Captain Outrageous (Turner) was a remarkable guy, a business genius, yachtsman and an inveterate drunk with an almost “Bidenesque” ability to stick his foot in his mouth. In an effort to “be someone of consequence”, he funded multiple idiotic programs (the now defunct Goodwill Games, The (corrupt) United Nations Foundation, (the socialist anticapitalistic) Captain Planet…) and supported all manner of then fringe liberal causes. The driving force behind his efforts was a desire to “outdo” his dad.
However, the “Mouth of the South” had already become someone of consequence without realizing it. CNN is just part of that legacy and Turner allowed it to go to shit in an effort to ”squash Rupert Murdoch like a bug”. Mad about a sailing rule violation and boat collision with Murdoch, Turner set out to make CNN into a “Fox killer”. His plan was to combine with another “super station” and run Murdoch out of the game. Conservative estimates are that Turner lost more than $7,000,000,000 in his merger of the Turner Network with Time Warner and today 2-3 shows on Fox regularly have more combined viewers than the entire lineup on CNN.
Life was so much simpler when America’s Cup boats didn’t fly, you could watch wrestling, old movies and the Braves on channel 17 and TVs didn’t have 295 channels…
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Captain Outrageous (Turner) was a remarkable guy, a business genius, yachtsman and an inveterate drunk with an almost “Bidenesque” ability to stick his foot in his mouth. In an effort to “be someone of consequence”, he funded multiple idiotic programs (the now defunct Goodwill Games, The (corrupt) United Nations Foundation, (the socialist anticapitalistic) Captain Planet…) and supported all manner of then fringe liberal causes. The driving force behind his efforts was a desire to “outdo” his dad.
However, the “Mouth of the South” had already become someone of consequence without realizing it. CNN is just part of that legacy and Turner allowed it to go to shit in an effort to ”squash Rupert Murdoch like a bug”. Mad about a sailing rule violation and boat collision with Murdoch, Turner set out to make CNN into a “Fox killer”. His plan was to combine with another “super station” and run Murdoch out of the game. Conservative estimates are that Turner lost more than $7,000,000,000 in his merger of the Turner Network with Time Warner and today 2-3 shows on Fox regularly have more combined viewers than the entire lineup on CNN.
Life was so much simpler when America’s Cup boats didn’t fly, you could watch wrestling, old movies and the Braves on channel 17 and TVs didn’t have 295 channels…