Call Me Ted

by Ted Turner

  So Roy called up afterward and spoke to Bob Shaye and me about the talk with Ted and said, “You’re not going to believe this but Ted Turner is very eager to meet with you.”

  At the time we didn’t know Ted at all but in thinking about it, if there was one person we might be open to talking to it was Ted Turner. He’s an iconoclastic guy. He’s not a bureaucrat and we weren’t bureaucrats. If anybody could understand us and if there was anybody out there we might be able to work with, he could be the guy. We still didn’t want to sell but if nothing else we figured it would be great to meet him, so with enormous skepticism we flew down to Atlanta. When we got up to his office Ted showed us all his Oscar statuettes from his MGM acquisition and Civil War memorabilia and then he went on with the meeting as if he had already done a deal with us! It was like someone turned on a switch in him and he said, “I’m acquiring you guys and you’re going to come in here and make more money than your business has ever made before. We’re on the same wavelength. You formed your business and are still running it, I formed my business and I’m still running it.” He just went on and on and it was really overwhelming in a funny and bizarre way.

  We had a lot to think about as we flew back to New York. Bob and I had always enjoyed being independent and emotionally we weren’t ready to sell our company. But in many ways Ted was right—we were on the same wavelength. We had very similar business experiences and were in many respects similar kinds of people.

  New Line and Castle Rock were solid companies run by great people and we quickly negotiated deals with them. I didn’t know if the board would approve one, both, or neither but it came down to a vote at the board meeting in the summer of 1993. We were meeting in a room at the St. Regis Hotel in New York, and Bob Shaye and Mike Lynne from New Line and Alan Horn from Castle Rock each had to make presentations directly to the board. This was an unusual practice and it turned out to be an unusual meeting. I remember the Time Warner directors being particularly difficult. To open the questioning of Michael Lynne and Bob Shaye, Michael Fuchs, at the time the head of HBO, asked, “Isn’t it true that you guys just make B movies that most people really aren’t that interested in?” It was a tough way to start, but Bob and Mike answered by explaining that they didn’t think of movies as A or B but instead tried to produce ones that would be profitable.

  The discussions continued to be contentious and right up to the vote it wasn’t clear which way it would go. During a break in the meeting someone asked for individual vote counts, so we went around the table and one by one, the three Time Warner directors made similar statements filled with legalese like, “I have not consulted with my colleagues on this but I’ve studied the film business and believe that its risky nature will add to the volatility of Turner’s earnings.” They all said pretty much the same thing but instead of voting against the deals or exercising their veto right they claimed a possible conflict and abstained.

  The way it wound up, we needed one more vote from an outside director and it all came down to Brian Roberts from Comcast. His company was not in the film business so he wasn’t conflicted. Brian said that we were doing a good job running Turner, and that these film companies seemed to make good strategic sense to our company, and he enthusiastically supported the deals. (To this day, when I see Brian I thank him for letting me get into the movie business.) After being denied the chance to go after a major studio, for about $600 million we had acquired two smaller ones and I was determined to make our new programming ventures succeed.

  At the same time, I was pushing TNT to produce more and better original movies and miniseries, and the one I was most excited about was Gettysburg. I had always had great interest in the Civil War, and one of my favorite works on the subject was Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. Ron Maxwell adapted the book into a screenplay and would also serve as the director of the project, which we had originally designed to be a miniseries for TNT.

  Gettysburg would be our most ambitious original production, and Maxwell’s terrific script helped attract an incredible cast including Martin Sheen, Jeff Daniels, Tom Berenger, and Sam Elliott. The National Park Service allowed us to shoot on the Gettysburg battlefield and as the dailies started coming in I knew that this miniseries was going to be great. I got so excited about the production that Maxwell asked if I wanted to make a cameo. I let them cast me as Colonel Waller T. Patton, a Confederate officer. There I was in full uniform and makeup out there in the fields with a huge battalion of Civil War reenactors. When it came time for my part, Maxwell yelled “Action!” and I led a charge only to be shot down. (Years later, I also made a cameo in Gods and Generals, a follow-up to Gettysburg, but curiously, neither of these performances led to any more acting offers!)

