The Atlanta Formula
Hosted by Zettler Clay, this show explores the city's rich culture, history and vibrant energy of the people.
The Atlanta Formula
6. Variable Edition - Ted Turner’s Visionary Impact on Atlanta and Modern Broadcasting
Ted Turner revolutionized modern media, and his story is as riveting as it is inspirational. From a raw and candid Playboy interview where he opens up about love and violence to the tragic suicide of his father that set him on a relentless path to success, you'll learn about the man behind CNN. This episode lays bare the complexities of Turner's life, shedding light on his controversial views and the personal trials that shaped his unyielding drive.
We also explore the profound influence of paternal figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s father and Turner's own. See how these relationships helped mold their destinies, with Turner reviving his father's business through ingenious, sometimes audacious strategies. From acquiring a UHF TV station in Atlanta to leveraging unsold billboard inventory for promotion, Turner's innovative tactics in the early television market reveal the importance of seizing opportunities in emerging industries.
Ted Turner's entrepreneurial spirit didn't stop at television. His foresight in acquiring sports rights, like the Atlanta Braves' TV rights, and his bold moves in the realm of free agency in baseball were game-changers. Discover the intricate process of establishing the first satellite transmission for WTBS, marking the dawn of nationwide broadcasting. This episode captures Turner's indomitable spirit, highlighting his ability to navigate technological and competitive challenges to leave an indelible mark on the broadcasting landscape. Join us in celebrating the legacy of Ted Turner, a maverick who forever changed the media world.
Well, everybody wants to be loved, right? In fact, most criminals and sex perverts and weirdo creeps were just rejected somewhere along the way. Son of Sam, or whatever his name is, couldn't get a girl, so he went out and shot them. People who are in love never want to hurt anybody. You know that it's only horny people who shoot people. If people get all the sex they can handle, they're so happy and content. They just sit around and smile. I mean, you never feel aggressive just after you got laid right. Lots of sex for everybody. That's the solution to the world's problems. This was an excerpt from an interview that Ted Turner did withinct Like towns of Atlanta of old Swatch.
Speaker 2:Tell you just how we speak. Tell them both when you from Cozone. What number is your police precinct? Uh yeah, tell you just how we speak, where you from, what number is your police precinct?
Speaker 1:Cozone what's going on y'all? This is the atlanta formula. I am zettler the fourth, glad to be back to this party. Just recently, celebrated the birthday, feeling tremendously blessed. And one time I've realized in my time here on this earth space time journey is that every moment is ripe with new opportunities. There is no such thing as getting older when you're always refreshing. You did so the other day.
Speaker 1:I received an anthology book of playboy interviews entitled movers and shakers. And looking at the table of contents, lo and behold, there were not one but two interviews with Robert Edward Turner III. One was printed, as I stated before, in August of 1978 and the other in August of 1983. And being that we are in August of 2024 now I just love when the coinkidink come together of 2024, now I just love when the coink and dink come together. Both of these interviews, y'all, were outstandingly absurd and phenomenally telling 65 pages of him saying what seemed to be whatever he wanted to say. He came across with all the charm, all the wit, all the drive and all of the zany that people have come to expect from the creator of Cable News Network and Turner Studios and TNT and Cartoon Network and many other economy builders. Truly one of a kind, and, as I said in that last episode, you cannot talk about Atlanta Without diving into the maverick of the South of the South, alright, y'all. So, at the risk of oversimplifying the effect of Ted and I'm going to refer to him as Ted for the rest of this interview because that's what he wanted to be called he has an autobiography out called Call Me Ted, and a hat tip to Founders Podcast, david Sinterer. He did an episode on this book. I highly recommend you go check it out.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to go into the book in depth like he did, but I am going to go into specific chapters more in depth than he did, like I said, I want to talk about him acquiring the station. I want to talk about him acquiring the braids, I want to talk about him rebranding and I don't want to make this strictly a chronological, autobiographical or biographical account, right, because there are certain little random bits that I want to include in this that doesn't fit neatly into a story, but hopefully it's going to fit to y'all in a way that makes sense. First of all, he is the son of Robert Edward Turner II, who was an advertising magnate. He was a millionaire and he was successful, but he came up on some hard times financially and he kind of started to become. You know, he came apart a little bit toward the end of his life. He was gaining weight, started smoking a lot and he made a business deal. He sold off a lot of assets to his company. That left his son, ted Turner's son. So Ted was like in his 20s, I think he was like 23, 24. And he sold his business, a part of his business, and his son tried to talk him out of it and his dad said you know well, no, no, well. And then his son said hey, you told me all my life about not being a quitter, but here you are quitting. So now this is a very important part of the story because what happens next is going to shape the rest of his life. His dad, one morning he's breakfast, gets up, walks into the restroom, walks into the shower and shoots into him, walks into the shower and shoots into him. So now young Ted, 24 at the time, loses his dad, who he calls his best friend, and he has to pick up the pieces. So this thing about fathers, right. Every time I read these stories about these successful people and you read their father's story. You always just come across with the thought that the story of the father plays out through the son. The story of the son was precursored by the father.
Speaker 1:I'm currently reading this biography on Dr Martin Luther King Jr and it talks about his dad, who they call Dad the King. And you know his dad's journey is amazing. You know, native of Stockbridge. You know, left for Atlanta as a teenager and was illiterate. You know, hooked up with his wife's father, who was a pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and you know, ended up marrying his daughter. His daughter was a highly intelligent, only child of two educated theologians and they birthed three children, the second being the one whose holiday we celebrate every January. But Martin Luther King Jr does not. I mean, it's the same thing with Ted Turner, right you? There's no way that you can talk about Ted Turner without going to the story of his father. Same thing with Martin Luther King Jr. You know the father, you know, shaped this children's lives in ways for good and ill sometimes.
