Call Me Ted: The Autobiography of Ted Turner

Overview
Ted Turner's autobiography is an expansive, candid account of a life that helped reshape American media and philanthropy. He narrates a rise from Southern roots to global prominence, describing the practical gambles and restless ambition that produced a broadcast empire and a distinctive public persona. The tone mixes brashness, humor, and introspection as Turner explains the motives behind his bold business moves and public stances.
The book moves chronologically through personal and professional milestones but often pauses for broader reflections on power, responsibility, and the responsibilities of wealth. Stories of boardroom fights sit beside recollections of solitary moments on ranches and yachts, giving a sense of a man driven by both competitive intensity and a search for meaning beyond profit.

Early Life and Business Beginnings
Turner traces his upbringing in the Deep South, the influence of family expectations, and the early taste for commerce that led him into advertising and outdoor billboards. He recalls learning to take hard, immediate decisions and the practical lessons of running small enterprises in a conservative social environment. These formative experiences are presented as the foundation for a temperament that tolerated high risk and favored decisive action.
The narrative covers the transition from regional entrepreneur to television owner, outlining the early challenges of operating fringe UHF stations and experimenting with programming and distribution. Turner emphasizes how constraints, limited reach, scarce capital, forced creative thinking, ultimately fostering innovations that would pay off as the cable era matured.

Turner Broadcasting and CNN
A central strand of the memoir is the founding and growth of Turner Broadcasting. Turner describes the conversion of a single television station into a national "superstation" and the strategic logic behind using satellite distribution to break the geographic limits of local television. He frames these moves as technological opportunism: spotting how emerging platforms could amplify content and brand.
The decision to launch a 24-hour news channel is presented as perhaps his most consequential gamble. Turner recounts skepticism from colleagues, advertising executives, and the broader industry, and he emphasizes persistence, conviction, and a willingness to spend money to change the market. The creation of a continuous news operation is depicted as both a business innovation and a public-service experiment, one that transformed expectations about immediacy and scale in journalism.

Personal Life and Public Image
Interwoven with corporate chronicles are candid accounts of Turner's private life and the media scrutiny that followed. He addresses multiple high-profile marriages, parenting, and the personal costs of celebrity, acknowledging errors and moments of personal difficulty. Turner does not shy away from the controversies that attracted attention and sometimes criticism, offering his perspective on how public perception diverged from private reality.
These passages convey the tension between a fiercely independent temperament and the social obligations that accompany fame. Turner reflects on how his bluntness and unconventional choices fueled both admiration and backlash, and he considers the ways in which personal narrative shaped and complicated his professional identity.

Philanthropy and Environmentalism
Later chapters turn to Turner's philanthropic commitments and environmental activism, describing major donations, conservation projects, and the creation of institutions to channel his giving. He recounts a desire to steward land and wildlife, to address global problems through sizable, targeted funding, and to leverage his resources for systemic impact. The account of his large-scale support for international causes and for preserving ecosystems conveys an evolution from industrialist to steward.
Turner also shares practical motivations for his giving: a belief in measurable outcomes, a disdain for purely symbolic gestures, and a preference for direct action. These reflections tie his business instincts to his philanthropic strategy, showing continuity between risk-taking in commerce and ambition in philanthropy.

Leadership and Legacy
Throughout the memoir Turner articulates a leadership philosophy rooted in decisiveness, audacity, and impatience for incrementalism. He offers sharp judgments about corporate culture, the media business, and the responsibilities of those with wealth and influence, often insisting that moral clarity and business acumen can, and should, coexist. His anecdotes illustrate a management style that prized autonomy, rapid moves, and a willingness to absorb public heat.
The portrait that emerges is of an iconoclast whose experiments altered the landscape of television, news, and public giving. Turner's legacy, as portrayed here, is uneven but unmistakable: he helped invent new forms of media distribution, changed how news is delivered, and directed vast sums to causes he believed mattered. The book closes with a sense of unfinished business and a conviction that bold choices, for better or worse, drive historical change.