's the solution to theworld's problems.
This was an excerpt from aninterview that Ted Turner did
(00:44):
withinct Like towns of Atlantaof old Swatch.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Tell you just how we speak.
Tell them both when you fromCozone.
What number is your policeprecinct?
Uh yeah, tell you just how wespeak, where you from, what
number is your police precinct?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Cozone what's going on y'all?
This is the atlanta formula.
I am zettler the fourth, gladto be back to this party.
Just recently, celebrated thebirthday, feeling tremendously
(01:42):
blessed.
And one time I've realized inmy time here on this earth space
time journey is that everymoment is ripe with new
opportunities.
There is no such thing asgetting older when you're always
refreshing.
You did so the other day.
I received an anthology book ofplayboy interviews entitled
(02:03):
movers and shakers.
And looking at the table ofcontents, lo and behold, there
were not one but two interviewswith Robert Edward Turner III.
One was printed, as I statedbefore, in August of 1978 and
the other in August of 1983.
And being that we are in Augustof 2024 now I just love when
the coinkidink come together of2024, now I just love when the
(02:27):
coink and dink come together.
Both of these interviews, y'all, were outstandingly absurd and
phenomenally telling 65 pages ofhim saying what seemed to be
whatever he wanted to say.
He came across with all thecharm, all the wit, all the
drive and all of the zany thatpeople have come to expect from
the creator of Cable NewsNetwork and Turner Studios and
(02:47):
TNT and Cartoon Network and manyother economy builders.
Truly one of a kind, and, as Isaid in that last episode, you
cannot talk about AtlantaWithout diving into the maverick
of the South of the South,alright, y'all.
(03:08):
So, at the risk ofoversimplifying the effect of
Ted and I'm going to refer tohim as Ted for the rest of this
interview because that's what hewanted to be called he has an
autobiography out called Call MeTed, and a hat tip to Founders
Podcast, david Sinterer.
He did an episode on this book.
I highly recommend you go checkit out.
(03:30):
I'm not going to go into thebook in depth like he did, but I
am going to go into specificchapters more in depth than he
did, like I said, I want to talkabout him acquiring the station
.
I want to talk about himacquiring the braids, I want to
talk about him rebranding and Idon't want to make this strictly
a chronological,autobiographical or biographical
(03:52):
account, right, because thereare certain little random bits
that I want to include in thisthat doesn't fit neatly into a
story, but hopefully it's goingto fit to y'all in a way that
makes sense.
First of all, he is the son ofRobert Edward Turner II, who was
an advertising magnate.
He was a millionaire and he wassuccessful, but he came up on
(04:13):
some hard times financially andhe kind of started to become.
You know, he came apart alittle bit toward the end of his
life.
He was gaining weight, startedsmoking a lot and he made a
business deal.
He sold off a lot of assets tohis company.
That left his son, ted Turner'sson.
So Ted was like in his 20s, Ithink he was like 23, 24.
(04:34):
And he sold his business, apart of his business, and his
son tried to talk him out of itand his dad said you know well,
no, no, well.
And then his son said hey, youtold me all my life about not
being a quitter, but here youare quitting.
So now this is a very importantpart of the story because what
happens next is going to shapethe rest of his life.
(04:55):
His dad, one morning he'sbreakfast, gets up, walks into
the restroom, walks into theshower and shoots into him,
walks into the shower and shootsinto him.
So now young Ted, 24 at thetime, loses his dad, who he
calls his best friend, and hehas to pick up the pieces.
(05:16):
So this thing about fathers,right.
Every time I read these storiesabout these successful people
and you read their father'sstory.
You always just come acrosswith the thought that the story
of the father plays out throughthe son.
The story of the son wasprecursored by the father.
(05:38):
I'm currently reading thisbiography on Dr Martin Luther
King Jr and it talks about hisdad, who they call Dad the King.
And you know his dad's journeyis amazing.
You know, native of Stockbridge.
You know, left for Atlanta as ateenager and was illiterate.
You know, hooked up with hiswife's father, who was a pastor
(06:01):
of Ebenezer Baptist Church andyou know, ended up marrying his
daughter.
His daughter was a highlyintelligent, only child of two
educated theologians and theybirthed three children, the
second being the one whoseholiday we celebrate every
(06:23):
January.
But Martin Luther King Jr doesnot.
I mean, it's the same thingwith Ted Turner, right you?
There's no way that you cantalk about Ted Turner without
going to the story of his father.
Same thing with Martin LutherKing Jr.
You know the father, you know,shaped this children's lives in
(06:44):
ways for good and ill sometimes.
And Ted talks about his dad alot in this book.
And you know he's a part of thetribe.
You know he became a part ofthe I'm missing my dad's tribe,
you know, at a very early age.
You know, a lot of people losetheir fathers earlier than that,
some a little later than that,you know.
But nevertheless, you know, heknow he, like I, chris rock, few
(07:08):
others right, we miss our dadsand he's no different.
But anyway he picks up thepieces and he tries to get his
father's business back.
And the guy whose dad made thatbad business deal which said
hey, you know I admire yourfather, you know I admire you,
but there's no way in the worldI'm backing out of this deal.
So what Ted ended up doing isfinding loopholes and fighting
(07:30):
and ends up acquiring a companyback through clever financing.
And that's just the story ofhow his career goes.
He always finds a way to getthese deals done in these
unconventional ways and do thesethings that a lot of business
advisors around him just look athim and shake his head about.
In fact, two of his closestadvisors who his dad knew they
(07:50):
left.
Ted was making these businessdeals that just didn't make
sense to people and two of themleft.
And while he said it hurt, healso realized that he had a
vision that couldn't be deterredfrom.
So, alright, he acquires thestation by the late 1960s.
Now I'm reading from his umautobiography, so let me
backtrack to the playboyinterviews that, um, I ordered I
(08:15):
read those before I got thisbook.
I read these interviews I said,wow, I gotta get this book now.
So, uh, amazon ordered it, cameto my house in a couple days,
shot the prime and, um, I readthrough these three sections and
it's about 90 pages total, kindof like what I'm going to go
through a little bit.
