Media Man

Ted Turner's Improbable Empire

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by Ken Auletta

W. W. Norton and Co.

Due/Published September 2004, 160 pages, cloth

ISBN 0393051684

Ted Turner, the "mouth from the South," revolutionized television. Grasping cable's potential in its infancy, Turner parlayed a tiny UHF station in Atlanta into a national cable superstation; invented the world's first 24-hour cable news channel, CNN; and transformed the MGM film library into lucrative cable networks. Although Turner sold his company to Time Warner and was eventually ousted, his influence is still pervasive in the business world through his philanthropy.

Ken Auletta, whose New Yorker profile of Turner won a National Magazine Award for Best Profile in 2001, has written the first book-length retrospective on the volatile Turner and his roller-coaster career, and received the active cooperation of Turner himself, including fifteen hours of taped interviews. Media Man is a captivating view of a daring entrepreneur, a pioneering company, and the industry they helped create. 6 photographs.