TED TURNER’S PLANS TO SAVE THE WORLD
TED TURNER’S PLANS TO SAVE THE WORLD
BY KEREN BLANKFELD
This feature appeared in the 2011 Forbes 400 edition.
DAVID GOLDMAN/AP
AT AGE 72 TED TURNER isn’t quite as pugnacious as he once was. He no longer refers to pro-lifers as “bozos.” It’s been years since he challenged onetime media rival Rupert Murdoch to a fistfight. And while he is a true believer in climate change, he’s abandoned his prediction of a planet where most of the population will die off, leaving only a few cannibals to roam the scorched Earth.
There are still flashes of the old Mouth of the South—as when he gets excited about one of his causes. “I like the elephants and the gorillas and everything, too,” he says during a recent sit-down. “But I have to say, if I had to pick one species, I’d pick women.” (He has been married and divorced three times.) Still, he has become a champion of women’s rights in the developing world. “The worst thing that’s perpetrated on women is female genital mutilation,” he says. “They’re not taking their knives out and cutting the wackers off little boys … You cut the clitoris off so you can’t enjoy sex, and it’s really painful. I’ve never had it happen to me, but I’m just going by what I’ve read.”
Yes, Turner has mellowed—somewhat. “Once I was let go from Time Warner,” he says, “I decided … I’m dedicating most of my time to trying to save the world.” And much of his remaining $2 billion fortune, too. Captain Outrageous has morphed into Captain Planet, who wants to protect endangered species, end poverty, embrace population control, achieve nuclear disarmament. He has drawn closer to his five children, all of them board members of the Turner Foundation and each continuing his own interests in nature and the media. There is a discernible spouselike ease between him and his girlfriend, Elizabeth Dewberry, a novelist who is 25 years his junior. “I’m still working on [my legacy],” says Turner. “I haven’t finished yet.”
He is proud of small accomplishments. “Is that beautiful or not?” Turner asks, pointing out the window of his office in the Turner Building toward a street-level lot covered in dozens of solar panels in downtown Atlanta. “Parking lots are wastelands because they’re black and they absorb the heat rather than reflect. I’m gonna start a movement to paint parking lots white instead of black.”
What he doesn’t point out is the landmark five blocks away: the CNN Center, Turner’s greatest accomplishment. Today, amid the gleaming glass and the images of Headline News, Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan beamed across giant screens, it’s hard to fathom the impact the 24-hour cable news channel once had when it launched back in 1980. There was nothing like it then, and news was breaking out all over the world: the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran; a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt; boycotted Olympics Games thanks to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; the start of the Iran-Iraq war; the Mariel boat lift from Cuba; Lech Walesa’s first strike in Poland’s Gdansk shipyards; an epic presidential election that swept Ronald Reagan into office. You could read about these events in Time or Newsweek or the New York Times, but CNN let you watch them, again and again, throughout the day.
With CNN, Turner—the crazy skipper of the Courageous who had successfully defended the America’s Cup; the mercurial owner of the hapless Atlanta Braves who was inspired to hire, fire and rehire Bobby Cox as manager—had suddenly achieved the stature of a global ambassador. “I went around the world making friends, because that’s the best thing to do with your customers,” Turner recalls. “And I’m talking about Communist China, Russia, which was the Soviet Union at the time.”
THE 1996 MERGER of Turner Broadcasting System with Time Warner marked the pinnacle of CNN—and the start of Ted Turner’s decline. That year Murdoch kicked off Fox News Channel, which today crushes CNN in the ratings. Turner clashed with Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin, got bucked down from head of cable networks to vice chairman, and left the board in 2006. Meantime, his stake in Time Warner, worth $9.1 billion in 2000, shrank by nearly 80%, by dint of the disastrous marriage with America Online. “You can get by on $2 billion,” Turner laughs.
He lost a lot more than money. “[After] they took Ted’s job from him, the company changed a lot and lost that culture of doing for others,” says Laura Turner Seydel, Turner’s oldest daughter, an environmentalist. “They killed the Goodwill Games, which was never a moneymaker, and all the documentaries they were making.” While Turner can put up some of the old bluster, it is tinged with the wistfulness of a retired prizefighter. His office is a museum of bygone glory, with its Emmy awards and photos of past leaders: Turner with Castro, with Jacques Cousteau, with former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, with Mikhail Gorbachev, with Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. “Here’s one with President Obama,” Turner says, perking up. “When I met him I said, ‘I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time.’ He said, ‘I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time.’”
These days Turner is still pretty well connected but packs a lot less throw weight. When it comes to nuclear disarmament, he relies on “jawboning, going around and writing editorials.” To plug the cause he teamed up with Sam Nunn, the onetime Democratic senator from Georgia whose Nunn-Lugar Threat Reduction program has helped deactivate 6,000 nuclear warheads in Russia and former Soviet republics. “You did a film, Last Best Chance,” Dewberry reminds him, a 2005 thriller about terrorists trying to get their hands on loose nukes. Turner has also teamed up with T. Boone Pickens to promote alternative energy. “He and I have done some panels together, primarily talking about getting natural gas implemented as a bridge fuel to solar and wind.”
Turner’s to-do list takes the form of “11 Voluntary Initiatives,” a summary of his pet causes (starting with “I promise to care for planet Earth …”). He keeps a copy in his wallet—minitablets that bear a deliberate, if slightly hubristic, resemblance to the Ten Commandments. “You have to have rules to live by—nations need it, the world needs it, humanity needs it,” he explains. “I thought if we’re gonna start over with a parallel set of rules, voluntary initiatives would be more acceptable because people don’t want to be commanded anymore today.”