I'm not going to go throughlike 90 pages of work, but I am
going to condense it tosomething that we can all
(08:38):
understand through this podcastbecause, you know, I really
recommend you read the bookbecause, like it's like a book
in a movie.
The book always contains thingsand I ain't going to be able to
tell you all the stuff in thebook, but nevertheless, all
right here.
By the late 1960s we owned fiveradio stations, but I was
frustrated to be based inAtlanta and not have one there.
I looked around but it wasclear that there weren't going
to be any 24-hour stations forsale anytime soon.
(08:58):
So you know about that time.
Later on he noticed an ad onone of these billboards for a
UHF TV station called WJRJChannel 17.
He wasn't following thebusiness much back then, but you
know, because he didn't evenwatch TV.
He said and UHF stands forultra high frequency.
This was something that youknow most people couldn't see
(09:22):
because the antennas couldn'treceive it.
All right, so, but the businessintrigued them, no, and the VHF
stations the very highfrequencies.
So you had ultra high frequencyand very high frequency.
Those VHF stations in Atlantawere all strong network
affiliates that were probablyworth more than his entire
company, right.
But since the VHF stations wereso strong because they split the
(09:42):
market three ways, he figuredhe might be able to get his
hands on the UHF competitor at aprice he could afford.
So here it is.
He's a business owner.
He's looking for something hecan bring in at cost so that he
can even start to makeinterroads to building his
empire, right, building hisbusiness.
So he asked around town andrealized that this station was
not doing well, right, and theymight be for sale.
(10:05):
And the did get in.
The TV business was exciting,he said, and he wanted to bet on
a medium that looked like itwould grow.
So that's another thing too,for the entrepreneurs who are
listening, that you know youwant to get into an industry
that is going to grow.
You don't want to get into asaturated industry.
Radio was not growing at thattime.
You don't want to get into asaturated industry.
(10:26):
Radio was not growing at thattime.
No, the radio industry wassaturated, but TV was.
Tv is a relatively new mediumas far as advertisers were
concerned.
Businesses weren't.
They had not realized how to, Iguess, maximally make money
through it.
Yet through creativeprogramming, through creative
like.
It was all very much new, itwas in its infancy.
It was all very much new, itwas in its infancy.
So he said Chyna 17 was owned byRice Broadcasting, but the
(10:48):
station was bleeding cash.
And he realized that.
You know, he found another way.
On an average month about 50%of his billboard inventory went
unsold.
So with signs all over Atlantaquote I could put the unsold
ones to use promoting ourstation, just as we had done to
(11:09):
promote our radio station.
The more I studied this deal,the more I wanted to do it All
right.
So he went and tried to buy itand they said hey, all right,
look, we'll give you the station, but it's for $2.5 million and
(11:32):
the rest of the time his companywas probably worth about $7.5
million.
So $2.5 million, $7.5 million,that would be a big deal.
That's significant.
There's no way we could paycash, he said.
So we negotiated a stock swapthat would leave me as the
largest single owner in thecombined company but would drop
my percentage ownership to about47%.
(11:53):
My board of directors continuedto raise objections, but they
knew I had voting control of thestock and in the end my
enthusiasm wore them down.
Enthusiasm, that's another bigthing.
Steve Jobs Not Sergey Brin,larry Page, those Google but
Jeff Bezos those are men who areknown for enthusiasm and
(12:16):
putting across their ideas.
Enthusiasm, passion, passion,passion.
You can't substitute it.
And according to this book andaccording to those Playboy
interviews, he had that inspades.
He just knew how to conjure upemotion when it came to
communicating with people.
So he ended up getting theboys' blessing and the deal
ended up getting done.
It took some time because theyhad to go through some legal
(12:37):
things, but he ended up gettingit in January of 1970.
As soon as they got it, theychanged his call letters to WTCG
for Turner Communications Group.
I had a lot to learn about theTV industry, so I dove in
headfirst.
I bought a couple books aboutthe industry and subscribed to
(13:00):
TV trade journals, and that'sanother thing in his life too.
Of course, I'm not going totell you that, but he was a
voracious reader.
This is a key theme, you know.
It is what it is.
If y'all hear, my voice.
I'm going to say something aboutreading Because that's just I
know how important it is.
If y'all hear my voice, I'mgoing to say something about
reading Because that's just Iknow how important it is for me,
and everywhere I read aboutthese people who do these
(13:20):
wonderful things, they all,without exception, were
voracious readers, alright,unfortunately, the more I
learned about TV stations, themore I realized that ours was a
disaster.
So he acquired this company andthey were just a mess.
Most of the 35 employeesinherited were either lazy on
drugs or both.
The terrible work ethic startedat the top.
(13:42):
He ended up firing everybodybut two people a year later.
A year later, there was onlytwo people there who was there
when he bought it the custodianand the receptionist.
Our shows were weak, so Idecided to make programming my
top priority, and this is wherehe got real clever.
See I remember those TV guysthey had, like you know, 6.30 to
(14:03):
7.00, this show came on.
7.00 to 7.30, this show came on.
But Turner realized that, hey,why don't I start my show five
minutes after, so that when theother shows end and people are
flipping the channel, they'llpass my channel and we'll
already have, we'll have, a showplaying Right.
And that increased viewershipsignificantly.
(14:23):
So he would start his shows at635 and at 705, you know, 705 to
735.
I remember seeing that back inthe day but not understanding
why.
But I know now and nobody elsewas doing that.
So that's another thing, thatability to not care about what
was conventional at the time butto go forward with what he
(14:44):
thought would be advantageous togrowing his business.
I made a lot of programdecisions.
I look around to see whatcompetitions are running and I
figure out whose tastes aren'tbeing met and provide them with
an alternative From watching thecompetition.
I believe that most of what thenetworks were airing was
garbage, full of gratuitousviolence, sex and stupidity.
(15:07):
Knowing how quickly TVviewership was growing, it
troubled me to see how much junkpeople were watching.
Alright, so after six months,until our ownership of WTCG you
know, bankrupt UHF station andCharlotte went on the market, I
skipped that part.