Speaker 1:And Ted talks about his dad a lot in this book. And you know he's a part of the tribe. You know he became a part of the I'm missing my dad's tribe, you know, at a very early age. You know, a lot of people lose their fathers earlier than that, some a little later than that, you know. But nevertheless, you know, he know he, like I, chris rock, few others right, we miss our dads and he's no different. But anyway he picks up the pieces and he tries to get his father's business back. And the guy whose dad made that bad business deal which said hey, you know I admire your father, you know I admire you, but there's no way in the world I'm backing out of this deal. So what Ted ended up doing is finding loopholes and fighting and ends up acquiring a company back through clever financing. And that's just the story of how his career goes. He always finds a way to get these deals done in these unconventional ways and do these things that a lot of business advisors around him just look at him and shake his head about. In fact, two of his closest advisors who his dad knew they left. Ted was making these business deals that just didn't make sense to people and two of them left. And while he said it hurt, he also realized that he had a vision that couldn't be deterred from. So, alright, he acquires the station by the late 1960s.
Speaker 1:Now I'm reading from his um autobiography, so let me backtrack to the playboy interviews that, um, I ordered I read those before I got this book. I read these interviews I said, wow, I gotta get this book now. So, uh, amazon ordered it, came to my house in a couple days, shot the prime and, um, I read through these three sections and it's about 90 pages total, kind of like what I'm going to go through a little bit. I'm not going to go through like 90 pages of work, but I am going to condense it to something that we can all understand through this podcast because, you know, I really recommend you read the book because, like it's like a book in a movie. The book always contains things and I ain't going to be able to tell you all the stuff in the book, but nevertheless, all right here.
Speaker 1:By the late 1960s we owned five radio stations, but I was frustrated to be based in Atlanta and not have one there. I looked around but it was clear that there weren't going to be any 24-hour stations for sale anytime soon. So you know about that time. Later on he noticed an ad on one of these billboards for a UHF TV station called WJRJ Channel 17. He wasn't following the business much back then, but you know, because he didn't even watch TV. He said and UHF stands for ultra high frequency. This was something that you know most people couldn't see because the antennas couldn't receive it. All right, so, but the business intrigued them, no, and the VHF stations the very high frequencies. So you had ultra high frequency and very high frequency. Those VHF stations in Atlanta were all strong network affiliates that were probably worth more than his entire company, right.
Speaker 1:But since the VHF stations were so strong because they split the market three ways, he figured he might be able to get his hands on the UHF competitor at a price he could afford. So here it is. He's a business owner. He's looking for something he can bring in at cost so that he can even start to make interroads to building his empire, right, building his business. So he asked around town and realized that this station was not doing well, right, and they might be for sale. And the did get in. The TV business was exciting, he said, and he wanted to bet on a medium that looked like it would grow. So that's another thing too, for the entrepreneurs who are listening, that you know you want to get into an industry that is going to grow.
Speaker 1:You don't want to get into a saturated industry. Radio was not growing at that time. You don't want to get into a saturated industry. Radio was not growing at that time. No, the radio industry was saturated, but TV was. Tv is a relatively new medium as far as advertisers were concerned. Businesses weren't. They had not realized how to, I guess, maximally make money through it. Yet through creative programming, through creative like. It was all very much new, it was in its infancy. It was all very much new, it was in its infancy.
Speaker 1:So he said Chyna 17 was owned by Rice Broadcasting, but the station was bleeding cash. And he realized that. You know, he found another way. On an average month about 50% of his billboard inventory went unsold. So with signs all over Atlanta quote I could put the unsold ones to use promoting our station, just as we had done to promote our radio station.
Speaker 1:The more I studied this deal, the more I wanted to do it All right. So he went and tried to buy it and they said hey, all right, look, we'll give you the station, but it's for $2.5 million and the rest of the time his company was probably worth about $7.5 million. So $2.5 million, $7.5 million, that would be a big deal. That's significant. There's no way we could pay cash, he said. So we negotiated a stock swap that would leave me as the largest single owner in the combined company but would drop my percentage ownership to about 47%. My board of directors continued to raise objections, but they knew I had voting control of the stock and in the end my enthusiasm wore them down.
Speaker 1:Enthusiasm, that's another big thing. Steve Jobs Not Sergey Brin, larry Page, those Google but Jeff Bezos those are men who are known for enthusiasm and putting across their ideas. Enthusiasm, passion, passion, passion. You can't substitute it. And according to this book and according to those Playboy interviews, he had that in spades. He just knew how to conjure up emotion when it came to communicating with people. So he ended up getting the boys' blessing and the deal ended up getting done. It took some time because they had to go through some legal things, but he ended up getting it in January of 1970. As soon as they got it, they changed his call letters to WTCG for Turner Communications Group. I had a lot to learn about the TV industry, so I dove in headfirst. I bought a couple books about the industry and subscribed to TV trade journals, and that's another thing in his life too. Of course, I'm not going to tell you that, but he was a voracious reader. This is a key theme, you know. It is what it is. If y'all hear, my voice.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say something about reading Because that's just I know how important it is. If y'all hear my voice, I'm going to say something about reading Because that's just I know how important it is for me, and everywhere I read about these people who do these wonderful things, they all, without exception, were voracious readers, alright, unfortunately, the more I learned about TV stations, the more I realized that ours was a disaster. So he acquired this company and they were just a mess. Most of the 35 employees inherited were either lazy on drugs or both. The terrible work ethic started at the top. He ended up firing everybody but two people a year later. A year later, there was only two people there who was there when he bought it the custodian and the receptionist. Our shows were weak, so I decided to make programming my top priority, and this is where he got real clever.
