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REPORTER: We're beginning to see
some antiaircraft fire coming up there in the air,
flashes going off...
Don't you hear air down there?
Don't you hear what's on the air, folks?
NARRATOR: This was the moment
that CNN founder Ted Turner had been waiting for.
I've been an innovative thinker, okay?
I mean, I've thought of CNN.
SHAW: The skies over Baghdad
have been illuminated.
NARRATOR: His rivals had once called his brainchild
"Chicken Noodle News,"
but at the start of the Gulf War,
the whole world was watching CNN,
the first 24-hour TV news network.
This is where it's happening.
MAN: Ted Turner and CNN put the viewer
in the middle of history as it was unfolding,
and that was revolutionary.
You think the CIA had more information than CNN did?
Of course not.
REPORTER: That came down fairly near our hotel.
MAN: When Ted Turner started CNN,
it scared... the crap out of the people
who were working with him.
Get the French on the air!
TURNER: If you've got an innovative idea
and the majority does not pooh-pooh your idea,
then you must not have a very good idea.
Now where? Oh, down to the press conference.
NARRATOR: No one had believed in Russell Simmons' idea either,
but he ended up with a multimillion-dollar empire
in hip-hop fashion,
comedy
and poetry.
He even produced an acclaimed show on Broadway.
( to rap beat ): ♪ It's like this! It's like that! ♪
♪ It was poetry, but now they call it rap... ♪
NARRATOR: And it all started when he unleashed
a controversial new kind of music in America-- rap.
♪ Come on, bring it! ♪
♪ What? ♪
♪ Right here... ♪
SIMMONS: Sometimes we talk about rap
and how people don't like to hear
what the rappers are saying.
That's God's soundtrack.
MAN: If you're wondering why so many white kids
are impersonating black culture, it's all to do with the way
that Russell Simmons has marketed
the phenomenon which is hip-hop.
♪ Here we go again... ♪
MAN: Russell Simmons produced the browning of America,
in the sense that a culture which was born in the ghetto
became universal.
NARRATOR: Russell Simmons and Ted Turner
brought the world closer together.
Give me a minute, all right?
NARRATOR: You may not know their stories, but they made America.
For a while, it's going to be out of control.
Thank you, uh, thank you all for being here.
From the steamboat to the jet plane,
from the Barbie doll to CNN,
American innovators changed the way we live.
They Made America with captioning is made possible
by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
to portray the lives of the great inventors, entrepreneurs
and the role of technology in society.
Exclusive corporate funding is provided by...
Funny how innovation works--
one doorway leads to another.
Today, Olympus innovations help lead the way
in everything from consumer electronics
to medical technology.
Wonder what doors we'll open tomorrow.
Additional funding is provided
by the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City,
the foundation of entrepreneurship
on the Web at kauffman.org.
And by:
And the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
( mixture of reporters' voices )
All right, stand by 23.
Here on three...
Good evening.
DIRECTOR: Stand by.
Dissolve full.
( mixture of voices )
DIRECTOR: 20 seconds.
DIRECTOR: 40 seconds...
Houston, you're clear. Thank you.
I couldn't have done any of this
without a lot of help.
DIRECTOR: Roll C.
We all did it together.
( audience cheering )
30 seconds...
MAN: Ted Turner's innovation was 24-hour news.
What that means is that you can watch history live.
ANNOUNCER: We're live in Baghdad...
You can watch history as it's happening.
So we tend to look back and we say,
"Well, obviously, CNN was going to be a big success."
But in fact, when it was started,
there was no indication at all
that it was going to be a success,
and, in fact, they were teetering on the edge.
I lived for ten years during that time,
I lived in my office on a foldout bed.
MAN: One of Ted Turner's great qualities:
He makes us excited about everything he does.
He's not a man in a gray flannel suit.
MAN: When he was working his 24-hour days,
I mean, he was driven by a desire to get it right.
And part of his drive in life
is to prove to his father that he's worthy.
( crowd cheering )
MAN: Ted's father was a billboard magnate--
he had a billboard company.
He was expanding and doing better and better,
and he did this one big deal
where he bought out General Outdoor Advertising.
And this was his big break.
Ted was incredibly excited.
His father originally was very excited,
but soon started to get scared.
He was worried that he was overextended;
he was worried that this whole empire would come crashing down.
So, it was the morning of March 5, 1963,
and Ted Turner's father went downstairs
and he had a big, full breakfast.