Basically, he ends up acquiringthat Charlotte station in
Charlotte, which you know.
That's what set in place isthat close friend of my dad who
(15:32):
served on the board, and, afterdoing everything he could to
keep me from buying the Atlantastation, the Charlotte deal was
the last straw he resigned fromthe board.
Not long after he left, anotherguy who was running the company
day to day decided he had hadenough too, and he resigned as
well.
These were big blows, given allwe had in front of us, but I've
always considered myself to begood to to be a good, open field
(15:55):
runner, and I was moredetermined than ever to make it
work.
So and these next few pages area testament to how relentless he
was about recruiting talentright and this is another
commonality we see in thesetitans and founders they just
were ceaseless in their effortto getting the best talent
(16:17):
possible.
You know, rockefeller was saidto have hired people based off
sight, not on need.
So it wasn't as if he saidstandard oil, we need six people
in this position.
He said, no, we're going to.
If I see somebody that'sextremely talented, I'm just
going to get them.
I'm just going to get them.
I'm just going to get them.
I'm just going to get them.
I'm just going to get them.
I'm just going to get them.
I'm just going to stockpiletalent.
(16:37):
And Ted Turner was no different.
So he would talk to people andresearchers and pick their
brains and then say, hey, whydon't you come work for me, why
don't you come work for me?
And he was able to bring themover through his enthusiasm,
through his passion, because youknow, you work for me.
You're not working to makemoney, we work for purpose.
Right, we're building somethinghere.
We're building something we'redifferent.
(16:58):
We're building a station herethat nobody else is showing.
We have a vision and when thispays off, you're going to be
leading for a missionary-likecause, as opposed to being a
mercenary for a check.
I think what Jeff Bezos said youwant to hire missionaries, not
mercenaries.
You can say it's a con thingthat business people do to get
(17:21):
people on their side.
Or you can just say that, hey,they realize that to get
people's total buy-in, you gotto get more than just their
skills, their talents.
You got to get their hearts.
You got to get their sustainedeffort, because we ask you to
put in hours we ask you to putin, push yourself beyond what
you would push if you had notmet me.
(17:42):
So you've got to have somethingelse that you're working for,
so that when you're tired you'renot thinking, ah, you're
thinking, all right, it's apurpose, it's something to be on
the other side that we can getfrom this extra effort, all
right.
So he talks about how he, youknow, went about building his
television stations.
(18:03):
He got the Andy Griffith show,which ended up being a huge hit
for TBS.
He talks about how his firstyear under ownership the
stations lost about $2 milliontotal but made a significant
progress.
Then something happened thatwas real fortuitous for him.
Out of the blue, watl went offthe air.
(18:24):
One other competitor in Atlantamarket was WATL, but they ended
up getting off the air becausethey was losing money, just like
that.
They were the only station intown.
They were the only independentstation bidding on syndicated
programming rights for Atlanta,just that virgin territory thing
.
I think Warren Buffett orCharlie Munger, one of them,
(18:45):
said something to the extent ofyou don't want, a key part to
your success is low competition.
You don't want to go where thecompetition is.
You want to find a market, agroup of people whose needs
aren't being met go there andthat seems so obvious, but it's
not common in actuality, becausea lot of people go to where
(19:09):
it's popping right.
Very few people want to go andbuild something, because that
takes effort, that takes capital, that takes time and it's much
easier to jump on a rising stockthan to buy a stock low and
wait it out for a certain timeperiod.
When you're looking to makemoney now, who has?
(19:31):
Because you know who has timeto sit and wait for, you know,
for dollars to come in.
We got expenses.
So it takes a certain kind offoresight.
It takes a certain kind ofpatience.
It also takes you know, ittakes knowledge Right If you, if
you are reading and researchingdifferent areas, different
(19:53):
areas, you realize that that isthe way of things.
To get wealthy in this country,in this world, you have to start
something or invest insomething very early.
There is no other way toachieve wealth in this country,
in this world.
You've got to create somethingand build it, build a market, or
(20:18):
you need to invest in somethingelse very early.
It's amazing how much this isforgotten.
So, through ingenuity, throughhustling, through getting on the
phone, ted Turner builds andbuilds, and builds and then you
(20:39):
know he would do things like youknow.
He would test big networks, youknow, not caring about
litigation, not caring about youknow the legality of things.
So he talks about a story abouthow, you know, the big three
networks made money by sellingnational ads that ran across
their stations.
They wanted this programming toair on as many affiliates as
(21:00):
possible to deliver coveragenationwide to a large audience.
But because of conflictingprogramming commitments,
especially with locally producedshows like pro sports,
affiliated stations wouldsometimes preempt national
programming, costing networkcoverage in that market.
So once I learned this, he said, I got an idea.
I decided to call the networkpeople in New York and offer to
(21:22):
air their shows on channel 17Whenever they were preempted by
their Atlanta affiliate.
It took me a while to trackdown the right people but when I
did they said yes, theypreferred to have their
affiliate clear their shows.
But we were better than nothing.
When we reached the point ofhaving four preempted nbc shows
running in our daytime lineup, Ihad our people put up the
(21:43):
billboard saying the nbc networkmoved to channel 17 in really
big letters.
The owners of the nbc CoxBroadcasting threatened a
lawsuit and our attorney advisedme to have them taken down.
Meanwhile, the controversy wasmentioned in Cox's own Atlanta
(22:03):
Journal-Constitution newspaperand we got some free publicity
out of it.
That is brilliant, y'all.
The Atlanta ABC station carriedthe Hawks' basketball games so
that during the NBA season theyhad a bunch of preemptions in
the primetime.
This gave me the sameopportunity I had with NBC, and
ABC's executives were more thanhappy to have us clear Atlanta
for them.
We even got to air the 1971premiere of Brian's song.
(22:26):
So this movie had an abilitywith James Caan.
You know it's a teaser.
It's a real teaser.
It's one of the classic movies.
It was one of the biggestmade-for-TV movies of its time.
Y'all, this is brilliant.
That's one of those.
You know we all ask forforgiveness.
We're not asking for permission.
