The Other Mr. Turner

OU alumnus Ed Turner has stocked his CNN staffwith aggressive Sooner go-getters . The Other Mr. Turner at CNN hen calling the executive News Network, TBS' most ambitious Ted Turner launched his full-time offices of the Turner Broad- and surprisingly successful venture. news experiment, the media skeptics casting System in Atlanta, While Ted Turner is busy making were unanimous. Labeling CNN Wit pays to enunciate. A mumbled re- news, Ed Turner concentrates on mak- "Turner's Folly" and "Chicken Noodle quest can get you either Ted Turner, ing the news available, 24 hours a day, News," the major networks predicted the flamboyant, controversial favorite to 31 .5 million cable viewers abject failure. No one would talk to son of the South who heads this com- worldwide . They are both very good CNN, they reasoned; no one would ad- munications/sports empire, or Ed at their jobs . vertise; no one would watch. Turner's Turner, the hard-driving trans- Four-and-one-half years ago, when profitable WTBS, Atlanta's cable-wise planted Sooner whose considerable Superstation, would never be able to journalistic talents have made him sustain the losses sure to be incurred the number two operative at Cable By CAROL J . BURR by CNN . Continued 1985 WINTER 11 done in Washington . At United Press International Television News in New York, his next professional stop, he found a news organization of sorts already in place, but one which "had not yet entered the electronic world." "In this day and age, you ordinarily don't have a chance to build a news group from nothing," he explains, "because they're usually in place. You come aboard, and you run it, add to it or take away from it. I was fortunate to have the experience of setting up an organization from scratch." When UPITN was sold, Turner moved to "CBS Morning News," back to Channel 9 in Oklahoma City and again to Washington, but his two bosses in New York, Reese Schonwald and Burt Reinhardt, remembered his knack for organization when they signed on to turn Ted Turner's vision- ary CNN into reality. "Burt and Reese introduced me to The most recent ofthe OUjournalists tojoin Ed Turner's Sooner "twang" sessions Ted at halftime of an Atlanta Hawks at CNN in Atlanta is Bella Shaw, '76, now the weekday afternoon anchor . basketball game," Ed Turner says, re- calling that the team's owner was jumping up and down on the bench But amid these dire predictions, a talked himself into the job of news di- next to the coach . "He was a better group of hard-news TV journalists rector and put together a staffof new- show than the game. He just assumed were preparing to join Ted Turner's comers, many of whom have gone on that I was already working for him, crusade. Among them was a 1957 to become major names in the broad- although we hadn't talked salary or University of Oklahoma journalism cast business. He hired NBC's Connie even what my job was going to be." graduate from Bartlesville, Eddie Chung right off the University of The job was CNN managing editor, Sims Turner, who, after more than 20 Maryland campus, brought CBS' Bob in charge of setting up news bureaus years as one of the broadcast business' Schieffer from Dallas, and recruited in Washington, New York, Los peripatetic newsmen, was ready to "CBS Morning News" movie critic Pat Angeles, Dallas, Chicago and San make a long-term commitment . Collins, Bis-Net anchor Merrill Comer Francisco, hiring assignment editors "There were about a dozen of us," and Mike Buchanan, former Okla- and reporters, finding stations that Ed Turner recalls, "400 million years homa Cityan now an Emmy Award- would exchange their local coverage ago - or yesterday . I'm not sure winner in Washington. for CNN's worldwide service. Today which. It was a crusade. Absolutely . He pioneered the 10 o'clock news in 170 stations in the United States have No one knew whether it would work, EST Washington, where prime-time such an arrangement with CNN, but but the challenge was too great not to shows end at 11 p.m. when most Ok- the first ones were hard to come by. have a go at it. The game was really lahomans are heading for bed. An old "A lot of stations didn't want any- worth playing to see if we could make buddy from OU days, Washington thing to do with us because we were it work, and so far, we have ." public relations man John Campbell, cable, i .e. the enemy," Turner says. Ed Turner had some unique profes- jokes that Turner received all kinds "Others didn't think we'd last, so why sional qualifications which made him of credit for being innovative when he bother? It