I haven’t watched CNN in years or the Turner movie channel.
It will be interesting to see if this has an impact on his massive land holdings here in Montana. I’m sure he has a rock solid succession plan.
I also live in Montana and was thinking the same thing.
To be fair, Turner hadn’t directly owned any of those channels since 1996 (when Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner), and Turner himself, who had remained as an officer with Time Warner, resigned as a Vice Chairman in 2003, and stepped down from the board of directors in 2006.
I remember, when we first got cable TV in the early '80s, his very visible presence on cable, between what was then still “Superstation WTBS” and CNN. He was brash and charismatic, and he did a lot to shape what cable was in the 1980s.
He was also the owner of the Atlanta Braves, and made headlines for making himself the on-field manager of the team (which lasted one game, before the president of the National League forced him to step down), and for having one of his players – Andy Messersmith – who wore jersey #17, wear the word “Channel” on the back of his jersey, rather than his name, as an ad for WTBS (this, too, only lasted for one game).
So how big are his Montana holdings?
Only 87??
I’m 66. He should have been at least 97 by my internal “they’re rich and famous so they must be MUCH older than I am” gauge.
Various sources I’m finding say somewhere between 113,000 and 148,000 acres.
He owned a ton of land, across the U.S. and Argentina. Wikipedia indicates that he owned over 2 million acres of personal land and ranch land across North America. One of the things he used this land for was for bison ranching; he allegedly owned the largest bison herd in the world. (And, TIL that the “Ted” in the restaurant chain “Ted’s Montana Grill” was Turner.)
Around 200 sq. miles, Holy crap. That is like 200 of my town’s area.