Speaker 1:See I remember those TV guys they had, like you know, 6.30 to 7.00, this show came on. 7.00 to 7.30, this show came on. But Turner realized that, hey, why don't I start my show five minutes after, so that when the other shows end and people are flipping the channel, they'll pass my channel and we'll already have, we'll have, a show playing Right. And that increased viewership significantly. So he would start his shows at 635 and at 705, you know, 705 to 735. I remember seeing that back in the day but not understanding why. But I know now and nobody else was doing that. So that's another thing, that ability to not care about what was conventional at the time but to go forward with what he thought would be advantageous to growing his business. I made a lot of program decisions. I look around to see what competitions are running and I figure out whose tastes aren't being met and provide them with an alternative From watching the competition. I believe that most of what the networks were airing was garbage, full of gratuitous violence, sex and stupidity. Knowing how quickly TV viewership was growing, it troubled me to see how much junk people were watching. Alright, so after six months, until our ownership of WTCG you know, bankrupt UHF station and Charlotte went on the market, I skipped that part. Basically, he ends up acquiring that Charlotte station in Charlotte, which you know. That's what set in place is that close friend of my dad who served on the board, and, after doing everything he could to keep me from buying the Atlanta station, the Charlotte deal was the last straw he resigned from the board. Not long after he left, another guy who was running the company day to day decided he had had enough too, and he resigned as well. These were big blows, given all we had in front of us, but I've always considered myself to be good to to be a good, open field runner, and I was more determined than ever to make it work.
Speaker 1:So and these next few pages are a testament to how relentless he was about recruiting talent right and this is another commonality we see in these titans and founders they just were ceaseless in their effort to getting the best talent possible. You know, rockefeller was said to have hired people based off sight, not on need. So it wasn't as if he said standard oil, we need six people in this position. He said, no, we're going to. If I see somebody that's extremely talented, I'm just going to get them. I'm just going to get them. I'm just going to get them. I'm just going to get them. I'm just going to get them. I'm just going to get them. I'm just going to stockpile talent.
Speaker 1:And Ted Turner was no different. So he would talk to people and researchers and pick their brains and then say, hey, why don't you come work for me, why don't you come work for me? And he was able to bring them over through his enthusiasm, through his passion, because you know, you work for me. You're not working to make money, we work for purpose. Right, we're building something here. We're building something we're different. We're building a station here that nobody else is showing. We have a vision and when this pays off, you're going to be leading for a missionary-like cause, as opposed to being a mercenary for a check.
Speaker 1:I think what Jeff Bezos said you want to hire missionaries, not mercenaries. You can say it's a con thing that business people do to get people on their side. Or you can just say that, hey, they realize that to get people's total buy-in, you got to get more than just their skills, their talents. You got to get their hearts. You got to get their sustained effort, because we ask you to put in hours we ask you to put in, push yourself beyond what you would push if you had not met me. So you've got to have something else that you're working for, so that when you're tired you're not thinking, ah, you're thinking, all right, it's a purpose, it's something to be on the other side that we can get from this extra effort, all right.
Speaker 1:So he talks about how he, you know, went about building his television stations. He got the Andy Griffith show, which ended up being a huge hit for TBS. He talks about how his first year under ownership the stations lost about $2 million total but made a significant progress. Then something happened that was real fortuitous for him. Out of the blue, watl went off the air. One other competitor in Atlanta market was WATL, but they ended up getting off the air because they was losing money, just like that. They were the only station in town. They were the only independent station bidding on syndicated programming rights for Atlanta, just that virgin territory thing.
Speaker 1:I think Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger, one of them, said something to the extent of you don't want, a key part to your success is low competition. You don't want to go where the competition is. You want to find a market, a group of people whose needs aren't being met go there and that seems so obvious, but it's not common in actuality, because a lot of people go to where it's popping right. Very few people want to go and build something, because that takes effort, that takes capital, that takes time and it's much easier to jump on a rising stock than to buy a stock low and wait it out for a certain time period. When you're looking to make money now, who has? Because you know who has time to sit and wait for, you know, for dollars to come in. We got expenses. So it takes a certain kind of foresight. It takes a certain kind of patience. It also takes you know, it takes knowledge Right If you, if you are reading and researching different areas, different areas, you realize that that is the way of things.
Speaker 1:To get wealthy in this country, in this world, you have to start something or invest in something very early. There is no other way to achieve wealth in this country, in this world. You've got to create something and build it, build a market, or you need to invest in something else very early. It's amazing how much this is forgotten. So, through ingenuity, through hustling, through getting on the phone, ted Turner builds and builds, and builds and then you know he would do things like you know. He would test big networks, you know, not caring about litigation, not caring about you know the legality of things.
