Forty-six years ago, Ted Turner covered new ground with the launch of Cable News Network, the first 24-hour news channel. Turner, who died May 6 at age 87, began his media empire when he took over his dad’s billboard business in the 1960s. He turned his attention to radio and TV and, by 1970, had acquired an Atlanta-based UHF channel that would become the cable channel TBS.
In 1978, Turner connected with media executive Reese Schonfeld about starting the nation’s first all-news channel. The pair co-founded CNN, and while Schonfeld had a journalism background, Turner was more interested in capitalizing on burgeoning satellite technology and would boast that he knew “diddly-squat” about news.
“We were working around the clock and had no idea what it would become, but we just knew we were doing something that nobody had done before,” recalls Rick Davis, CNN’s longest-tenured executive, who retired in 2021 after 40 years with the channel. When it debuted June 1, 1980, CNN employed 300 staffers and was headquartered in Atlanta; its bureaus included an L.A. office on Sunset Boulevard that remained open until 2024, when staff shifted to the Burbank campus of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.