Those less forceful initiatives don’t include “Thou shalt not guilt-trip thy friends.” In 1997, after he pledged to give $1 billion to the UN (he’s ponied up $866 million so far), Turner needled fellow billionaires to donate more generously. One of his first targets? “Here I am with Warren Buffett, the richest man in the world,” Turner says, pointing out a photo that long predates the Buffett-Gates Pledge to give away half of one’s fortune. (Turner is a signatory.) “He’s got his wallet in his hands, and I was trying to get it away from him to give money to the United Nations.” Turner recently tried to goad his friend Richard Branson into taking the Pledge. Nothing doing yet. “It’s easy to make promises,” says Turner. “What’s hard is writing the checks.”
And, curiously, so is donating to the public any of the 2 million acres of natural habitat he has bought up in Montana, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Argentina. The second-largest private landowner in America (after Liberty Media’s John Malone), Turner has no plans to give any of it away. “We’ve [already] got wonderful public parks and millions of people go through them,” says Turner. His land “will be protected from development as long as the wind blows and the grass grows, and the laws of the United States are respected.”
This überconservationist is also raising the world’s largest herd of bison, 50,000 head—partly for slaughter. Ted’s Montana Grill, a chain of 46 restaurants Turner cofounded in 2002, is the nation’s largest server of bison meat. Environmentalists are furious for yet another reason. Last year they sued the state of Montana for an unusual agreement that allows dozens of bison to be transferred from Yellowstone National Park to Turner’s Flying D Ranch; in exchange for grazing rights and disease testing, Turner gets to keep most of the offspring.
Does he contradict himself? Sure; such are the prerogatives, it seems, of being a charter member of The Forbes 400. The day after Rupert Murdoch was grilled by Parliament over allegations of wiretapping, Turner is gleefully violating initiative number two. (“I promise to treat all persons everywhere with dignity, respect and friendliness.”) “You have to admit, he’s sure getting into a lot of trouble,” Turner says with a big smile, eyes shining. “My career in broadcasting and media is over, but we didn’t tap into anybody’s wires or anything. We just played by the rules.” His own rules, of course. F
RINGO CHIU/ZUMA PRESS/NEWSCOM
Christel DeHaan
$725 million. Time shares. Indianapolis, Ind. 57. Twice divorced, 3 children. Daughter of German soldier who died in WWII, left home at 16 to become governors in U.K. Immigrated to U.S. 4 years later. Married Jon DeHaan, founder of Resort Condominiums International 1973. Divorced 1987; court awarded her half of the company. Bought remainder from ex-husband 2 years later for $67.5 million; expanded, sold to HFS in 1996 for $825 million. After visiting dilapidated orphanage outside Mexico City 1998, decided to devote herself to poor children in underdeveloped countries. Has since poured $25 million into Christel House charity; opened first learning center last year. Plans to build more in India, Venezuela, Romania.
From the Forbes 400 2000 Issue
John Paul DeJoria
$3.5 billion. Shampoo, tequila. Austin, Tex. 64. Divorced, remarried; 4 children. Navy vet made billions getting people clean with shampoo and sloppy with tequila. Cofounded hair-care outfit John Paul Mitchell Systems with Paul Mitchell (d. 1989) in 1980 with $700; slept in car, sold products door-to-door in Los Angeles. Annual salon product sales now approach $900 million. Created tequila maker Patron Spirits with Martin Crowley (d. 2003) in 1989. With help of celeb friends Clint Eastwood and Wolfgang Puck, made $50 bottles of tequila a necessity at high-end restaurants, nightclubs. Today company sells nearly 2 million cases a year; only Jose Cuervo sells more in the U.S. Bacardi bought minority stake for undisclosed sum in July. East L.A. native loves philanthropy: “Success unshared is total failure.” Supports Food4Africa, Mineseekers, Blazer House.
From the Forbes 400 2008 Issue
Richard Marvin DeVos
Jay Van Andel
Partners. Amway Corp. Ada, Mich. 65, 67. Each married, 4 children; all but 1 work for company. Next-door neighbors, high school buddies. After WWII tried flying service, then hamburger stand; then bought schooner, set sail for Haiti; sank in Cuba. Willing to raise a buck anywhere, started Amway 1959 in basement. Began with soap, added over 400 products sold door-to-door; preached American dream, free enterprise to recruit salespeople. Company pleaded guilty to Canadian customs fraud scheme 1983; fined C$25 million, largest ever. Sales declined, then rebounded as marketing pacts with big names (MCA, Firestone, Coca-Cola) put professional gloss on Bible-thumping image. Over 20 subsidiaries: real estate, jewelry, hotels, etc., though most money made from salespeople’s purchase of tapes, books, rally tickets. With Irwin Jacobs, knocked on Avon’s door 1989 pitching a surprise $2 billion bid for the company; no sale. Spring 1991 enormously profitable Amway Japan went public; Amway’s 92% of stock then worth $8.2 billion. Stock now down over 40%, but Van Andel and DeVos share company still upwards of $6 billion. The 1991 Amway convention theme: “We Touch the World.”
From the Forbes 400 1991 Issue
Max Martin Fischer
Oil. Franklin, Mich. et al. 84. Widowed; remarried, 5 children. Son of Russian immigrant peddler who built small oil reclamation plant. Ohio State 1930. Started as $15-per-week salesman. When plant burned down 1931, approached gas brokers to finance new refinery. “I guess I must have hoodwinked them.” Built up. Offered premium price for oil late 1930s. During WWII, oil scarce, made killing. Sold out to Marathon Oil for stock 1959; Marathon tendered to U.S. Steel 1982. Real estate; Sotheby’s stock. Daughter Mary recently diagnosed with AIDS, gave speech at Republican National Convention. Supports GOP, Israel, Detroit revitalization. “I believe I have an obligation as an American citizen to make a contribution.” Estimated $370 million.
From the Forbes 400 1992 Issue