Speaker 1:So he talks about a story about how, you know, the big three networks made money by selling national ads that ran across their stations. They wanted this programming to air on as many affiliates as possible to deliver coverage nationwide to a large audience. But because of conflicting programming commitments, especially with locally produced shows like pro sports, affiliated stations would sometimes preempt national programming, costing network coverage in that market. So once I learned this, he said, I got an idea. I decided to call the network people in New York and offer to air their shows on channel 17 Whenever they were preempted by their Atlanta affiliate. It took me a while to track down the right people but when I did they said yes, they preferred to have their affiliate clear their shows. But we were better than nothing. When we reached the point of having four preempted nbc shows running in our daytime lineup, I had our people put up the billboard saying the nbc network moved to channel 17 in really big letters. The owners of the nbc Cox Broadcasting threatened a lawsuit and our attorney advised me to have them taken down. Meanwhile, the controversy was mentioned in Cox's own Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper and we got some free publicity out of it. That is brilliant, y'all. The Atlanta ABC station carried the Hawks' basketball games so that during the NBA season they had a bunch of preemptions in the primetime. This gave me the same opportunity I had with NBC, and ABC's executives were more than happy to have us clear Atlanta for them. We even got to air the 1971 premiere of Brian's song.
Speaker 1:So this movie had an ability with James Caan. You know it's a teaser. It's a real teaser. It's one of the classic movies. It was one of the biggest made-for-TV movies of its time. Y'all, this is brilliant. That's one of those. You know we all ask for forgiveness. We're not asking for permission. Ted Turner is the ultimate ask-for-forgiveness, not permission, guy. Alright, so he's growing his station, and then he says this I knew we needed sports to really jump to the next level. I'd already taken professional wrestling From the ABC station and while these shows did well, getting big league rights Would really put us on the map.
Speaker 1:The Atlanta Braves were relatively new in town, having moved from Milwaukee in 1966. We talked about this last episode. Go listen to it. Shout out to the late Henry Aaron. But the Braves were popular, he said. If we could somehow get the Braves on our station it would be a huge coup. Not only would our ratings go up, but also we figured that many Atlantans who didn't have these UHF antennas will buy one just so they can see the Braves games. With more of these antennas in place, the potential audience for all of our shows will grow automatically.
Speaker 1:It was widely known that the Braves had lost money since moving to Atlanta Some said as much as one mil a year and as a result I was confident that an offer of more money for their TV rights would at least get their attention. Wsb was paying the Braves $200,000 per year for the right to show 20 away games. Back then many teams hesitated to put too many games on TV, particularly the home games, fearing that this exposure would hurt ticket sales. Because it was so bad. I say she was turning the corner for profitability and I was willing to pay for an asset as valuable as rights to a major sport.
Speaker 1:I called Bill Bartholomew, the late Bill Bartholomew, who led the group that purchased the Milwaukee Braves and moved them to Atlanta. He lived in Chicago and was also a seller, so we knew some of the same people, had a lot in common. From our mutual friends I also learned that he was a trustworthy stand-up guy. I met with Bill and said we would offer the Braves $600,000 per year three times WSB's fees In return. We wanted 60 games instead of 20. All right, so while they're talking he realized something else Given the team's broad relationship with Cox Communications Cox Communications owned the Braves' flagship radio station. In addition to their language-owned constitution, the paper the Braves counted on for extensive and hopefully positive coverage of the team, bill felt the right thing to do was to give them a courtesy call before they had heard about this deal secondhand. All right, so they make a deal. The Cox people obviously were furious, right, they said this dude Ted's a nut and this station is a Mickey Mouse station and you better not do this deal.
Speaker 1:But he ended up doing a deal because, you know, bill came back to Ted and said, hey man, they don't like this deal, can we back out? But Ted said, hey man, you already said you would do it. Ain't you a man of your word? And Bill was like, yeah, I'm a man of my word. And they did the deal and the company was up and running. Ted goes. The Braves were a huge shot in the arm for us. Ratings for the games were strong and our ad sale teams had solid success selling them.
Speaker 1:He talks about how bad the Braves were when he bought them. The Braves in the early 70s were pretty bad, but after posting consecutive losing records our first two seasons carrying the game, 72 and 73, they started turning things around in 74. So he hadn't got a team yet right, but he had gotten the Braves contract. He'd gotten the right to show advertising in Braves games and he's building a relationship with the Braves. He wouldn't buy the Braves for another. Let's see when did he get with the Braves as an ad guy? He got with them in 1973. 1971. 1971. 1973, 1971, 1971. He wasn't about to braze until 1976. How?
Speaker 2:was that Really you think so? Yeah, it was a great parade.
Speaker 1:Alright, you ready to hit? Yeah, come on my girl. Yeah, it was a race. It was a race, all right, you ready to hit? Yeah, come on my girl. So Ted calls the Braves, locking in with them, allowing them advertising a huge shot in the arm. Ratings for the games were pretty strong. It went up. They started losing less money to the point where they actually started making money. So then he starts talking about how the Braves were when he first got sinked in with them. On the advertising tip he said you know, as helpful as the Braves were, we'd have been better off if the team had won more games. Advertisers like being associated with the Major League franchise, but they prefer that team to be a winner.
Speaker 1:The Braves of the early 1970s were pretty bad but after posting consecutive losing records, our first two seasons, carrying games 72 and 73, they started turning things around in 74. 72 and 73, they started turning things around in 74. As you know, in 74, that was when the mighty Henry Aaron, you know, showed up. All the haters and want to be killers and did his thing and you know he talks about that, of course and that team won 88 games for the season and he calls Atlanta being really excited about baseball. Nearly a million fans went to the ballpark and our ratings improved. But the team did a total 180 degree reversal in 1975. They traded Hank Aaron to Milwaukee the very season he broke Baybrook's record, lost 94 games and saw their attendance drop almost in half. Lost 94 games and saw their attendance drop almost in half. He went to those Fulton County Stadium games and he talked about how there were barely 600 people in the stands at times. The Braves were losing and it was obvious their fans weren't the only ones who packed it in. The players had too. The whole experience was depressing.