Then he went upstairs, took out his revolver--
the same revolver he had taught Ted to shoot with--
and... and he killed himself.
MAN: When Ted's father killed himself,
that was the ultimate blow to Ted Turner,
who could never, ever get his father's approval
that he had spent his life, up to that point, seeking.
MAN: Ted's father did it, in a way, to leave his family--
each of them-- as millionaires.
Ted wasn't interested in being a millionaire.
He could have taken the money,
he could have gone off to be a millionaire on the Riviera,
but instead he says, "No, I want to take this company.
"I want to show my father,
I want to show everybody I can do this."
MAN: Part of his mission in his life
is to prove to his father that his father was wrong.
And in fact, once he looked up at the heavens,
and he said, "Dad, are you satisfied now?"
TURNER: I... I used to tell people when I was in my 20s
that I wanted to get to the top
and I wanted to get there in a hurry,
not even knowing where the top was.
Go and eat your cereal.
NARRATOR: Everyone thought Ted Turner was too inexperienced
to take over his dad's billboard company.
Well, hustle it up, Chaco.
NARRATOR: But he made money.
And in 1970, he splurged
on a rundown, money-losing UHF station in Atlanta.
TURNER: We changed the call letters to WTCG,
and then later to WTBS, for "Turner Broadcasting System."
But WTCG was "Watch This Channel Grow."
GOLDBERG: When Ted buys WTCG, it's a TV station
that's hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.
Good morning. Hope you're doing okay this morning.
Morning, Tina.
GOLDBERG: There was an FCC requirement to put news on.
Instead of putting real news on, Turner put on joke news.
Ronald Reagan hopes to beat...
( chuckling )
NARRATOR: To help fill his programming schedule,
Turner bought his hometown losing baseball team,
the Atlanta Braves, and broadcast their away games.
Many saw the move as a foolhardy gamble,
but Turner loved cheering the underdog players.
( team singing rousing song )
Wayne, what do you think of this team?
I like every one of them.
Come see the big-league team
with little-league spirit.
And, hey, we're in Atlanta.
BARNEY FIFE: Sure hope the bug
don't get down in my lar-a-nix.
GOLDBERG: While everybody else
might have been doing serious shows or news shows,
Ted Turner was rerunning-- because it was cheap--
Gilligan's Island and Leave it to Beaver.
SKIPPER: Gilligan!
Oh, I gotta go.
BIBB: Ted sold advertisers on the idea
that your commercials in color will stand out on our station
because everybody else
is running color programs and color commercials,
but we're running black-and-white programs
and your color commercials will jump out of the... the set.
TURNER: Well, when are we ready?
( country-western music begins playing )
NARRATOR: Turner's strategies worked.
But soon after his station was in the black,
he went into debt again, in a bet-the-company move.
Before it was a sure thing, Turner bet on cable.
ENSEMBLE:
NARRATOR: Turner wanted his local UHF station
to be one of the first national stations offered
by the fledgling cable industry,
which was wiring the country to provide better reception
than shows broadcast through the air.
Heck, all I did was jump the gun.
NARRATOR: But Turner needed an efficient way
to send his signal to cable companies
sprinkled throughout the United States.
AULETTA: And he said, "You know,
"this bird just went up in 1976, and that's a satellite.
And that satellite-- what if we hooked up to that satellite?"
Bingo-- innovation.
NARRATOR: Turner borrowed money to buy a dish
that would beam his Atlanta TV signal
22,000 miles above the earth,
bounce it off a rented transponder
on a satellite over North America,
and beam the signal back down to receiving dishes
owned by the country's cable operators.
By being a "superstation," I can be super.
NARRATOR: The networks tried to get Congress to stop him.
But Turner went on a rampage
about the network monopoly... and beat them.
The only difference between us and WCBS
is that our antenna
is 22,000 miles up in the sky instead of 2,000 feet.
I must be doing something right.
NARRATOR: In the summer of 1977,
Turner was taking on the established networks.
And with a secondhand boat and a youthful crew,
he was taking on the refined yachting establishment
in the prestigious America's Cup race.
BIBB: Ted Turner was definitely not cut of the same cloth
as the other members of the New York Yacht Club.
He was a loud, obnoxious... and profane in his language.
NARRATOR: Turner cherished the role of outsider;
he thrived on being the underdog.
Don't overtrim it like that, you got to ease out on it.
NARRATOR: By now, it was a familiar role to him.
MAN: When he first began to pick up
his father's billboard business, the advice was,
"Don't do it, you'll go broke.
