09/01/2000

Noble Tycoon Magnate Ted Turner Likes to Put his Money Where His Heart Is

By Claudia Dreifus, Modern Maturity

It's hard not to think of Robert Edward Turner III as a swashbuckler. He is founder of CNN and Turner Broadcasting System; the largest single stockholder of one of the world's largest media conglomerates, Time Warner, Inc.; the owner of the entire MGM film library; the head of Castle Rock Entertainment, New Line Cinema, and Hanna-Barbera film companies; the owner of the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks; and the yachtsman who won the America's Cup in 1977. He is also 61 and currently undergoing a series of transitions—passages, if you will—that seem to herald yet another new chapter in his ongoing adventure story. For starters, his eight-year marriage to actress and political activist Jane Fonda, 62, appears to be over. Last January, Fonda and Turner issued a joint statement announcing a separation, declaring, "We have mutually decided to spend some time apart." Meanwhile the broadcasting, sports, entertainment, and advertising businesses he spent almost 40 years nurturing have begun to fall increasingly outside his personal control, ever since Turner Broadcasting System's 1996 merger with Time Warner. And they will in all likelihood continue to do so if Time Warner's merger with America Online goes forward. Turner is putting the bulk of his energy these days into philanthropy and his political beliefs. He is not only one of the richest men in the world, but also one of the givingest. His Turner Foundation donated $49 million last year to groups that, among other things, helped save the whooping crane, discouraged teen pregnancy in Georgia, and cleaned up Russia's much-befouled environment. Turner's United Nations Foundation, funded with a personal gift of $1 billion, has dispensed more than $250 million to a variety of environmental, population-reduction, and human-rights projects. And this year, through his membership in several organizations, including the advisory board of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, he's launched his latest—and perhaps grandest—endeavor, an international campaign to reduce the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. Modern Maturity sent journalist Claudia Dreifus to talk with him in his Atlanta offices this past April. Her report: "Though Ted Turner was giving few interviews at the time due to his marital separation, talking to him was a journalist's dream. Unlike most tycoons, he speaks with unguarded openness—and with an engaging passion about the issues he cares about. There's no 'spin' to a Ted Turner interview. Just energy and passion. Indeed, he began our session before I could even ask a question." MM: Good morning, Mr. Turner— TT: You're from AARP, right? That's a very, very powerful group. And important. People are living longer and are more active than ever. And I'm one of those swinging seniors. Well, I'm not a swinging senior, I'm an active senior. I don't feel old. And neither do most older people. MM: How are you dealing with growing older? TT: Well, I certainly don't want to emulate my father, who shot himself at 53. I want to make a positive contribution. I'd be miserable if I were just sitting around watching TV and not able to do something worthwhile. One thing for sure: I intend to stay around my family and help out with the grandchildren when I get too old to do anything else. I don't want to be shuttled off to an old folks' home. That's my greatest fear, the absolute worst nightmare to me. My mother was in an old folks' home; it gives me the willies. Remember that saying: Youth is wasted on the young? Well, you can be young late in life if you think you are. Just because your hearing has suffered doesn't mean you can't be young at heart. And there are a lot of older people who are young at heart, believe me. MM: If the merger with AOL is approved, you'll be one of many officers far down in the company. Won't that be difficult for an alpha male like yourself? TT: Of course. Actually, I don't really have a number in the hierarchy at all. Turner Network Television, the cable networks, they do report to me, and I oversee and advise [at the time of the interview—Ed.], but I'm not in competition for a line position in the new company. I'm vice chairman, which is kind of like vice president. Basically, I get trotted out at ceremonial occasions, like the Emperor of Japan. MM: You must feel some empathy for Al Gore. Vice presidents don't get to do much. TT: It's more like being the Queen of England. She doesn't have any authority, except moral authority. I have some moral authority. But hey, I was the king for 37 years. How long do you want to be king? I like the Pope, I think he's terrific. But I don't believe you ought to have the job when you can't stand up anymore. I believe in retirement at a certain point. MM: There was a time when you considered running for President. What happened? TT: I thought about it briefly. I didn't run because I didn't have time and, basically, I'm more interested in global survival issues. A Presidential race is more about domestic issues. I don't want to get bogged down in how much the gasoline tax ought to be. MM: You're about to launch a campaign to abolish nuclear