Speaker 1:He talks about that and he says you know what? I'm going to go up and see the team president. So he goes up to the team president and say hey, look, I consider us to be partners and we need to add more excitement next year. What are we going to do to get the team on track? Team president at the time Dan Donahue, you know, looked at him and said well, I don't know what you're going to do next year, but I know what we're going to do we're selling the team. He said what? And this is the beginning of how Ted Turner acquired the Braves. So he says to him hey, you can't sell the team. The Braves mean a lot to my business. You're not selling this team, so who are you going to sell it to? Donahue said you, me, me.
Speaker 1:So then he goes on to talk about how his dad Taught him early in life that long term relationships, when your customers and partners Are important, because you just never Know Down the line how they're going to help you the guy who you're Friendly with today might be able to help you out Tomorrow. My dad said that too, and he's right. Dads are right Sometimes. For the past few years Ted says I demonstrated to Braves management that the team was important to me and now they were offering me first look chance to buy the franchise. So he goes talks to him. He says how much you gonna sell them to me for? They say $10 million, $10 million. So for a business that was losing $1 million a year, $10 million is out the question. So he said I can't lose this team. I'm sorry. We can't allow this team to move out of Atlanta.
Speaker 1:So we got to find a way to get this team and he realized that he had to come up with some creative financing way to do it, and that ended up happening. He ended up getting a team for you know, he put $1 million down and then assumed $9.65 million debt and lo and behold, well, they were halfway home. They had to get the sign off on the Major League Baseball owners. Ted wasn't a typical owner at the time. Right, and as we go see throughout the chapter, he says I think I was the first person to try to buy a team with less than 100% cash. Some were also concerned about my ultimate intentions on the TV side of things. I would just be the second owner who controlled both the team and its broadcast station and I had made a few comments about distributing WTCG on cable outside Atlanta. Some owners worried about what this might mean in terms of TV competition in their home markets. But the Braves were such a bad team in a relatively small southern city I didn't think many of them saw me as a threat. So he goes into full hustle mode and calls people and gets vouchers for him being the owner and they end up signing off on on him and he became the owner in January of 76. So now everybody's thrilled. However, there's one problem Ted didn't know the difference between a bulk and an infield fly. He didn't know anything about baseball, so he had some research to do.
Speaker 1:And it gets interesting right here because later on in this chapter, terry McG mcgirt, who ended up being, you know, a high ranking um executive in the braves organization. He talks about how, for spring training, he was sent with the team to be a quote-unquote player invite. But his real intention there was to see what was going on with the team and get some intel. And I read this and to me that sounded too much like snitching Right For all the good and for all the heroic endeavors that our boy Ted has done. I mean, come on now, right? So McGurk talks about how he went through it and you know, finally, I think like the last day or something like that, he came clean with other players and coaches and let them know that he was heading back to his real job in Atlanta and what he was there for. He said they had some good laughs over the whole thing and they went out for dinner and you know he made it sound like it was all ha-ha, all's well, that ends well.
Speaker 1:But I got to imagine, right, if somebody in my squad in the locker room with me and they're reporting back to the boss, but it did not seem to affect the player's attitude towards Ted Turner. From all reports it seemed to like them, seemed to love them, and you know, because he did things like you know jump over the railing when the team hit the home run. He said he talked about how his first game as an owner, I think and somebody hit a home run and he jumped over the rail and zapped the plate, you know celebrating with them. Of course he heard soon after that hey, that's not cool. The commissioner of baseball hit him up and said hey, you know that's not cool. Commissioner baseball hit him up and said hey, you know, that's that's not cool, you know so he would do things like that. But you know so Ted was just off the wall guy, you know that that was.
Speaker 1:You know that was him. It's somewhere in his book where he was doing a pitch to somebody and they said that at one point he jumped on the table and In another pitch meeting he was on all fours. He was just that excitable. His energy was not repressible. So he's with the Braves. He's learning about the Braves. He realized they suck. He realized that they had to get some talent. And this is around the time where free agency starts to become involved. Shout out to Kurt Flood, who was the first to buck the system and got his career ended because of such.
Speaker 1:But after he bust down the doors, there was two players, I believe, that ended up being the breakthrough players that the Supreme Court said that you know what free agency is allowed in baseball. One of them was this guy named Andy Messerschmitt. So Ted Turner ends up outbidding the Yankees to acquire him, and then he gets with somebody else and he says, hey, the owner of the Giants. He's had a cocktail party with the owner of the Giants and other owners too, and he starts talking saying, hey, you know, I'm going to outbid you for one of your players. I'm going to outbid you and I'm going to win. And he ended up signing the player, but that's a big no-no in sports because they call that tampering and result resultedly, he ended up becoming the first owner, I believe Well, not the owner of his first owner, but I don't know he may have been the first owner who got suspended for a year by Major League Baseball. I know George Steinbrenner ended up getting suspended later on and you know, some other owners might have gotten hot water for things they said, but he got suspended for tampering and right after he got suspended for tampering he acquires the Hawks for the same reason that he acquires the Braves. They were about to leave town and he was able to, you know, work out a deal with Tom Cousins, you know real estate magnate of Atlanta, and he was able to acquire two professional Atlanta sports at the same time.