You can't do it, you don't have enough experience."
When he buys UHF,
it's "Don't go, it will cost you all this money."
Next it was, "Don't do the superstation,
we can't afford a sat..."
It's all over, baby!
( men whoop )
EVANS: Every single time he went out on a limb,
it was actually like a springboard in diving
for Ted Turner, and he came down and made a perfect dive.
( crew cheering )
NARRATOR: Turner was on a winning streak, bad news for his employees.
It usually was a sign that he was growing antsy
and about to bet the company on a new venture.
GOLDBERG: Ted Turner loves to have his back against the wall.
And if his back isn't against the wall,
he'll go out of his way to find a wall
to put his back up against.
NARRATOR: In 1979, Turner backed himself against a wall
that would make or break him.
This industry is out of control.
NARRATOR: At an annual cable meeting, he announced that he would get
an entirely new satellite channel
up and running in just one year.
It would run only news, 24 hours a day,
and it would be called Cable News Network, or CNN.
And he said, "There are only four things
"that television can do:
"They can do this regular entertainment programming,
"and the networks have got that.
"They can do sports, and ESPN's got that.
"They can do movies, HBO has that.
All we've got left is news, so what the hell, I'll do news."
The industry ought to say "stop."
NARRATOR: 24-hour news was Turner's craziest idea yet.
The established networks lost money
producing just one news show per day.
SCHONFELD: In the days when the networks were everything,
you had to watch your news between 7:00 and 7:30,
22 minutes of news,
a whole network psychology, philosophy, which said,
"Look, news is public service, we don't do this to make money."
I got the advertising companies say, "Who's going to make it?"
AULETTA: So what does Ted Turner do?
"Wait a second," he decides,
"these networks, they have a half hour,
"an appointment at night for a newscast.
What if I had 24 hours of news?"
Bingo-- CNN, innovation.
NARRATOR: Turner went to the New York Times
to pitch his new idea.
GOLDBERG: They were asking him,
"So what's going to be so great about this CNN?"
And Ted said, "It's going to be live all the time."
SCHONFELD: One of the deputy editors turned to me and said,
"Aren't you with live-all-the-time
going to wind up covering a lot of one-alarm fires?"
And I said, "Until it's over,
"you never know whether it was a one-alarm fire
or the fire that burned down Chicago."
NARRATOR: Turner needed $30 million for start-up costs
and another $2 million per month in operating expenses.
He started selling assets,
and he was counting on cable fees and advertising
to generate income for CNN--
that is, if the industry ever shared his faith
in the zany idea.
EVANS: It was a universal reaction
that Ted Turner would go bust, he was wasting his time,
people didn't want 24-hour news, what were they playing at.
GOLDBERG: Ted Turner starts CNN
with very few commitments from the cable industry
and really not much in the way of financing.
He doesn't really have banks behind him,
he doesn't have money behind him.
So it's all kind of on a wing and a prayer,
and frankly, it scared the crap
out of the people who were working with him.
If you've got an innovative idea
and the majority does not pooh-pooh your idea,
then you must not have a very good idea.
It's not enough of a breakthrough
to make that kind of a difference.
Didn't bother me at all.
It did not bother me at all.
In fact, I considered it...
I said, "I must really be on to something."
NARRATOR: Now, with only weeks to go before launch,
the staff was assembling for rehearsals.
There were eager newcomers
and TV veterans looking for one last romance,
one last go-around in hard news.
MAN: Roone Arledge and I had negotiated
a new contract at ABC News,
the country was in double-digit inflation,
our children were about this high,
and here I was thinking about going to work
for a network that didn't exist.
And now back to Don...
NARRATOR: In the dry runs, just days before the launch date,
the CNN staff still couldn't produce news
for two hours in a row, much less 24.
MAN: The rehearsals were a nightmare.
People would call for things that weren't ready,
the tapes weren't there, the scripts were not completed.
SCHONFELD: They started giving me a ***
in my orange juice in the morning.
I didn't know anything about it.
After a week, she stopped,
because it wasn't making any difference.
SHAW: "Those demands, says Begin,
are rejected and are totally unacceptable."
( clicks stopwatch )
SHAW: I wanted to twit the traditional networks--
those people at ABC, CBS and NBC who said,
"This will not work, they are inept."
I wanted to join Ted, along with the other men and women at CNN,
to prove those *** wrong.
NARRATOR: On June 1, 1980, ready or not,
CNN was scheduled to begin broadcast.
