by Lisa Napoli
Conjuring up Dan Rather proved folly. Ted dropped a note to Walter Cronkite, who politely rebuffed the overture with an invitation to sail. Former ABC correspondent Howard K. Smith didn’t return calls. Most other A-list anchors were locked into contracts or disinterested in window-dressing at a crazy start-up on what they perceived to be more lunatic than the lunatic fringe: cable.
The biggest star Reese had at his command was fallen CBS newsman Daniel Schorr, a “Big J” journalist who had three Emmys on his shelf and was as serious about news as Ted was about sailing. His credentials were impeccable. He balanced Ted in another important way—he was a liberal.
The speeches and moderating and $100-a-shot commentaries Schorr had been filing for ITNA did not add up to the steady salary he needed to support his young family. Since his departure from the grand network, Schorr had experienced an identity crisis. Did he miss working on television, or did he just miss the thrill of being recognized? Was he now, without this mighty platform, in danger of vanishing altogether? How intensely had he derived his identity from being on the air? He’d relished the notoriety that led him to once rankle President Nixon so intensely that he’d been included on his famous enemies list. Dan Schorr from the Bronx, despised by the president! He was no faceless newspaper reporter. At the same time, he decried the base commercialism of television, what he called “that make-believe world.” Of course, he acknowledged, it was far more comfortable to poke holes in the medium when he was a star.
But did he wish to be back on TV badly enough to work for Ted—a “drunk” who “sailed ships,” who mocked the news with pratfalls and German shepherds—that was a whole other matter. As dubious as he was about Reese, he was even more worried about Ted.
Lending his name and his reputation to a new venture in an untried medium about which he confessed he knew very little seemed a revolting twist to his vaunted career. What was a cable news network, anyway? Who would want to watch twenty-four hours of news a day, and how did Ted know he could make it work? Then, he remembered his initial reaction to television, how dismissive he’d been of the newer medium.
The carrot of a six-figure salary allowed Schorr to rationalize that this Ted Turner must truly be committed to something important and serious. Why, otherwise, would he pursue a craggy, sixtysomething-year-old journalist such as himself? It certainly wasn’t his looks Ted was after. Still, it wasn’t clear to Schorr that Ted even knew who he was exactly, or his reputation, other than the fact that Reese had told him he was important.
The prospective boss persuaded the dubious journalist to meet him in Vegas at the cable convention to talk things through. When he arrived at nine a.m. sharp at Ted’s penthouse suite in Las Vegas, a beautiful blonde with a big personality named Liz Wickersham was present. She was so dazzling that judges had overlooked the fact that she was wearing a cast on her ankle during the 1976 Miss Georgia competition and crowned her the winner anyway. She’d made it to the semifinals in Miss USA. Ted explained that she was his secretary.
At dinner the night before, she’d impressed Reese when she refereed an awful row between him and Ted, who’d fallen in love with the idea of a wheel format for CNN: a half hour of news, then of sports, then of business, and then of features. He was also pushing Reese to commit to an afternoon children’s news show.
No way to both, Reese protested, flexing his muscles as president. If Ted didn’t want to honor his promise that he would control format, content, and personnel, then he shouldn’t have hired him.
In reality, Reese had more of a vision than a plan for CNN. That vision involved news floating into headquarters from all over the world, producers building their newscasts on the fly, keeping viewers guessing what was coming next, in a sort of fluid, random fashion. “Live, live, live” would be their métier, he told Ted. This was how CNN could set the news agenda for the world.
“What makes you so fucking smart?” Ted countered, angling for a fight, as the plucky Wickersham attempted to soothe the dueling stubborn egos. Reese retorted, “You picked me.” The two men laughed.
Now, as Ted entertained Schorr over breakfast in his suite, it was his turn to offer up his own theory of news. As he paced in his customary circles, he explained to the man who had spent thirty years at CBS that the networks were dinosaurs. The future was in delivering what was happening now, instantly, to the audience. Newspapers were not sustainable, environmentally, and they weren’t fast enough. They would not and could not last, he explained.