Speaker 1:Then I want to end this bit on his rebranding of channel 17. So I talked about how he you know the company that the station was, wtcg. He acronymed it, calling it watch this channel grow and they were making money and with them, making more money over the years he was more confident ever that television was quote where I wanted to be. But even as we moved out of the red I was concerned that our options for meaningful growth were limited. In the mid-70s, channel 17 was the only independent station in a major southeastern market outside of Florida and the Braves were the only major league baseball franchise in the region. I knew that our programming would be of interest to viewers outside of Atlanta. I also saw that in places like Albany and Macon, georgia, people were signing up for a new service to get local stations. They were unable to tune in with their antenna and or a better picture for stations they were already receiving. This technology was often referred to as CATV for community antenna television or, more simply, cable TV. I concluded that our next big opportunity would be to push WTCG's distribution beyond Atlanta to become an independent station that serve the entire southeast, and we would use cable to get us there.
Speaker 1:So then he goes on this. Okay, listen, there's no reason why I can't get this station across the nation using this antenna. And he does what he does best. He researches, he goes to his first National Cable Television Association meeting. He learns about experiments undertaken by broadcasters and cable operators to use microwave technology to relay signals from broadcast towers to the cable plant. I'm not going to even flex like I really understand this. But here's the most important part the hustle. He came across this guy named Don Anderson. He was a researcher for the National Cable Television Association. He found out researcher for the National Cable Television Association and he mined Dunn's mind and he found out that these new technologies offer a lot of promise for aggressive independent broadcasters.
Speaker 1:So he realized he needed Dunn's expertise. He hired him and put him in charge of figuring out how he could move microwave technology to expand his territory and market our service to the young cable industry. So he goes forward. He does, you know, goes to these conferences, he reads these books. He comes across these people, right, and, you know, aggressive. But he comes with a roadblock. Guess what the roadblock is? Roadblock, guess what the roadblock is. It's no different for folks on the corner selling drugs who got a market on it, or a pharmaceutical industry selling a product and somebody else coming to the market hey, you on my turf, you can't get on turf.
Speaker 1:So he faced a lot of resistance from the big three stations. He faced resistance from other teams because now he's threatening to put the Braves in areas where you have a Cincinnati or you have a Chicago or you have a Boston. It's like what are you doing? This is our territory. Nobody had ever done this before. This is like a baby coming into an industry, but he's not acting like a baby. He's not acting like a baby because one, he's prepared, he's researching, he's constantly researching, he has more energy than you and he knows how to talk to people, so he's not acting like a baby. He's not acting like a baby because one he's prepared, he's researching, he's constantly researching. He has more energy than you, right, and he knows how to talk to people. So he's working the phones, he's researching. He realized he comes across how this thing called Home Box Office, hbo he talks about that in this chapter and I'm reading the section of.
Speaker 1:He says a relative, a relatively new pay-per-view channel, was planning to start distributing their signal via satellite and that Western Union would be their distributor. I called Western Union's marketing director and set up a meeting at his office in New Jersey. They sent a car to pick me up at Newark Airport and it was clear that they wanted my business. Shortly into the meeting, I understood why. Not only was HBO their only other television client, their deal was short-term and as soon as RCA launched their satellite, hbo planned to switch over to them. I learned a lot from this meeting. The guy who he met the marketing director's name was Ed Taylor. I learned a lot from Ed during that visit and, unfortunately for Western Union, I was convinced that we had to be on the same satellite as hbo as hbo at the time, satellite receiving antennas cost cable operators about 100 000 a piece, but if I teamed up with hbo they'd get two channels for the price of one. Creative thinking right. So I decided to try to coordinate efforts with the head of hbo, a guy named jerry levin. I met jerry once before and shortly after he's going for work for time warn, warner, time Inc.
Speaker 1:Hbo's owner. In the past few years since then he has become passionate advocate for satellite distribution. So this is like early adopter guys, guys who kind of understood what things were going before. Many others didn't. And when you have that kind of advantage, this cerebral cognitive advantage in any field you're going to have, you're going to, you're going to be able to do things. Cerebral cognitive advantage in any field, you're going to be able to do things. You're going to be able to get that first money right, that initial seed money that nobody's even thinking about getting, because you know they have the intel, they have the creativity and you know just the huevos I'm sorry to my Latin brothers and sisters if I'm pronouncing that wrong Huevos, that's what I think it's pronounced. Anyway, you know what I'm saying. You got to have them things to be able to be a first mover in the industry.
Speaker 1:So he talks about talking to people and then he gets to this sticky situation so I'm going to start here. Sticky situation, so I'm gonna start here. So he goes to negotiate a deal with with rca and realized there was one big problem before you could distribute a channel via satellite, you had to get your signal up to the satellite in the first place, and to do this required the use of a send station or uplink at the signal's origination point. So again, I again I'm not going to flex like I truly understand this but basically they're saying look, you can't just walk through this market. You got to get a third-party signal up to the satellite and that costs money. He said how much it costs about 750 racks. So I asked him him talking if there was anyone in Georgia who could build one for me. And they suggested I contact a company named Scientific Atlanta. Now Scientific Atlanta y'all was, I believe, a company built by Georgia's tech students and they had a bit of a reputation but it was kind of underground-like. But the people in the industry knew them and they recommended them to him.
Speaker 1:So by now I was determined to make this work and I quickly set up a meeting with Sidney Topol and this is a theme in this book too. He's always talking about as soon as he gets a hunch or as soon as he gets information, intel about something, he's setting it up right then. He's setting it up right then. And I read something recently, and I've always heard in my life throughout that the more that you reduce the gap from idea to execution, the more likely that execution will be favorable for you. And this book is a proof of that, because I've heard it at least eight times in his book. He said, hey, I got information and I quickly set up a meeting. I think he used quickly at least 20 times in his book.
