Nolte: Biographer Says CNN Founder Ted Turner Hates 'What Jeff Zucker Did with CNN'
CNN founder Ted Turner despises “what Jeff Zucker did with CNN,” according to his biographer and longtime friend, Porter Bibb.
Bibb, who has been a close friend of Turner’s for almost fifty years and wrote the billionaire’s biography nearly 30 years ago, says the larger-than-life Turner is in bad shape now. The 83-year-old businessman and philanthropist is in declining health due to Lewy Body Syndrome, the same incurable brain disease Robin Williams suffered from before he committed suicide.
In a lengthy interview with the Ankler, Bibb discloses that he stays in close touch with Turner and the two of them have discussed the fall of CNN:
[ANKLER] What does Turner think about CNN now?
[BIBB]: I have not spoken to him [recently], because candidly he cannot really carry on a conversation. His brain is starting to go. But he’s been adamantly [against] what Zucker did with CNN, turning it into an opinion network, to compete with Fox and losing the concept of hard news 24/7 was wrong.
Q. He’d agree with John Malone (who suggested CNN emphasize hard news)?
They’re buddies, even though Malone (the single-largest shareholder in Discovery, which is merging with CNN’s parent WarnerMedia) basically beat him into the ground when he came up short on trying to buy the MGM film library. But they became very close after that. John Malone is not only speaking his own opinion of what CNN should be doing as an all-news network, but he speaks for Ted.
Turner founded and launched CNN in 1980 and promised CNN would be there to cover the end of the world.
“We won’t be signing off until the world ends,” he said just prior to launch. “We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event… we’ll play the National Anthem only one time, on the 1st of June [the network’s debut date], and when the end of the world comes, we’ll play ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ before we sign off.”
What Turner meant about playing the National Anthem only that one time is that CNN would never sign off. Back then, it was customary for television networks to sign off at the end of the broadcast day by playing the National Anthem. The idea of 24 hour television, with programming that ran around the clock, was unheard-of at the time.
More than that has changed. The idea that a far-left propaganda outlet like CNN would close its end-of-world coverage with a Christian hymn like “Nearer, My God, to Thee” is preposterous. You know those cretins would play John Lennon’s Imagine.
As far as Ted Turner goes, I’m happy the dynamic billionaire lived to see Jeff Zucker resign in disgrace. Hopefully, he’ll live long enough to see a humiliating housecleaning of the whole smug and corrupt bunch. Hopefully, I will as well.
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