Ted Turner is the ultimateask-for-forgiveness, not
permission, guy.
(22:46):
Alright, so he's growing hisstation, and then he says this I
knew we needed sports to reallyjump to the next level.
I'd already taken professionalwrestling From the ABC station
(23:07):
and while these shows did well,getting big league rights Would
really put us on the map.
The Atlanta Braves wererelatively new in town, having
moved from Milwaukee in 1966.
We talked about this lastepisode.
Go listen to it.
Shout out to the late HenryAaron.
But the Braves were popular, hesaid.
If we could somehow get theBraves on our station it would
be a huge coup.
(23:28):
Not only would our ratings goup, but also we figured that
many Atlantans who didn't havethese UHF antennas will buy one
just so they can see the Bravesgames.
With more of these antennas inplace, the potential audience
for all of our shows will growautomatically.
It was widely known that theBraves had lost money since
moving to Atlanta Some said asmuch as one mil a year and as a
(23:50):
result I was confident that anoffer of more money for their TV
rights would at least get theirattention.
Wsb was paying the Braves$200,000 per year for the right
to show 20 away games.
Back then many teams hesitatedto put too many games on TV,
particularly the home games,fearing that this exposure would
hurt ticket sales.
Because it was so bad.
I say she was turning thecorner for profitability and I
(24:11):
was willing to pay for an assetas valuable as rights to a major
sport.
I called Bill Bartholomew, thelate Bill Bartholomew, who led
the group that purchased theMilwaukee Braves and moved them
to Atlanta.
He lived in Chicago and wasalso a seller, so we knew some
of the same people, had a lot incommon.
From our mutual friends I alsolearned that he was a
trustworthy stand-up guy.
(24:32):
I met with Bill and said wewould offer the Braves $600,000
per year three times WSB's feesIn return.
We wanted 60 games instead of20.
All right, so while they'retalking he realized something
else Given the team's broadrelationship with Cox
Communications CoxCommunications owned the Braves'
(24:53):
flagship radio station.
In addition to theirlanguage-owned constitution, the
paper the Braves counted on forextensive and hopefully
positive coverage of the team,bill felt the right thing to do
was to give them a courtesy callbefore they had heard about
this deal secondhand.
All right, so they make a deal.
The Cox people obviously werefurious, right, they said this
dude Ted's a nut and thisstation is a Mickey Mouse
station and you better not dothis deal.
(25:14):
But he ended up doing a dealbecause, you know, bill came
back to Ted and said, hey man,they don't like this deal, can
we back out?
But Ted said, hey man, youalready said you would do it.
Ain't you a man of your word?
And Bill was like, yeah, I'm aman of my word.
And they did the deal and thecompany was up and running.
Ted goes.
The Braves were a huge shot inthe arm for us.
Ratings for the games werestrong and our ad sale teams had
(25:35):
solid success selling them.
He talks about how bad theBraves were when he bought them.
The Braves in the early 70swere pretty bad, but after
posting consecutive losingrecords our first two seasons
carrying the game, 72 and 73,they started turning things
around in 74.
So he hadn't got a team yetright, but he had gotten the
Braves contract.
(25:56):
He'd gotten the right to showadvertising in Braves games and
he's building a relationshipwith the Braves.
He wouldn't buy the Braves foranother.
Let's see when did he get withthe Braves as an ad guy?
He got with them in 1973.
1971.
(26:17):
1971.
1973, 1971, 1971.
He wasn't about to braze until1976.
How?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
was that Really you think so?
Yeah, it was a great parade.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Alright, you ready to hit?
Yeah, come on my girl.
Yeah, it was a race.
It was a race, all right, youready to hit?
Yeah, come on my girl.
So Ted calls the Braves,locking in with them, allowing
them advertising a huge shot inthe arm.
(26:52):
Ratings for the games werepretty strong.
It went up.
They started losing less moneyto the point where they actually
started making money.
So then he starts talking abouthow the Braves were when he
first got sinked in with them.
On the advertising tip he saidyou know, as helpful as the
Braves were, we'd have beenbetter off if the team had won
(27:14):
more games.
Advertisers like beingassociated with the Major League
franchise, but they prefer thatteam to be a winner.
The Braves of the early 1970swere pretty bad but after
posting consecutive losingrecords, our first two seasons,
carrying games 72 and 73, theystarted turning things around in
74.
72 and 73, they started turningthings around in 74.
As you know, in 74, that waswhen the mighty Henry Aaron, you
(27:39):
know, showed up.
All the haters and want to bekillers and did his thing and
you know he talks about that, ofcourse and that team won 88
games for the season and hecalls Atlanta being really
excited about baseball.
Nearly a million fans went tothe ballpark and our ratings
(28:01):
improved.
But the team did a total 180degree reversal in 1975.
They traded Hank Aaron toMilwaukee the very season he
broke Baybrook's record, lost 94games and saw their attendance
drop almost in half.
Lost 94 games and saw theirattendance drop almost in half.
He went to those Fulton CountyStadium games and he talked
about how there were barely 600people in the stands at times.
(28:22):
The Braves were losing and itwas obvious their fans weren't
the only ones who packed it in.
The players had too.
The whole experience wasdepressing.
He talks about that and he saysyou know what?
I'm going to go up and see theteam president.
So he goes up to the teampresident and say hey, look, I
consider us to be partners andwe need to add more excitement
(28:43):
next year.
What are we going to do to getthe team on track?
Team president at the time DanDonahue, you know, looked at him
and said well, I don't knowwhat you're going to do next
year, but I know what we'regoing to do we're selling the
team.
He said what?
And this is the beginning ofhow Ted Turner acquired the
Braves.
So he says to him hey, youcan't sell the team.
(29:05):
The Braves mean a lot to mybusiness.
You're not selling this team,so who are you going to sell it
to?
Donahue said you, me, me.
So then he goes on to talk abouthow his dad Taught him early in
life that long termrelationships, when your
customers and partners Areimportant, because you just
never Know Down the line howthey're going to help you the
(29:25):
guy who you're Friendly withtoday might be able to help you
out Tomorrow.