weapons worldwide. Is such a thing really possible? TT: Last year my net worth went up, so I decided to throw some resources, brain power, time, and energy into trying to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and eventually eliminate them. Years ago, when I started CNN, I figured if I was going to run a news organization I needed to familiarize myself with what challenges were facing humanity. In 1980, the year CNN started, the Cold War was the greatest danger to humanity. By 1991 the Cold War had ended and, like a lot of people, I figured the nuclear threat would go away. But in 1998, when India and Pakistan tested their bombs and politicians decided that nuclear proliferation was too complicated to deal with, they just let the bombs sit there. Like dynamite in the basement. I want to get that dynamite out of the basement. The only reason we still have our nuclear warheads targeting Russia is because they have theirs targeting us. It's crazy. We're not enemies anymore. We're sitting at a table with someone with whom we're getting along reasonably well—with cocked pistols pointed at each other's heads. The right thing to do, the economical thing to do, is to rid the world of nuclear weapons so we won't need to spend more money to maintain them or build them or modernize them anymore—$25 to $30 billion a year—or spend a trillion more for the Star Wars system. We could use that money to improve education and get Social Security on a more solid footing. MM: How would you characterize your political beliefs at the present time? TT: Constantly evolving. I don't belong to either party. I look at each candidate's views on the issues. I like candidates who look up, not down. I think one person can make a difference. Jacques Cousteau made a difference. So did Rachel Carson, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King. I also think Adolf Hitler made a difference, but of the wrong sort. I'm strong on global cooperation. I'd like to see a world where we look for the nobility in people. I'm pro-choice and pro-environment. I'm for a balanced budget. I'm for making Social Security secure. MM: Is it secure? TT: I'm dumbfounded that Social Security wasn't funded like all retirement plans are. They just spend the money that they take from everybody instead of investing it so our money will be there for us. [In fact, Social Security funds are invested in government securities. —Ed.] It's basically an unfunded pension plan, which is ridiculous. That's fiscally unsound. MM: You favor campaign finance reform, but that's not something most heads of broadcast companies would admit. TT: I'm a citizen before I'm a broadcaster. I consider myself a citizen of the world before I'm anything else. MM: Yes, but doesn't CNN make a lot of money from paid political advertising? TT: Not really. Most of the money is spent on local races. The only candidates who use us are Presidential candidates, and they don't use us very much. If we had campaign finance reform, that wouldn't mean people couldn't buy issue advertising. I'm talking about doing away with all the soft money that people distribute to the campaigns—not doing away with democracy. Congress is supposed to reflect the will of the people, and there's nothing wrong with people being able to contact them and lobby them. I believe in freedom of speech. What I don't think people should be able to do is give a disproportionate amount of money to candidates and buy them at election time. And that's what's happening now. MM: Three years ago, you gave a billion dollars to the United Nations. How come? TT: The U.N. needed a morale boost. I came up with the idea on the spur of the moment. I wish I could have said that it was the result of careful deliberation over a period of months or years, but I got the idea a couple of days before I was slated to speak at the United Nations Association. I wanted to say something that would have an impact, so I thought, Why not give them some money—a lot of money? That was certainly one of my proudest moments. It was a third of everything I had at the time. In one night. Boom! MM: Aren't you afraid that giving away so much might cripple you financially? TT: Four times in my life I came close to going broke. In 1963, when my dad passed away and I was 24 years old, I tried to keep the company going, though it was heavily in debt. I almost went broke there. Then in 1970 I almost went under when I got in the television business with the UHF station in Atlanta. The next time was in 1980 when I started CNN. I gambled everything on it. The most recent time was when I bought MGM in 1985. In the first five years of my philanthropy, I gave away half of what I had. And that's a lot to give away when you're in your 50s, let me tell you. Most people tithe, if they do anything. They give away 10 percent of what they make every year. I gave away half. As I learned to give more, I got more courageous. You have to be courageous to give. MM: A mutual friend of ours said you're the most fearless person she's ever met. Aren't you afraid of anything? TT: The prospect of a nuclear accident frightens me. Flying in inclement weather frightens me though I wouldn't say I'm huddled in terror. MM: Is philanthropy hard work? TT: Intelligent philanthropy is. I use