Turner threw an opening-day party.
GOLDBERG: I think what I loved about that opening day is that
it was so grand and so rinky-*** at the same time.
And only cable television
could give the consumer the choice...
GOLDBERG: It was a network
that was kind of like its owner, Ted Turner.
It was a little ragged around the edges,
but with grand, global ambition.
You'll notice out in front of... in front of me
that we've raised three flags--
one, the flag of the United Nations
because we hope that the Cable News Network will bring
a better understanding
of how people from different nations live and work together.
AULETTA: Turner wanted to shrink the world.
He wanted Americans to understand the world
and not be isolationist,
not be comfortable in our little cocoons.
I dedicate the news channel for America: the Cable News Network.
TURNER: You know, it was a real good plan.
It was a plan to conquer the world,
but with ideas, not with weapons.
Good evening, I'm David Walker.
And I'm Lois Hart. Now here's the news.
President Carter has...
NARRATOR: Inside, CNN started its very first broadcast
with little fanfare.
The FBI and...
NARRATOR: If Turner had it his way,
it would continue from this moment until the end of time--
that is, if his staff could survive the first few months.
( cheering )
NARRATOR: Turner had launched CNN during a presidential election year,
just six weeks before the Republican convention.
The major networks,
which would try to bar CNN from the White House press pool,
all laughed at Turner's unprepared reporters.
SHAW: Can you button your jacket?
There's a lot of white there.
I'm Sandy Kenyon, and I'm the writer/producer
here in the booth with Bernie Shaw.
These are our convention facilities.
Over here is...
KENYON: The booth that CNN had rented for this convention
was about the size of a large bathroom.
And it was totally open, and it was above the band,
so that when the bands played, we had to cut to a commercial.
( marching band plays loudly in background )
SCHONFELD: At the time,
our greatest critic was Roone Arledge, who ran ABC News.
ABC called us "Chicken Noodle News,"
and they used to say, "***-a-doodle-doo"
when the crew would appear.
NARRATOR: For his part,
Turner was doing everything he could financially
to keep his new network afloat.
SCHONFELD: We'd do every stunt we can.
We'd get the cable systems that carry us,
we'd give them a discount, a large discount,
if they'll pay in advance.
Ted's got hot dog money coming in
from the concessions at the Braves stadium.
He makes the same deal with the concessionaire.
Can you just pull back a second?
Okay, sure.
SHAW: Ted Turner...
he knew we were working slavish hours.
He knew we were underpaid.
Okay, pull the plug out
and plug it in here...
SHAW: It was his trying
to maintain the team spirit
and say, "Hang in there.
"I'm losing millions of dollars.
I'm depending on you."
And that was one of the attractions.
CAMERAPERSON: Are we going to do an interview?
Yeah, we're going to do an interview.
NARRATOR: With its on-air glitches,
it was easy for the experts to dismiss the all-news network.
But CNN was just getting started.
Do you want me to move anywhere?
NARRATOR: And only three months after launch,
Ted's "Chicken Noodle Network" had something to crow about
when Turner's gamble to cover live stories paid off
in a small town in Arkansas.
This is as close as the military will allow us to get
to this Titan II missile silo site installation
just outside of Damascus, Arkansas.
MAN: A Titan II missile had exploded in its silo
and spit its warhead several hundred yards
out onto the ground.
And the Air Force officials
had told the mayor of Damascus
there was no warhead on the premises.
Is there a warhead on the site?
I cannot confirm or deny.
MIKLASZEWSKI: We put the camera in the cherry picker bucket.
And as the cherry picker rose up,
you could see now over the trucks.
And you could see this center of activity
around what we later found out was the actual warhead.
MIKLASZEWSKI: Look at that tank.
MAN: That's what I asked you...
In the crane-- can you see that picture?
We go to go live-- now!
This is it, baby.
GOLDBERG: That's a moment where all of a sudden
news is no longer... something that's reported
at the end of the day.
News is something that's happening right now.
MIKLASZEWSKI: They're going to hide it in just a second.
We got to go now.
SCHONFELD: By the end,
the L.A. Times correspondent said
he learned more about the story
sitting in his hotel room and watching CNN
than he learned from being on the scene.
Get a picture of him doing that, that would be...
NARRATOR: CNN's exploits with the Titan II missile had
another keen observer-- Cuba's Communist leader Fidel Castro,
who was reviled by the U.S. government.