My dad said that too, and he'sright.
Dads are right Sometimes.
For the past few years Ted saysI demonstrated to Braves
management that the team wasimportant to me and now they
were offering me first lookchance to buy the franchise.
So he goes talks to him.
He says how much you gonna sellthem to me for?
(29:47):
They say $10 million, $10million.
So for a business that waslosing $1 million a year, $10
million is out the question.
So he said I can't lose thisteam.
I'm sorry.
We can't allow this team tomove out of Atlanta.
So we got to find a way to getthis team and he realized that
he had to come up with somecreative financing way to do it,
(30:08):
and that ended up happening.
He ended up getting a team foryou know, he put $1 million down
and then assumed $9.65 milliondebt and lo and behold, well,
they were halfway home.
They had to get the sign off onthe Major League Baseball
owners.
Ted wasn't a typical owner atthe time.
Right, and as we go seethroughout the chapter, he says
(30:29):
I think I was the first personto try to buy a team with less
than 100% cash.
Some were also concerned aboutmy ultimate intentions on the TV
side of things.
I would just be the secondowner who controlled both the
team and its broadcast stationand I had made a few comments
about distributing WTCG on cableoutside Atlanta.
(30:50):
Some owners worried about whatthis might mean in terms of TV
competition in their homemarkets.
But the Braves were such a badteam in a relatively small
southern city I didn't thinkmany of them saw me as a threat.
So he goes into full hustlemode and calls people and gets
vouchers for him being the ownerand they end up signing off on
(31:11):
on him and he became the ownerin January of 76.
So now everybody's thrilled.
However, there's one problemTed didn't know the difference
between a bulk and an infieldfly.
He didn't know anything aboutbaseball, so he had some
research to do.
And it gets interesting righthere because later on in this
(31:34):
chapter, terry McG mcgirt, whoended up being, you know, a high
ranking um executive in thebraves organization.
He talks about how, for springtraining, he was sent with the
team to be a quote-unquoteplayer invite.
But his real intention therewas to see what was going on
(31:56):
with the team and get some intel.
And I read this and to me thatsounded too much like snitching
Right For all the good and forall the heroic endeavors that
our boy Ted has done.
I mean, come on now, right?
So McGurk talks about how hewent through it and you know,
(32:17):
finally, I think like the lastday or something like that, he
came clean with other playersand coaches and let them know
that he was heading back to hisreal job in Atlanta and what he
was there for.
He said they had some goodlaughs over the whole thing and
they went out for dinner and youknow he made it sound like it
was all ha-ha, all's well, thatends well.
But I got to imagine, right, ifsomebody in my squad in the
(32:39):
locker room with me and they'rereporting back to the boss, but
it did not seem to affect theplayer's attitude towards Ted
Turner.
From all reports it seemed tolike them, seemed to love them,
and you know, because he didthings like you know jump over
the railing when the team hitthe home run.
He said he talked about how hisfirst game as an owner, I think
(33:00):
and somebody hit a home run andhe jumped over the rail and
zapped the plate, you knowcelebrating with them.
Of course he heard soon afterthat hey, that's not cool.
The commissioner of baseballhit him up and said hey, you
know that's not cool.
Commissioner baseball hit himup and said hey, you know,
that's that's not cool, you knowso he would do things like that
.
But you know so Ted was justoff the wall guy, you know that
that was.
(33:20):
You know that was him.
It's somewhere in his bookwhere he was doing a pitch to
somebody and they said that atone point he jumped on the table
and In another pitch meeting hewas on all fours.
He was just that excitable.
His energy was not repressible.
So he's with the Braves.
(33:42):
He's learning about the Braves.
He realized they suck.
He realized that they had toget some talent.
And this is around the timewhere free agency starts to
become involved.
Shout out to Kurt Flood, whowas the first to buck the system
and got his career endedbecause of such.
But after he bust down the doors, there was two players, I
(34:04):
believe, that ended up being thebreakthrough players that the
Supreme Court said that you knowwhat free agency is allowed in
baseball.
One of them was this guy namedAndy Messerschmitt.
So Ted Turner ends upoutbidding the Yankees to
acquire him, and then he getswith somebody else and he says,
(34:26):
hey, the owner of the Giants.
He's had a cocktail party withthe owner of the Giants and
other owners too, and he startstalking saying, hey, you know,
I'm going to outbid you for oneof your players.
I'm going to outbid you and I'mgoing to win.
And he ended up signing theplayer, but that's a big no-no
in sports because they call thattampering and result resultedly
(34:51):
, he ended up becoming the firstowner, I believe Well, not the
owner of his first owner, but Idon't know he may have been the
first owner who got suspendedfor a year by Major League
Baseball.
I know George Steinbrennerended up getting suspended later
on and you know, some otherowners might have gotten hot
water for things they said, buthe got suspended for tampering
and right after he got suspendedfor tampering he acquires the
(35:14):
Hawks for the same reason thathe acquires the Braves.
They were about to leave townand he was able to, you know,
work out a deal with Tom Cousins, you know real estate magnate
of Atlanta, and he was able toacquire two professional Atlanta
sports at the same time.
(35:35):
Then I want to end this bit onhis rebranding of channel 17.
So I talked about how he youknow the company that the
station was, wtcg.
He acronymed it, calling itwatch this channel grow and they
were making money and with them, making more money over the
years he was more confident everthat television was quote where
(35:55):
I wanted to be.
But even as we moved out of thered I was concerned that our
options for meaningful growthwere limited.
In the mid-70s, channel 17 wasthe only independent station in
a major southeastern marketoutside of Florida and the
Braves were the only majorleague baseball franchise in the
region.
I knew that our programmingwould be of interest to viewers
(36:17):
outside of Atlanta.
I also saw that in places likeAlbany and Macon, georgia,
people were signing up for a newservice to get local stations.
They were unable to tune inwith their antenna and or a
better picture for stations theywere already receiving.
This technology was oftenreferred to as CATV for
community antenna television or,more simply, cable TV.