  I was so impressed with the quality of this production that it gave me an idea—before it airs on TNT, we should release it in theaters. The first, obvious objection I received was that the movie would be way too long. Even if they edited aggressively, it would be hard to bring it in under five hours.

  “No problem,” I joked, “at five hours, we could charge double!”

  I thought that Gettysburg had a chance to become a classic epic in the tradition of Lawrence of Arabia and Gone With the Wind and I figured that a theatrical release would only add to the title’s value when we aired it on TNT and released it on video. I tried to get the New Line and Castle Rock people excited about it but they kept saying it was too long to play in theaters. I explained that we were working hard to shorten it and they’d understand my enthusiasm if they’d just take a look at it.

  Alan Horn at Castle Rock had given me a particularly hard time about the movie’s length and during a trip to Los Angeles I called to tell him I had a version I wanted him to see. When he said he could do it that afternoon I asked him what time.

  “I can probably do it some time after lunch, say around 2:30. Would that work?” he said.

  “Well, that depends on what time you’re planning to have dinner!” I answered.

  In the end, Maxwell and his team managed to get the film down to four hours and fourteen minutes—still making it the longest American movie ever distributed—ten minutes longer than Cleopatra. When I saw the final version, complete with Randy Edelman’s beautiful score, tears welled up in my eyes. It was a proud moment for me to see this heroic story told so beautifully. New Line agreed to be our distributor and while it did prove difficult to get such a long movie into theaters (they had only half the chance to sell tickets as they would for a two-hour feature), we got some great reviews and wound up doing a little more than $10 million at the box office. That was far below the film’s $25 million budget but it wound up doing very well on TNT and has had very strong home video sales over the years. Gettysburg continues to be shown in classrooms, and to this day it remains the film production of which I’m most proud.

  By the end of ’93, the Cartoon Network was clearly a winner and despite the board’s initial objections, we were also in the movie business. As TNT aired more contemporary product and sports like the NBA, I wanted to make sure we continued to get value out of our classics library, too. But rather than license the movies to a competitor like American Movie Classics, we decided to start another channel of our own—and in April of ’94 we launched Turner Classic Movies. Kicking off with a splashy event in the heart of Times Square (I got to flip the switch right in front of the JumboTron), the network struggled for distribution at first but when people saw the channel they fell in love with it and it became a moneymaker within a couple of years.

  The early 1990s were a period of tremendous growth for us but I still wanted one more jewel in our crown. Even as we added new libraries, production companies, and cable channels, I worried that when I died, my tombstone would read, “Here Lies Ted Turner. He Never Owned a Broadcast Network!”

  26

  Networking

  Even though I felt that Time Warner would continue to block my attempts to buy a network I still thought
that merging with one made strategic sense, so I kept discussions quietly going with ABC, NBC, and CBS. My hope was that if I could negotiate an attractive deal I could get Jerry Levin to change his mind or maybe even convince him to cash out Time Warner’s stake in Turner and clear the way for us to move forward.

  ABC was off my radar screen for several years after Capital Cities Communications bought it in 1985. But in ’92, when it came time for the networks to pursue the broadcast rights to the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, we did have encouraging discussions with Capital Cities/ABC over the possibility of a joint bid. We reasoned that if we could create the most value—and therefore justify the highest bid—if we aired higher profile prime-time events on the ABC network while also offering daytime coverage on ABC’s ESPN and Turner’s TNT and TBS. Because we already had so much production infrastructure in Atlanta, it made sense for someone to partner with us. But we never did get to the point of putting forth an offer (and NBC wound up getting those rights). Yet through the course of these discussions I got to know Dan Burke, Capital Cities’ CEO, and as we looked at the advantages of a joint Olympic bid, the conversation naturally went toward the synergies we could create if our two companies were combined.

