A new docuseries is coming to the streaming service Max on Wednesday detailing the life and achievements of CNN founder and media entrepreneur Ted Turner.
“Call Me Ted,” based on Turner’s 2008 autobiography of the same name, follows the humble beginnings and career rise of the business mogul “in his own words.”
The six-part series comes only days ahead of Turner’s 86th birthday on Nov. 19.
A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Turner’s early years were met with a complicated relationship and later an unexpected journey into the world of advertising and media after taking over the family business.
His ambitions took him to Atlanta in the 1970s, where he would later purchase the Atlanta Braves and take on the U.S. Senate to allow the launch of SuperStation WTBS, now known as TBS.
“I thought that Superstation would be a good way to describe ourselves,” said Turner in the docuseries trailer.
And when asked why no one else had thought of the idea at the time, he simply responded, “How come no else thought the world is round until Columbus came around?”
His venture into television grew with the creation of CNN, the world’s first 24-hour news network, launched from Atlanta in 1980. The next two decades would see Turner create successful networks such as Turner Network Television, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network, as well as a lucrative merger with Time Warner in the mid 1990s.
During this period of his career, the mogul also contributed to philanthropic efforts, such as the creation of The Goodwill Games and growing interest in environmental protection.
On top of the triumphs, the series also sheds light on some of more controversial elements of Turner’s life, including his brash public persona, his feud with business investor Rupert Murdoch and his highly publicized 10-year marriage to Academy-Award-winning actress Jane Fonda, who was interviewed for the project.
Turner’s divorce from Fonda in 2001 was one of several tribulations that plagued the CNN founder at the start of the 21st century, also experiencing the failure of the AOL-Time Warner merger and the loss of a beloved father figure in the same period.
The final episode will explore Turner’s present-day life living with Lewy body dementia, a diagnosis that he revealed publicly in 2018.
“There’s no such thing as certainty in this life,” Turner says in the trailer. “‘If we fail’ doesn’t exist in my vocabulary.”