(36:41):
I concluded that our next bigopportunity would be to push
WTCG's distribution beyondAtlanta to become an independent
station that serve the entiresoutheast, and we would use
cable to get us there.
So then he goes on this.
(37:02):
Okay, listen, there's no reasonwhy I can't get this station
across the nation using thisantenna.
And he does what he does best.
He researches, he goes to hisfirst National Cable Television
Association meeting.
He learns about experimentsundertaken by broadcasters and
cable operators to use microwavetechnology to relay signals
from broadcast towers to thecable plant.
I'm not going to even flex likeI really understand this.
(37:22):
But here's the most importantpart the hustle.
He came across this guy namedDon Anderson.
He was a researcher for theNational Cable Television
Association.
He found out researcher for theNational Cable Television
Association and he mined Dunn'smind and he found out that these
(37:45):
new technologies offer a lot ofpromise for aggressive
independent broadcasters.
So he realized he needed Dunn'sexpertise.
He hired him and put him incharge of figuring out how he
could move microwave technologyto expand his territory and
market our service to the youngcable industry.
So he goes forward.
He does, you know, goes tothese conferences, he reads
these books.
He comes across these people,right, and, you know, aggressive
(38:09):
.
But he comes with a roadblock.
Guess what the roadblock is?
Roadblock, guess what theroadblock is.
It's no different for folks onthe corner selling drugs who got
a market on it, or apharmaceutical industry selling
a product and somebody elsecoming to the market hey, you on
my turf, you can't get on turf.
So he faced a lot of resistancefrom the big three stations.
He faced resistance from otherteams because now he's
(38:32):
threatening to put the Braves inareas where you have a
Cincinnati or you have a Chicagoor you have a Boston.
It's like what are you doing?
This is our territory.
Nobody had ever done thisbefore.
This is like a baby coming intoan industry, but he's not
acting like a baby.
He's not acting like a babybecause one, he's prepared, he's
(38:54):
researching, he's constantlyresearching, he has more energy
than you and he knows how totalk to people, so he's not
acting like a baby.
He's not acting like a babybecause one he's prepared, he's
researching, he's constantlyresearching.
He has more energy than you,right, and he knows how to talk
to people.
So he's working the phones,he's researching.
He realized he comes across howthis thing called Home Box
Office, hbo he talks about thatin this chapter and I'm reading
the section of.
He says a relative, a relativelynew pay-per-view channel, was
planning to start distributingtheir signal via satellite and
(39:18):
that Western Union would betheir distributor.
I called Western Union'smarketing director and set up a
meeting at his office in NewJersey.
They sent a car to pick me upat Newark Airport and it was
clear that they wanted mybusiness.
Shortly into the meeting, Iunderstood why.
Not only was HBO their onlyother television client, their
deal was short-term and as soonas RCA launched their satellite,
(39:39):
hbo planned to switch over tothem.
I learned a lot from thismeeting.
The guy who he met themarketing director's name was Ed
Taylor.
I learned a lot from Ed duringthat visit and, unfortunately
for Western Union, I wasconvinced that we had to be on
the same satellite as hbo as hboat the time, satellite
receiving antennas cost cableoperators about 100 000 a piece,
(40:01):
but if I teamed up with hbothey'd get two channels for the
price of one.
Creative thinking right.
So I decided to try tocoordinate efforts with the head
of hbo, a guy named jerry levin.
I met jerry once before andshortly after he's going for
work for time warn, warner, timeInc.
Hbo's owner.
In the past few years sincethen he has become passionate
advocate for satellitedistribution.
So this is like early adopterguys, guys who kind of
(40:24):
understood what things weregoing before.
Many others didn't.
And when you have that kind ofadvantage, this cerebral
cognitive advantage in any fieldyou're going to have, you're
going to, you're going to beable to do things.
Cerebral cognitive advantage inany field, you're going to be
able to do things.
You're going to be able to getthat first money right, that
initial seed money that nobody'seven thinking about getting,
because you know they have theintel, they have the creativity
(40:50):
and you know just the huevos I'msorry to my Latin brothers and
sisters if I'm pronouncing thatwrong Huevos, that's what I
think it's pronounced.
Anyway, you know what I'msaying.
You got to have them things tobe able to be a first mover in
the industry.
(41:11):
So he talks about talking topeople and then he gets to this
sticky situation so I'm going tostart here.
Sticky situation, so I'm gonnastart here.
So he goes to negotiate a dealwith with rca and realized there
was one big problem before youcould distribute a channel via
satellite, you had to get yoursignal up to the satellite in
the first place, and to do thisrequired the use of a send
station or uplink at thesignal's origination point.
(41:33):
So again, I again I'm not goingto flex like I truly understand
this but basically they'resaying look, you can't just walk
through this market.
You got to get a third-partysignal up to the satellite and
that costs money.
He said how much it costs about750 racks.
So I asked him him talking ifthere was anyone in Georgia who
(41:54):
could build one for me.
And they suggested I contact acompany named Scientific Atlanta
.
Now Scientific Atlanta y'allwas, I believe, a company built
by Georgia's tech students andthey had a bit of a reputation
but it was kind ofunderground-like.
But the people in the industryknew them and they recommended
(42:16):
them to him.
So by now I was determined tomake this work and I quickly set
up a meeting with Sidney Topoland this is a theme in this book
too.
He's always talking about assoon as he gets a hunch or as
soon as he gets information,intel about something, he's
setting it up right then.
He's setting it up right then.
And I read something recently,and I've always heard in my life
throughout that the more thatyou reduce the gap from idea to
(42:40):
execution, the more likely thatexecution will be favorable for
you.
And this book is a proof ofthat, because I've heard it at
least eight times in his book.
He said, hey, I got informationand I quickly set up a meeting.
I think he used quickly atleast 20 times in his book.
(43:00):
All right, so anyway, he set upa meeting with Sidney Topol, the
CEO.
He said that while theyexpected satellite technology to
be a big part of their business, they had yet to build an
uplink.
I asked him how much he thoughtthis would cause.
He said he would have to dosome research and get back to me
.
I like Topol and I trusted him,so I told him that if he
offered me a reasonable priceI'd do the deal with him.