  I liked the Capital Cities people a lot. Dan Burke and Tom Murphy, the company’s chairman, really understood the business. They had built their company by buying up TV and radio stations as well as newspapers and magazines and operating them efficiently. They were also straight shooters who always treated people with respect. (That said, our executive styles were definitely a little different. One time, during a closed-door meeting in Burke’s office, my voice got a little louder than they were used to hearing on that floor. When I said something about how cable would eventually “strangle” the networks, Burke’s secretary thought I was threatening her boss personally so she called security! Dan and I had a good laugh when security knocked on the door to make sure that everything was okay and that I wasn’t trying to kill him.)

  When Dan Burke retired from the company in ’94, Tom Murphy moved back into the CEO position, and Bob Iger, who had been running the ABC network, was promoted to become the parent company’s COO. One night when Jane and I went out to dinner with some friends in New York, we were seated at a table next to Bob and his wife, Willow Bay, whom I also knew since she was an anchor at CNN.

  A TED STORY

  “He Just Couldn’t Let It Go”

  —Bob Iger

  (BOB IGER IS CURRENTLY PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY.)

  Willow and I were out to dinner in New York and Ted and Jane were seated at the very next table, with Ted and I sitting back-to-back. When he saw us, he got really excited and said, very loudly, “We ought to figure out a way to merge our companies!” This was a crowded New York restaurant but Ted was practically screaming and people could definitely overhear him. He might as well have banged his fork against his glass and said he had an announcement to make. I asked him to keep his voice down but he just couldn’t let it go and was talking to me more than he was the other people at his table. I finally told Ted I’d be happy to come down to Atlanta to talk about it some more in private.

  When I did go to meet with him at his office I was shocked by his physical energy. He couldn’t sit still and as we talked through how a merger might work, every time we agreed on something he’d give me a high five! And honestly there really was a lot to agree on. Combining ABC News with CNN made a lot of sense and we could have used Ted’s animation content for the network’s Saturday morning lineup. ESPN and Turner Sports would also work well together and with our ownership stake in Lifetime we probably could have found synergies with TBS and TNT. A merger between Capital Cities and Turner really would have been an exciting combination of assets, and after I briefed Tom Murphy on my conversation with Ted we set up a follow-up lunch in New York to begin more formal negotiations.

  Bob Iger and I hit it off and since he was fairly new to his job I assured him that if we merged the companies, I’d recommend that he continue to run the ABC portion. When it came time to take the negotiations up a level, Tom Murphy set up a lunch in New York. He invited Warren Buffett, a longtime investor in Capital Cities, to attend and I invited John Malone. These were two great deal makers, and since a merger couldn’t happen without their agreement, it made sense to involve them early. As Bob Iger and I discussed how the meeting might go, he cautioned me not to say anything about trying to buy a Hollywood studio. It looked like Sony might be ready to sell Columbia Pictures and I’d told Iger I wanted to go after it. “Murphy and Buffett hate the movie business,” Bob cautioned me. “This might be something we could consider down the road after the deal is done but this meeting will go a lot better if you don’t mention it.” I understood, and we had plenty of other issues to discuss, so I didn’t expect this to be a problem.

  The lunch was at Capital Cities/ABC’s Manhattan headquarters and the discussion was cordial and positive. Everyone around the table understood the benefits of merging the companies. Then, as we talked about ways we might expand the business down the road I mentioned that Sony might be willing to sell Columbia and exclaimed, “As soon as the ink dries on this deal and the merger is approved we should try to buy a studio.” I was really taking a chance by bringing this up but if we were going to be partners, I felt I needed to be honest with them. Unfortunately, Iger’s prediction was right, and immediately, Buffett said, “I don’t like the motion picture business. I’m a director at Coke and when we owned Columbia it was a disaster.”