really amounted to calling an ideal addition to the hardy band of actually was just an Oklahoma boy on old friendships made over 20 or 25 broadcasting pioneers. He had started who thought that the news was sup- years around the country." news services from scratch before. posed to come on at 10 o'clock. CNN was selling a whole new con- His first job out of Oklahoma, after "Within a couple of years, we had cept in news programming, all day a stint with Channel 9 in Oklahoma the highest-rated news show in town, every day -indepth interviewing and City, was with the Metromedia outlet local or network," Turner recalls. "We background features, scheduling so in Washington, D .C ., WTTG-TV, a beat all of them - even old Walter flexible as to allow staying with a station with no news department of (Cronkite)." story until it was told completely its own whose news broadcasts were Soon Turner was corporate news di- whether it took minutes, hours or of the rip-and-read variety straight rector for Metromedia, repeating in days, an emphasis on professional from the teletype machines. Turner New York and elsewhere what he had news gathering and reporting rather 1 2 SOONER MAGAZINE Mike Boettcher, '78, who now covers El Salvador for NBC, Tony Clark, three-degree OU graduate, wentfrom Oklahoma was one of Ed Turner's first Oklahoma City recruits at CNN. City's Channel 9 to Dallas, where he is CNN's bureau chief than media superstars in the anchor them, CNN experienced sudden accep- insists. "CBS has three or four booth. Ted Turner's dream was hard tance . "We could give them time that thousand people, and they all shoot to put togetherand even harder to sell . they just simply couldn't get on the for that half hour with Uncle Dan Ed Turner encountered his greatest other networks," Ed Turner explains. (Rather). Anything else is failure. You obstacles in his old stomping grounds "The networks do 22 minutes and can imagine that a lot of them never ofWashington, D.C., where to this day 30 seconds of news at night. Their make the air." there is no cable television . morning shows have gone from being By way of contrast, CNN em- "Washington is really behind the hard-news shows to very soft, fluffy, phasizes the message instead of the times," Turner insists. "It's like being featurey kinds of broadcasts with five messenger. "We have 49 anchors," a foreign correspondent in your own or seven minutes worth of news in Turner says. "If we paid them all capital. We finally had to give the Rather's salary, we could bankrupt Pentagon a satellite dish so they could Switzerland. People don't watch us for see us - this little bitty company in "CBS has three or four our anchors; they watch us because Georgia and the Pentagon with all the thousand people, and they the news is there, they trust it and it's trillions of dollars they've got." convenient to them." Turner Broadcasting had to file law- all shoot for that half And at CNN the employees learn suits to combat CNN's exclusion from hour with Uncle Dan. the broadcasting business from start the White House pool coverage. "It's Anything else is failure." to finish . At the entry level, Turner much easier now that we've got 31 .5 likens working for CNN to going to million subscribers and worldwide ex- graduate school and getting paid for it. posure," Ed Turner admits, "but we're them. When I produced the "CBS "I wish CNN had been around when still the new kids on the block. With Morning News," it was one hour of I got out of college," he says. "These four or five thousand journalists in hard news with Hughes Rudd . We kids can be here a few months and all Washington all clamoring for inter- didn't get the ratings, but we had of a sudden they're in Cairo with views, it's a question of `Who are they? news. Now it is chitchat and lengthy cameras on their shoulders chasing Why do I need to give them my time?'" interviews - which is fine - but not some army, or they're in the Sudan, When a satellite dish went up on the way it was. or they're in the Antarctic. You can't Capitol Hill and congressmen dis- "Working journalists in television do that working for the other net- covered how easily the voters back at the network level today don't have works, and CNN attracts a lot ofjour- home could turn in to cable and to a great outlet for their wares," Turner nalists for that reason ." Continued 1985 WINTER 13 Pam Olson, who left the OU campus in 1972 tojoin Oklahoma City's Channel 9, is the CNN Washington bureau's correspondent on the House side of Capitol Hill.

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