CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Ted Turner: 24 Hours That Changed The News World

Photograph Source: Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer – Public Domain

“We won’t be signing off until the world ends,” Ted Turner said in 1980, just before the launch of his latest media venture. “We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event.”

Turner died on May 6 at 87. The world hasn’t ended yet, nor has his project, Cable News Network, but the latter changed the former in a big way.

If you’re too young to remember the pre-CNN era, trying to describe it feels like pulling a fish out of water and showing it a non-aquatic landscape:

On television, “the news” was generally broadcast twice a day, morning and evening, in half-hour local and half-hour national/world shows. Morning network shows included short news segments between entertainment content. Truly earth-shaking events might call for “SPECIAL........

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