That was all very interesting, Schorr said, but what about that German shepherd co-hosting the news on his station—the mockery you’ve made of journalism in the past? Ted admitted that, no, he hadn’t taken news seriously. But everything was different now. Schorr could be the very first employee—since Reese had not officially signed on. He’d earn stock options and could make up whatever title he wanted. He could be a vice president! But he needed to say yes, now, because later in the day, he planned to make a formal announcement about Cable News Network, and he needed Schorr right next to him.
The news veteran explained that he had no interest in serving in any managerial role. That had never been his ambition. He was a journalist, a news analyst—not a suit. As such, he could not be expected to read ads, or to do anything that would violate his journalistic standards. After all, with what had happened to him at CBS, imagine what could happen in the hands of Captain Outrageous?
Schorr permitted himself to see some upside to this twenty-four-hour news idea—and to his embarking on this marriage of convenience. For years at the network, he’d had to condense his reports to fit an abbreviated format. News always ranked second to the entertainment programs that were the network mainstay—and cash cow. He recalled the struggles at CBS to deliver breaking news after the nightly newscast had aired. A channel independent of the mighty networks might also be less likely to collapse to government pressures. Yes, Ted had come from a different planet than him, and he certainly sounded different. But it seemed a worthy gamble for the possibility of reviving his career.
Ted was eager to lock Schorr in.
“You write an agreement that says you won’t have to do anything you don’t want to, and I’ll sign it,” he said.
Schorr rode the elevator down to the lobby, conferred on the phone with his agent, and, then, on Las Vegas Hilton stationery, scratched out a page-long summary that read, “No demand will be made upon him that would compromise his professional ethics or responsibility.” Reese was impressed. He’d never seen such a contract provision before. If Ted was willing to promise that in order to get Schorr, he was serious indeed.
* * *
The energy in the small hotel conference room was intense as the three men filed in at four-thirty p.m. on May 21, 1979, to announce their plan to conquer the world. In the six months since Ted had last made this pitch, the exuberance over the union of cable and satellite had continued to sweep the industry. Another wave of new cable services had been announced, from a kid’s channel called Nickelodeon, an entertainment service called Showtime, and a variety of religious channels. Fifteen hundred earth stations had been installed at cable systems coast to coast, ready to receive and transmit new signals.
Standing in front of the trade press, Ted introduced his confederates: Reese Schonfeld as president, a veteran broadcaster who’d been longing for this day forever, and former CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr, who said since Ted was willing to stake his entire fortune on CNN, he was willing to stake his reputation.
The seed funding for CNN, Ted told the group, would come from the sale of WRET in Charlotte, which he’d just put on the market. In a year, he declared, they would launch Cable News Network, the very first all-news network. Ever the salesman, Ted promised it would be nothing less than “the greatest achievement in the history of journalism.” He preened triumphantly, a man who’d watched hardly a frame of what either of the two men beside him had created—a man who hardly ever watched the news.
1 For a glimpse insi
de the newsroom, see part one of WNYW’s “25th Anniversary of the 10 O’Clock News Special,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyNTKg7ZeKY.
2 A few years later, he was told in confidence why he hadn’t landed his dream job. Tensions were rising then in the Middle East, and having more Jewish staffers would make the staff inflexible. The irony was not lost on Schorr that this discrimination had come down from a Jewish-owned newspaper.
3 Another force upending media consumption at about the same time was the new technology, the home videotape recorder. See https://reelrundown.com/film-industry/The-History-Of-Home-Movie-Entertainment for more information if you didn’t live through this period.
4 Woy later sued him for $17 million in damages for defamation. After an eight-day trial in 1983, a jury deliberated for an hour and cleared Ted.