(43:23):
I can't exactly remember whatprice he came back with, but it
seemed okay and we reached anagreement.
We bought a small piece ofproperty in a remote area on
Atlanta's northwest perimeterthat would serve as our site and
the scientific Atlanta.
People got to work.
So go, they do that.
The uplink is completed and thenanother problem comes.
My lawyers explained to me thatthe FCC had rules against
(43:43):
broadcasters sending their ownsignal outside their broadcast
house footprint.
Microwave distribution passedmuster because the cable
operators owned the relays, butin the case of satellite
distribution our company wasn'tallowed to own the uplink or the
lease for the satellitetransponder.
Again, listen, I'm learningsomething new too.
A third party is the mostimportant part.
(44:06):
A third party or common carrierwould be required.
We looked at different scenarios, like putting the uplink
company in my wife's name, mychildren's name, but the lawyers
made it clear that thedistributor had to be completely
independent from thebroadcaster.
I had to find someone to run anindependent satellite uplink
company.
So I called the first person Imet in the satellite business,
(44:26):
western Union's Ed Taylor.
I explained to Ed that I needto set up an independent company
to carry the TBS signal andasked him if he would leave
Western Union to own and run ourcomic carrier.
So with that he got more talent.
He always had a knack of findingpeople who knew exactly what
they were doing.
(44:46):
Steve Jobs would call thathiring A players.
That's a talent, that's a truetalent, to be able to recruit
the best and not only spot thebest, but be able to talk to
them and convince them to comebe with you.
You know, I got a cousin whoowns a very successful business
(45:07):
and we were talking and hetalked to me about how he was
able to plug people from othercompanies.
Not because you because, hey,we ought to pay you the most, or
we just got it all lavish overhere.
He was able to get them becauseof this messianic sense of
purpose that his businessoffered that other businesses
didn't.
While you may be making lessfor me now, you're going to be
(45:30):
working for a passionate group.
You're going to be workingtoward a purpose and it's going
to mean something.
Ted was like that.
He was able to get people basedoff.
Hey, this is where we are now,but we're going to be here Like
it's going to happen.
And this is why it's going tohappen, because I've talked to
so many people and this is amedium that nobody's really on
to yet, but I am.
(45:51):
I am and people you know, theybought it right.
So anyway, they end up goingthrough this process and they
ended up getting the satelliteup.
(46:12):
The first satellite transmissionof WTCG Watch, this Channel
Grow, occurred on December 17,1976, months before someone in
our promotions department hadcome up with the idea of calling
the local station Super 17.
I liked that a lot, but once wewere beaming the signal off the
satellite, I thought we neededsomething more.
I was playing around with theword super and when it just came
(46:33):
to me Super Station, the namehad a great ring to it and would
convey to people exactly whatit was.
I also decided to change thestation's call letters, since we
had moved into the broadcastmedia.
We changed our corporate nameto turn on broadcasting system
inc.
And I decided to convert towtbs, which is the station which
I saw growing up.
This is me talking Zettler IV.
(46:55):
I saw WTBS on the screen allthe time.
I had no idea what went into it, because I'm a child and these
things like that wasn't thatimportant to me to research.
But I read this now and I'mjust I'm like, wow, okay, so now
that we were competing on anational level.
I also like that TBS soundedlike CBS and we were soon
(47:18):
referring to the channel asSuperstation TBS.
So once it became clear thatTurner Ted you know he's about
it, he's serious he startedgetting national distribution
for a local station, which hadnever happened before National
(47:39):
distribution for a local stationthat was losing money.
Six years prior we ran intoproblems with our program
suppliers.
Our syndication deals withHollywood gave us rights in
Atlanta market only, and so Idon't know if I discussed this.
But when he bought the stationhe bought a whole bunch of movie
(47:59):
rights and started playing oldmovies on his station.
So syndication did whatHollywood gave us rights in
Atlanta market only.
When they expanded beyond that,it kind of got to this legal
thing.
Like I said earlier, you're onour turf now and it's not like
he did anything wrong per se.
(48:19):
He just pissed off the wrongpeople.
Pushing farther into theSoutheast via microwave didn't
seem to bother them, but goingnational on the satellite
certainly got their attention.
As for the Braves, major LeagueBaseball knew when I bought the
team that I had beenconsidering broader distribution
, but I don't think they thoughtit would really ever happen.
(48:42):
It was one thing for Bravesgames to be beamed to places
like Montana or New Mexico wherea competing franchise didn't
exist.
It's quite another to go into aMajor League market like
Detroit or St Louis and competefor viewers against their home
marketing.
He said I'm going to come intoyour turf.
I'm going to come into yourturf.
What you going to do about it?
(49:02):
We will also carry Atlanta hostgames at this point, and the
NBA raised similar concerns.
Local broadcasters also linedup in opposition to us, claiming
that the Superstation violatedestablished rules about the
redistribution of the local TVsignals.
So now you got this kind ofcollusion cartel thing going on.
Alright, y'all, we gotta getthis little man out of here.
(49:22):
Right Now.
He's becoming a nuisance, andthat's what's happening right
here.
They claim that since theSuperstation beamed into their
territory with shows that theyhad licensed for that market, we
were violating their rights toexclusivity.
In a short period of time, wemanaged to alienate Hollywood,
the sports leagues, thebroadcast networks and local
(49:43):
stations all over the country.
Each one of these groups hadbig time lobbying presence in
Washington and, with the FCC andCongress ultimately presiding,
washington became a primarybattlefront and I started
spending a lot of time there.
I participated in numeroushearings and tried to be on a
first name basis with as manyinfluential politicians as
(50:04):
possible.
You know he talked about hisearly training as a debater.
He was a debate champion inschool growing up and talked
about how that served him wellin his congressional hearings
and his strategy was to go onthe offense.
If there are any real thieveshere, he says in the hearing one
time, it's ABC, nbc, cbs.
(50:26):
They're the ones who convincedthe government to hand over
incredibly valuable VHF licensesall over the country completely
free of charge.
They've used the publicairwaves to make a fortune and
never once paid a dime for thatright.