Speaker 1:All right, so anyway, he set up a meeting with Sidney Topol, the CEO. He said that while they expected satellite technology to be a big part of their business, they had yet to build an uplink. I asked him how much he thought this would cause. He said he would have to do some research and get back to me. I like Topol and I trusted him, so I told him that if he offered me a reasonable price I'd do the deal with him. I can't exactly remember what price he came back with, but it seemed okay and we reached an agreement. We bought a small piece of property in a remote area on Atlanta's northwest perimeter that would serve as our site and the scientific Atlanta. People got to work. So go, they do that.
Speaker 1:The uplink is completed and then another problem comes. My lawyers explained to me that the FCC had rules against broadcasters sending their own signal outside their broadcast house footprint. Microwave distribution passed muster because the cable operators owned the relays, but in the case of satellite distribution our company wasn't allowed to own the uplink or the lease for the satellite transponder. Again, listen, I'm learning something new too. A third party is the most important part. A third party or common carrier would be required.
Speaker 1:We looked at different scenarios, like putting the uplink company in my wife's name, my children's name, but the lawyers made it clear that the distributor had to be completely independent from the broadcaster. I had to find someone to run an independent satellite uplink company. So I called the first person I met in the satellite business, western Union's Ed Taylor. I explained to Ed that I need to set up an independent company to carry the TBS signal and asked him if he would leave Western Union to own and run our comic carrier. So with that he got more talent.
Speaker 1:He always had a knack of finding people who knew exactly what they were doing. Steve Jobs would call that hiring A players. That's a talent, that's a true talent, to be able to recruit the best and not only spot the best, but be able to talk to them and convince them to come be with you. You know, I got a cousin who owns a very successful business and we were talking and he talked to me about how he was able to plug people from other companies. Not because you because, hey, we ought to pay you the most, or we just got it all lavish over here. He was able to get them because of this messianic sense of purpose that his business offered that other businesses didn't. While you may be making less for me now, you're going to be working for a passionate group. You're going to be working toward a purpose and it's going to mean something. Ted was like that. He was able to get people based off. Hey, this is where we are now, but we're going to be here Like it's going to happen. And this is why it's going to happen, because I've talked to so many people and this is a medium that nobody's really on to yet, but I am. I am and people you know, they bought it right. So anyway, they end up going through this process and they ended up getting the satellite up.
Speaker 1:The first satellite transmission of WTCG Watch, this Channel Grow, occurred on December 17, 1976, months before someone in our promotions department had come up with the idea of calling the local station Super 17. I liked that a lot, but once we were beaming the signal off the satellite, I thought we needed something more. I was playing around with the word super and when it just came to me Super Station, the name had a great ring to it and would convey to people exactly what it was. I also decided to change the station's call letters, since we had moved into the broadcast media. We changed our corporate name to turn on broadcasting system inc. And I decided to convert to wtbs, which is the station which I saw growing up. This is me talking Zettler IV. I saw WTBS on the screen all the time. I had no idea what went into it, because I'm a child and these things like that wasn't that important to me to research. But I read this now and I'm just I'm like, wow, okay, so now that we were competing on a national level. I also like that TBS sounded like CBS and we were soon referring to the channel as Superstation TBS.
Speaker 1:So once it became clear that Turner Ted you know he's about it, he's serious he started getting national distribution for a local station, which had never happened before National distribution for a local station that was losing money. Six years prior we ran into problems with our program suppliers. Our syndication deals with Hollywood gave us rights in Atlanta market only, and so I don't know if I discussed this. But when he bought the station he bought a whole bunch of movie rights and started playing old movies on his station. So syndication did what Hollywood gave us rights in Atlanta market only.
Speaker 1:When they expanded beyond that, it kind of got to this legal thing. Like I said earlier, you're on our turf now and it's not like he did anything wrong per se. He just pissed off the wrong people. Pushing farther into the Southeast via microwave didn't seem to bother them, but going national on the satellite certainly got their attention. As for the Braves, major League Baseball knew when I bought the team that I had been considering broader distribution, but I don't think they thought it would really ever happen. It was one thing for Braves games to be beamed to places like Montana or New Mexico where a competing franchise didn't exist. It's quite another to go into a Major League market like Detroit or St Louis and compete for viewers against their home marketing. He said I'm going to come into your turf. I'm going to come into your turf. What you going to do about it? We will also carry Atlanta host games at this point, and the NBA raised similar concerns. Local broadcasters also lined up in opposition to us, claiming that the Superstation violated established rules about the redistribution of the local TV signals. So now you got this kind of collusion cartel thing going on. Alright, y'all, we gotta get this little man out of here. Right Now. He's becoming a nuisance, and that's what's happening right here. They claim that since the Superstation beamed into their territory with shows that they had licensed for that market, we were violating their rights to exclusivity.
Speaker 1:In a short period of time, we managed to alienate Hollywood, the sports leagues, the broadcast networks and local stations all over the country. Each one of these groups had big time lobbying presence in Washington and, with the FCC and Congress ultimately presiding, washington became a primary battlefront and I started spending a lot of time there. I participated in numerous hearings and tried to be on a first name basis with as many influential politicians as possible. You know he talked about his early training as a debater. He was a debate champion in school growing up and talked about how that served him well in his congressional hearings and his strategy was to go on the offense.