5 Whether it occurred to Ted or Reese that employing an astrologer as a television commentator echoed the fears proposed by Paddy Chayefsky in his acclaimed film Network (where “Sybil the Soothsayer” is hired to boost the news ratings) isn’t clear.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Every Drop of Blood
Ted paced his office, brandishing his sword, slicing the air as if destroying the evil television networks with the blade, as he announced his intentions to annihilate time and space by making news available twenty-four hours a day. Histrionics from his swashbuckling boss didn’t faze Bill Tush, but this day’s diatribe felt more ominous.
By providing better access to information, Ted blustered, he’d be creating a better world. And because of this, he told his “low-budget Walter Cronkite,” a change in the programming was going to be necessary—effective immediately.
This did not mean the end for his star announcer. Back when Tush amazingly, unwittingly, was emerging as the first star of cable television, Ted had promised that as long as he himself had a job, so would Tush.
But now, the unorthodox news shenanigans simply had to stop. No more reading the headlines in a bunny suit. No more sermons from Brother Gold; goodbye, special reports from the News Chicken. From that day forward, Bill Tush would have to play it straight.
In a flash, like that, goodbye to all the fun, and hello, self-serious journalism. Tush felt crushed by defeat—as well as ridiculous. Who was going to take him seriously? He had never wanted to be, was never going to be, a bona fide journalist. Making him act like a real reporter, he said, was like asking kid’s comedian Soupy Sales to change his outfit and put the pies away.
Ted made it perfectly clear that it wasn’t he who had a problem with his approach. Too many others had pointed to it as the chief reason why they couldn’t take his Cable News Network seriously. (And they hadn’t, as Tush had, witnessed Ted roaming the halls of the station donning a purple wizard’s hat topped with a satellite dish that someone had sent him.) And right now, getting this project off the ground was his number one priority.
Chief among the detractors was Reese. Even with Schorr on board, he’d been encountering skepticism from many a potential recruit. There was something suspicious about a non-journalist committing his fortune to something as risky as an all-news channel. Was CNN Ted’s master plan to control the news? Did he harbor ambitions as an anchorman? When he said CNN was a “crusade,” that he was starting it to “straighten this country out,” what exactly did he mean? What, asked a reporter, was to keep him from inserting himself into editorial operations at a news channel of his own creation?
“Nothing, dummy,” Ted responded. “Of course I’m going to manage the news. Sure, if I want to. I’m paying for it, why shouldn’t I?”
Reese scrambled to do damage control, explaining that Ted simply didn’t understand the language of journalism. He didn’t mean control or manage as in inserting himself editorially. (At least, Reese was pretty sure he didn’t.) What he meant was that unlike the networks, CNN would not be beholden to the whims of advertisers. The all-news channel, under his control, would be a citadel against manipulation. The networks, he continued, lived by the clock, which by itself altered how and what got covered. “Somebody forced to make a public statement can wait until the deadline is at hand, speak his piece, and flee,” he said. “He knows it will be reported on the evening news more or less as he said it because there was no time to check it out. But we’re not just on for a half hour. Our reporters can come right back on the air forty-five minutes later, correcting and amplifying. On CNN, the news will keep on unfolding all night, and you’ll be watching our reporters at work.” Despite that ample airtime, he intended for it to be dedicated to real stories, important stories, not just tales of rapes, murders, plane crashes, and fires in abandoned buildings.
The ultimate public skepticism had arrived in the form of an article in Newsweek. The magazine ran pictures side by side—one of Tush, seated behind his ticky-tacky anchor desk with his paper-bag-clad special correspondent, the Unknown Newsman. The other of Daniel Schorr, principled and Emmy-winning steward of the Fourth Estate. The caption asked what everyone in the media world was wondering: “Can Ted Turner go from this to this?”
Ted needed all the help he could get turning the doubters of his unprecedented idea into believers—and, more important, into subscribers. Only when there were enough eyeballs would CNN pay for itself and become sustainable. Like it or not, he told Tush, playing it straight was how it had to be. And so, the “fancy news set” sign came down, and the cardboard news desk got turned over and recast. Introducing Bill Tush, anchorman.