In a move that drew criticism,
Turner accepted an invitation to go to Cuba.
TURNER: He was watching CNN.
He had heard about it
and somehow obtained a satellite dish, and the signal...
the United States signal spilled into Cuba,
so he was able to pick it up.
And he thought it was just terrific.
Well, for the tremendous hospitality that you've shown us
and the wonderful time...
AULETTA: Ted Turner was a very conservative guy,
so the thought that he would one day consort with Fidel
was just totally alien.
TRANSLATOR: Though we receive the news...
No pagar.
we do not pay for them.
I myself do not know how much money we owe the CNN.
TURNER: I think he was the first communist I ever met,
and, uh... but a serious one, anyway.
And he certainly was the first dictator I ever met.
I didn't hardly... I didn't know any dictators.
And you could... you could...
NARRATOR: Turner's trip was a revelation to him.
When he saw the impact that CNN had on Castro,
Turner was eager to expand more quickly
the coverage and availability of CNN all around the globe.
But he'd need the cooperation of foreign governments
suspicious of the American press.
TURNER: When I came up with the idea of going international,
there was tremendous resistance all over the world
by broadcasters and governments
to having an American news organization
just come into their country... that they had no control over.
And they were really concerned
that we'd somehow come up with a pro-America agenda,
anti-whatever.
...put on that aircraft.
But he said, at the end of the day...
So I said, I'm going to create a two-hour program
every Sunday afternoon
that will take news stories-- unedited--
from any broadcaster in the world
that wants to send them in.
I will run them unedited.
CORRESPONDENT: Around 500 demonstrators marched towards the gates of...
( correspondent speaking local language )
CORRESPONDENT: ...the most tense situation in Colombia
for the last ten years...
TURNER: I had a meeting of my top executives.
They said, "There's no way you can do that."
I said, "Why not?"
They said, "Qaddafi will send in a story
"about Libya's right and we're wrong.
"And Castro will be sending in stories from Cuba
that say, 'Down with the United States.'"
CORRESPONDENT: Geneva has lost 155...
AULETTA: It was controversial
because you're not supposed to turn space over
to the people you're reporting on.
Turner, basically, is turning over
a half hour, an hour at a time to a government.
TURNER: Every year we had a World Report Conference
where we brought them all into Atlanta,
put them up in a hotel for a week.
We had Russians, we had... that's how we met the Iraqis.
The Iraqis came to the World Report Conference.
And later they let us stay in Baghdad
when everybody else had to leave,
because they knew us, they were friends.
We were friends with everybody.
( jet engines thundering )
REPORTER: Okay, now we are seeing more antiaircraft fire...
GOLDBERG: There's this moment when CNN comes of age,
and it's actually a very precise moment.
It's on January 16, 1991, at about 6:35.
It's the beginning of the Gulf War, the first Gulf War.
( explosions echoing )
SHAW: All hell broke loose.
Sirens started wailing, search lights searching the dark sky.
John Holliman, Bernard; John Holliman...
NARRATOR: Back at Atlanta headquarters,
CNN producers turned the cameras on themselves
to document their news gathering
of the first war covered live on TV.
And that's when I yelled through the four-wire,
"Atlanta, come to us, come to us."
SHAW ( as reporter ): The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated.
We're seeing bright flashes going off...
NARRATOR: The CNN crew, holed up in a hotel in Baghdad,
had direct communication with Atlanta,
using a special phone line called a four-wire.
Yes, he can hear you.
Shaw ( as reporter ): All right...
NARRATOR: When the bombs started dropping
and Baghdad's electricity and phones went out,
only CNN was reporting live.
Baghdad is... Baghdad is back!
Then go to Baghdad right now, Dave.
( explosions )
REPORTER: Now the sirens are sounding for the first time.
The Iraqis have informed us...
( clicking )
They just cut the line-- get the French on the air.
WOMAN: We're coming back to French.
Well, we heard Peter Arnett saying,
"The Iraqis have informed us,"
and then we didn't hear anymore.
This is probably just a technical glitch.
AULETTA: Tom Johnson, who was the chairman of CNN,
wanted to pull Bernard Shaw and Peter Arnett and the team
out of Baghdad.
Show me 17! Put 17...
And Ted Turner interrupted and said,
"Tom, put it on my back.
"They're grown-ups.
"If they want to be there as journalists
"and cover this war for the American people,
by God, I want them to."
Officials are clearly gearing up for something.
FRENCH: Wolf,
let me interrupt.