Speaker 1:If there are any real thieves here, he says in the hearing one time, it's ABC, nbc, cbs. They're the ones who convinced the government to hand over incredibly valuable VHF licenses all over the country completely free of charge. They've used the public airwaves to make a fortune and never once paid a dime for that right. I'd go on to argue that no one would ever dream of letting a paper company cut timber on federal land or an oil company drill offshore without putting those rights up for bid. So why should TV companies get these rights for nothing? A free license might have made sense in the beginning, when the business was just getting started. But what about now, when these broadcasters were making millions? Right? When these licenses come up for renewal every three years, why not put them up for bid? So you know? He argues that. You know it's a monopoly, it's like a small group monopoly, oligopoly, right, it's not American. This is not American. This is supposed to be the land of opportunity, but what you're doing is patently anti-American.
Speaker 1:When it came to the sports leagues, I painted a picture that the owners basically sat around a table a long time ago and said okay, I'll take New York, you get St Louis, and the guy over here gets Chicago. They colluded to create local monopolies. I said, and I thought that one of the roles of government was to regulate monopolies. And he goes on and uses an analogy. I asked legislators to imagine a world where the heads of Ford, gm and Chrysler sat down and the Ford guy says I get everything east of the Mississippi. General Motors, you get west of Mississippi. Chrysler, you can have the state of Michigan. If we agree to this, we eliminate competition and we can charge $10,000 for a car instead of $2,000 and we'll make a lot more money.
Speaker 1:Baseball Commissioner Boy Coon tried to counter by saying that the portation of games into other markets would disrupt things to the point where the league's Viability might even be threatened. How is that possible, I ask? The owners are all millionaires. We're paying millions to our players and guess who gets left holding the bag? Our fans. And whenever I debated league rules in Washington, I always tried to conclude my point by saying the law of the land takes precedence Over the law of the league. And he talks about this and eventually you know, haha, and eventually you know ha-ha, lo and behold, hard work pays off.
Speaker 1:The FCC ruled that as long as our signal was distributed by that comment carrier that we talked about earlier, the Superstation could continue to exist as is. So now he can broadcast his games all over the country and there was nothing anybody can do about it. But he fought for it. He fought for it A lot of folks I don't know if a lot of folks would have had the temerity to do it or the intelligence to do it, or, you know, like that's just the and I hope you know everybody who's listening to this. And I get inspired by this because I understand like it's that grit. It's that grit. You know, that is the thing that nobody can write your story for you.
Speaker 1:And he clearly realized that because of all the stuff that he did just to get TBS all over the country. So he says the programmers might not like what we were doing, but over time we worked out terms In many cases increased license fees that everyone could live with. The sports leagues were frustrated but eventually learned to live with the idea that Atlanta games would be seen all over the country. Yeah, tough right. Meanwhile, cable operators were thrilled to add a wholesome high quality channel to their lineup. And, as I predicted, in Washington, consumers wound up being winners too.
Speaker 1:So then there's this other thing. Right, it's like problem after problem after problem, and it's just. You know, he talks in his book just how. He just bulldozes through all of them. So the next thing is his beef with Nielsen. So Nielsen is the company that charts the ratings for shows, but they refuse to document Atlanta Braves audiences outside of Atlanta. They claim that it was prohibitively expensive for them to measure a channel whose distribution was so spotty across the country. But I just turn talking now. But I was suspicious that their real motivations was to avoid upsetting their customer base the broadcast networks and local stations that were our competition. So he's basically operating off lack of sight into data. You know, that could clearly help his business. If he doesn't know how many people are watching games in New Mexico or Montana, st Louis, how can he plan Right? So he had to come up with some kind of rough, dirty, rough and dirty measure. So what he ended up doing was hire a creative recess, I'm sorry, hire a creative research specialist from Cox Communications named Bob Sieber.
Speaker 1:Specialist from Cox Communications named Bob Sieber and realized that once again, direct response advertising could be a solution to our problems. Since many of our orders for direct response products came in in the form of personal checks mailed directly to our Atlanta offices, we could tell where they were coming from, based off postmarks. So they would have one stack of letters postmarked in Atlanta, then they'll have another with letters from outside of Atlanta. So as the Superstation gained distribution, not only did the overall volume of letters increase. Postmarks from places in Alabama, mississippi and Florida were soon joined by others as far away as Illinois, hawaii and Alaska. And with Nielsen reporting, only the viewership level was Atlanta. Bob and his team would count the number of letters mailed in locally, then tally the number of letters we received from elsewhere and back into a rough estimate of what the size of our non-Atlanta audience was.
Speaker 1:This was hardly a bulletproof scientific process, but it was the best we had. That's another thing being resourceful, being creative with meager resources. Part of the fun was watching how quickly the non-Atlanta stack grew, going from just a handful of letters at first to a pile that ultimately dwarfed the size of the local one. The mail bags started to get so full they looked like Santa Claus's in Miracle on 34th Street. So he talks about this and eventually you know lo and behold. You know Nielsen ended up agreeing. But Nielsen didn't agree to do this after the litigation was threatened.
Speaker 1:And with that y'all, I'm out. Hat tip to David Sinner of Founders Podcast. Shout out to Coach Collective for the vision. Win on the track Maydale Ray. Check out our prior episodes at theatlantiformulacom, where all podcast platforms are. The episodes are Especially, check out the last one before this Hank Aaron 50th anniversary. When I did it with my 10 year old son, that was not only crazy for me, but I feel like everybody else will get something from it as well. Y'all go out and be great. Don't be a hater. Be blessed. This is the Atlanta Forum.