Panic and confusion began to spread around the dumpy halls of channel 17. Even Ted’s devoted employees were doubtful this could work. Earlier chatter about an all-sports cable network evaporated. Suddenly, the engineers were ordering up two dozen three-quarter-inch videotape machines on which to play back news stories? The idea that a purveyor of wrestling, old movies, and I Love Lucy reruns suddenly wished to stake a claim in the news business, said his ad salesman, Gerry Hogan, was as preposterous as if “some little company making seat belts suddenly decided to build a revolutionary new automobile that would change the face of transportation.” The precariousness and the struggle of the earlier WTCG years were still visible in the rearview mirror, even now that millions of viewers across forty-six states could tune in. This new, crazy idea could very well kill Ted’s finances—destroy their beautiful little television cocoon and free-form fun. They’d all be out on the street.
To reinforce the fear that gripped the staff, Hogan fashioned a two-foot-high cardboard sign, in heavy type, and perched it on Ted’s desk—almost like a ransom note:
Turner Be Sure
That The News
Operation
Doesn’t Bury Us
Don’t Get
Carried Away
Be Absolutely
Positive
It Will Work
At Least Don’t
Put Us Against
The Wall
Before he could stash this entreaty away behind his bookcase, a reporter for the Atlanta paper who’d come to interview Ted got a gander at it. Ted waved away the negativity and insisted to the curious journalist that he had no intention of jeopardizing his cash cow. In fact, he was about to spruce it up even more, starting with its name. Finally, he was in a position to chase the call letters he’d long desired: WTBS. Turner Broadcasting System.
His query to the original WTBS—the college radio station, Technology Broadcasting System, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts—turned out to be perfectly timed. Student management had been struggling with how to raise the money to pay for a new transmitter when a man claiming to be Ted Turner rang up. The timing was so uncanny that, if it wasn’t a prank, it seemed a sign from the heavens. Ted offered $25,000, they countered with a request for the $50,000 they needed, and, after he readily agreed, they wished they’d asked for twice as much. The MIT station was rechristened WMBR (Walker Memorial Basement Radio, after the building where they dwelled).
In short order, Ted’s promotions people were
readying revamped logos and station IDs to promote their new identity. WTBS, the Super-Station, was born. Inside, doubters remained pessimistic. They were sure these new call letters stood not for “Turner Broadcasting System” but Watch Ted’s Boat Sink.
Channel 17 had grown out of more than its name and approach to news. As a dribble of staff arrived to plan the news channel, the run-down building appeared ready to burst at its decrepit seams. As a short-term fix, space was taken in an even more ramshackle structure, a decaying white building up the block on the other side of a cluster of old oak trees, a place its new inhabitants imagined, because of the rusty towel bars attached to the backs of the doors, had once served as a rehab center or house of ill-repute. (It actually had done turns as local headquarters for both the Girl Scouts and the Georgia branch of the American Automobile Association.) The mere rumbling of a passing bus down West Peachtree Street set coffee cups perched on desks to quake-like chattering. Here, the employees soon to come would plot out the “greatest achievement in the history of journalism” while awaiting more permanent quarters.
With just eleven months before launch, building a studio from scratch that could accommodate both channel 17 and CNN was out of the question. One of the few ready possibilities was the dilapidated Brookwood Hotel, an old colonial masterpiece, situated on five acres a few miles north of midtown. It could be had for a million dollars. Over its various incarnations, the hotel had served as a swingers’ club, a spot for gay and lesbian cruisers, and a home for elderly ladies. Some believed the structure was inhabited by ghosts from Civil War battles fought adjacent to the property. An earlier potential buyer, who’d eyed it for a recording studio, felt the structure so psychically polluted that he considered bringing in an exorcist.