  I said, “Well, movies might not be a good business for a soft drink company, but if you’re in the broadcasting business it makes all the sense in the world! If you don’t want to be in the movie business, you don’t want to be in the television business because this industry is going to go vertical. The first network and studio merger will have the first mover advantage and the company that gets there last is going to be playing catch-up.”

  When Tom Murphy joined in, agreeing with Warren, I could tell that the meeting had taken a bad turn. It might have been different if I’d backed right down but I couldn’t. “The reason we’re all here,” I continued, “is because our industry is moving quickly and we want to anticipate the future. I’m telling you now about my interest in a studio because I want us to have a harmonious relationship and I want you to sign off on this because it’s the last piece of the big puzzle that we really need.”

  The conversation remained polite after that, but their enthusiasm dropped when they saw how serious I was about acquiring a studio. Iger called me a few days later to tell me they’d decided not to move forward. While Murphy openly disagreed with me in the meeting, I thought that Warren Buffett was the one who really killed the deal. Ironically, it was only about a year after that lunch that Capital Cities was bought by the Walt Disney Company. Today, every single broadcast network is aligned with a studio (ABC with Disney, NBC with Universal, CBS with Paramount, and Fox with 20th Century Fox). Sure enough, the industry did go vertical—I just wish I’d been able to convince them do it with me, first.

  At NBC I stayed in regular contact with Bob Wright, the CEO. I’d known Bob from all the way back in the late 1970s when he ran Cox Cable in Atlanta. In 1980 he was among our invited guests at our CNN launch ceremony, and at one point, when CNN was having financial struggles, I spoke with him about the possibility of Cox making an investment with us. Bob and I had also been hunting together and we’d become pretty good friends.

  A TED STORY

  “You Shot My Deer!”

  —Bob Wright

  (BOB WRIGHT SERVED AS PRESIDENT AND CEO OF NBC FROM 1986 TO 2007.)

  Ted invited my wife and me down to his place in South Carolina for a weekend to go hunting. I had shot a gun before and had killed some birds but this was deer hunting and I really didn’t know anything about hunting. So it’s in the fall, it’s cool, and on the first morning there we go out and it’s like 5:00 and Ted sits me in this tree. “This is your tree,�
�� he says. “You’ve got to climb up the tree and sit in that stand.”

  So I do it, and I’m sitting up there with my rifle and I’ve been there just ten minutes and I look down and there’s a deer—not seven hundred yards away but right below me. I said to myself, “That’s a pretty big deer!” So I take the gun out and I point it down and shoot the deer. This wasn’t exactly the way I pictured it would be, but less than an hour into the trip I’ve shot a deer. About five minutes after my gun went off, one of the Jeeps we’d driven out in comes rolling around. Ted’s in it and he sees me standing there looking at the deer and he says, “I’ve been hunting that deer for two years! You shot my goddamn deer!”

  “How do you know it’s your deer?” I asked.

  “Look at it—it’s a ten-point buck!”

  So I said, “You mean those things on the top?” and I counted them—one, two, three, four, five, and said, “Yeah, there are ten.”

  And he yelled again, “You shot my deer!” He was really upset.

  So we go back to the house and have something to eat and he’s all wound up about this deer and says, “I want to go back out and do some more shooting.”

  I said, “Shooting what?”

  “Wild hogs! We’re going to shoot wild hogs!”

  So my wife, Suzanne, and I get in this big Jeep. We’re sitting in the back and conveniently I don’t have a rifle but Ted has two. So we get out a ways and he stops the car and these huge hogs are coming through this high grass and he starts shooting away! They’re really big and they’re all around us and he’s shooting them and they’re running, running left and right. One’s coming at us, shoot ’um. One’s going away. He’s getting them every which way. The changing rifles, the smell of smoke is all over the place. He clearly had to go after these hogs to get that deer off his mind!