the same management techniques with charitable giving that I use in making money. We have dozens of people working on who should get money and how it should be handled. Then we monitor it to see that the money is invested wisely. Before we make another grant to the same organization, we make sure the money's not been wasted or embezzled. It's not easy to make money, and it's not easy to give it away. You have to do it in an intelligent and orderly fashion. MM: What does humanitarianism do for you? TT: It gives a purpose to my life and makes me feel good to know that I'm at least trying to help out, that my money is a positive force in the world. Most of the happiest people I've met are generous people. Selfish people are usually pretty miserable. But I do more than just give money. I mean, I created the Better World Society, a nonprofit organization. I set up the Goodwill Games. I did a lot of television exchanges with the former Soviet Union to bring our two countries closer together. And lo and behold, in 1991 the Cold War was over. You know the old adage about putting enough pieces of straw on a camel and you'll break him? A lot of people worked on that. MM: You also give to women's issues. TT: That's because women have gotten the short end of the stick for a long time. They live longer than men but don't get equal rights. Particularly in the developing world. They can't drive cars, they're brutalized. I mean, things are going on around the world that would curdle your blood. I'm trying to correct some of those with the work I'm doing with the U.N. I've said many times that men should be disqualified from public office for 100 years. Let the women run the planet for the next 100 years. They'd do a better job than us because they're not as warlike or as aggressive. MM: What about Margaret Thatcher? TT: … Well, there are exceptions. And there are a lot of men who are peaceful—like me, okay? But you can't say the exceptions don't prove the rule. Generally, women are more nurturing, more loving, and more peaceful than men are. Men are usually more aggressive. It's in our genes. MM: It's been said that you're actually very thrifty in your private life. TT: How do you define "thrifty"? For ten years I lived in my office. For 20 years I never paid for a haircut. I shined my own shoes. I thought that was how to save money and get rich. MM: Let me put it this way: Have you ever used your AARP card for discounts? TT: No, but I never buy anything. Hardly ever. Almost everything I own has been given to me. I haven't bought a suit in seven or eight years. My wife bought me one a few Christmases ago. If you take good care of your clothes, you can wear a suit for 20 years. I never buy anything except land. MM: Is it true that you're the largest single private landowner in America? TT: That's what I'm told, as far as acreage is concerned, not value. There are people who own one block of New York City that's worth more than all the land I have. I think I have approximately 1,700,000 acres. MM: Why collect land? TT: Why not? It's an opportunity to save the environment. One way to save it from pillaging is to buy it and preserve it. Mostly what I have is land out West, on the Great Plains and on the edge of the Rocky Mountains. I try and let it remain natural. I don't have cattle. I got the cattle off and put bison in. And deer and antelope and prairie dogs and elk. I like to encourage wild animals that were indigenous to the area. Cattle were originally brought in from Europe, did you know that? MM: Where did this interest in land and the environment come from? TT: I've always been interested in the totality of the planet. When I was a kid, I read a lot of books about animals in Africa, about butterflies, birds, whales, plants, flowers, trees, everything. The natural world fascinated me. There are public roads going through my property, and one of the things that really drives me nuts is people throwing trash out of their car windows. So I go out and pick it up. I get a sense of accomplishment doing that because you're doing something to make the world better, something you can actually see. MM: You've been married three times and recently announced a separation from Jane Fonda. Is marriage just not for you? TT: Marriage isn’t the problem. If I got divorced, I'd probably get married again. I'll marry the first person who comes along. My problem is, I love every woman I meet. I never met a woman I didn't like. Men have been mean to me, but no woman ever has. Finding someone you can live happily ever after with has always been my dream, but somehow that has eluded me. I may not be able to live with women, but I haven't given up. You can't give up in life. MM: You own a complete library of films. Which movies would you rank as the best? TT: I'd say my all-time favorites would be Gone With the Wind, Gandhi, Lawrence of Arabia, and Empire of the Sun. MM: Those are all big, dramatic, sweeping stories. In a way, your life has a sort of a David Lean scale to it, doesn't it? TT: Sure. I would have liked to have been a hero in some earlier time, a knight in shining armor. To have ridden with King Arthur or charged at Gettysburg. I would have liked that. What's wrong with having dreams of glory?

<< Back to News Articles       back to top