I'd go on to argue that no onewould ever dream of letting a
paper company cut timber onfederal land or an oil company
drill offshore without puttingthose rights up for bid.
(50:48):
So why should TV companies getthese rights for nothing?
A free license might have madesense in the beginning, when the
business was just gettingstarted.
But what about now, when thesebroadcasters were making
millions?
Right?
When these licenses come up forrenewal every three years, why
not put them up for bid?
So you know?
He argues that.
You know it's a monopoly, it'slike a small group monopoly,
(51:11):
oligopoly, right, it's notAmerican.
This is not American.
This is supposed to be the landof opportunity, but what you're
doing is patently anti-American.
When it came to the sportsleagues, I painted a picture
that the owners basically sataround a table a long time ago
and said okay, I'll take NewYork, you get St Louis, and the
(51:33):
guy over here gets Chicago.
They colluded to create localmonopolies.
I said, and I thought that oneof the roles of government was
to regulate monopolies.
And he goes on and uses ananalogy.
I asked legislators to imaginea world where the heads of Ford,
gm and Chrysler sat down andthe Ford guy says I get
everything east of theMississippi.
(51:53):
General Motors, you get west ofMississippi.
Chrysler, you can have thestate of Michigan.
If we agree to this, weeliminate competition and we can
charge $10,000 for a carinstead of $2,000 and we'll make
a lot more money.
Baseball Commissioner Boy Coontried to counter by saying that
the portation of games intoother markets would disrupt
(52:14):
things to the point where theleague's Viability might even be
threatened.
How is that possible, I ask?
The owners are all millionaires.
We're paying millions to ourplayers and guess who gets left
holding the bag?
Our fans.
And whenever I debated leaguerules in Washington, I always
tried to conclude my point bysaying the law of the land takes
precedence Over the law of theleague.
And he talks about this andeventually you know, haha, and
(52:37):
eventually you know ha-ha, loand behold, hard work pays off.
The FCC ruled that as long asour signal was distributed by
that comment carrier that wetalked about earlier, the
Superstation could continue toexist as is.
So now he can broadcast hisgames all over the country and
there was nothing anybody can doabout it.
But he fought for it.
He fought for it A lot of folksI don't know if a lot of folks
(52:59):
would have had the temerity todo it or the intelligence to do
it, or, you know, like that'sjust the and I hope you know
everybody who's listening tothis.
And I get inspired by thisbecause I understand like it's
that grit.
It's that grit.
You know, that is the thingthat nobody can write your story
(53:20):
for you.
And he clearly realized thatbecause of all the stuff that he
did just to get TBS all overthe country.
So he says the programmersmight not like what we were
doing, but over time we workedout terms In many cases
increased license fees thateveryone could live with.
The sports leagues werefrustrated but eventually
(53:42):
learned to live with the ideathat Atlanta games would be seen
all over the country.
Yeah, tough right.
Meanwhile, cable operators werethrilled to add a wholesome
high quality channel to theirlineup.
And, as I predicted, inWashington, consumers wound up
being winners too.
So then there's this other thing.
Right, it's like problem afterproblem after problem, and it's
(54:05):
just.
You know, he talks in his bookjust how.
He just bulldozes through allof them.
So the next thing is his beefwith Nielsen.
So Nielsen is the company thatcharts the ratings for shows,
but they refuse to documentAtlanta Braves audiences outside
of Atlanta.
They claim that it wasprohibitively expensive for them
(54:26):
to measure a channel whosedistribution was so spotty
across the country.
But I just turn talking now.
But I was suspicious that theirreal motivations was to avoid
upsetting their customer basethe broadcast networks and local
stations that were ourcompetition.
So he's basically operating offlack of sight into data.
You know, that could clearlyhelp his business.
(54:49):
If he doesn't know how manypeople are watching games in New
Mexico or Montana, st Louis,how can he plan Right?
So he had to come up with somekind of rough, dirty, rough and
dirty measure.
So what he ended up doing washire a creative recess, I'm
sorry, hire a creative researchspecialist from Cox
(55:12):
Communications named Bob Sieber.
Specialist from CoxCommunications named Bob Sieber
and realized that once again,direct response advertising
could be a solution to ourproblems.
Since many of our orders fordirect response products came in
in the form of personal checksmailed directly to our Atlanta
offices, we could tell wherethey were coming from, based off
postmarks.
So they would have one stack ofletters postmarked in Atlanta,
(55:34):
then they'll have another withletters from outside of Atlanta.
So as the Superstation gaineddistribution, not only did the
overall volume of lettersincrease.
Postmarks from places inAlabama, mississippi and Florida
were soon joined by others asfar away as Illinois, hawaii and
Alaska.
And with Nielsen reporting,only the viewership level was
Atlanta.
Bob and his team would countthe number of letters mailed in
(55:55):
locally, then tally the numberof letters we received from
elsewhere and back into a roughestimate of what the size of our
non-Atlanta audience was.
This was hardly a bulletproofscientific process, but it was
the best we had.
That's another thing beingresourceful, being creative with
meager resources.
Part of the fun was watchinghow quickly the non-Atlanta
(56:16):
stack grew, going from just ahandful of letters at first to a
pile that ultimately dwarfedthe size of the local one.
The mail bags started to get sofull they looked like Santa
Claus's in Miracle on 34thStreet.
So he talks about this andeventually you know lo and
behold.
You know Nielsen ended upagreeing.
(56:37):
But Nielsen didn't agree to dothis after the litigation was
threatened.
And with that y'all, I'm out.
Hat tip to David Sinner ofFounders Podcast.
Shout out to Coach Collectivefor the vision.
Win on the track Maydale Ray.
Check out our prior episodes attheatlantiformulacom, where all
(56:59):
podcast platforms are.
The episodes are Especially,check out the last one before
this Hank Aaron 50th anniversary.
When I did it with my 10 yearold son, that was not only crazy
for me, but I feel likeeverybody else will get
something from it as well.
Y'all go out and be great.
Don't be a hater.
Be blessed.
This is the Atlanta Forum.
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.