CNN/TBS's Historic 1988-1996 Profitability & Labor Record

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner.)

After Billionaire Ted Turner decided to save his CNN/TBS media conglomerate from bankruptcy in the 1980s by sharing control of CNN/TBS with Time Warner, Tele-Communications Inc. and the other U.S. pay-TV cable operators, CNN’s profitability increased greatly. As Forbes (1/4/93) observed, CNN/TBS’s 1992 net income was “estimated at $105 million on revenues of $1.7 billion, more than double the revenue of 1988” and “in 1991 CNN alone earned more than any of the broadcast networks” (i.e. than CBS, NBC and ABC). By then, the CNN subsidiary produced about 30 percent of CNN/TBS’s annual revenues and by 1991 the CNN “alternative media” operation was valued at about $1.5 billion.

Between 1992 and 1996, CNN/TBS’s total worth was also expected to jump from $5 billion to $11 billion, while its net annual income was expected to increase from $105 million/year to $335 million/year. [So, not surprisingly, in October 1996 the Time Warner media conglomerate decided it would be profitable to fully acquire Turner’s CNN/TBS media conglomerate and add CNN to the Time Warner media monopoly’s stable of mainstream corporate media properties].

One additional reason CNN had become so profitable by the 1990s was that it had tended to reflect Ted Turner’s anti-labor political bias in its employment and business practices. As Through Jaundiced Eyes: How The Media View Organized Labor by William Puette noted, an American University graduate student study reported that interviews with then-AFL-CIO president Lane Kirland were “never granted to the nonunion Cable News Network, whose owner Ted Turner, has made clear his dislike for unions.” And as CNN: The Inside Story revealed:

“To get around unions in the bureaus, CNN had been using subcontractors who hired people to run cameras and crews—such as Mobile Video, run by Sheldon Levy, who had been CNN’s first subcontractor in Washington, D.C. If those employees voted for a union, then CNN could simply cancel its contract (which, eventually, was what happened in the case of Mobile Video) and go to another outfit.”

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN Founder Ted Turner’s Personal Wealth In 1994

CNN/TBS's Historic `Godfather' & Corporate Connections

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner.)

According to Contemporary Business Leaders, during the 1980s then CNN/TBS Director “Malone had quietly become the dominant force in the American cable industry, while Turner was noisily tilting at various windmills” and “often called the `Godfather of Cable,’ Malone had clearly become TBS’s godfather by 1988…” Malone graduated from Yale the same year that JFK was mysteriously eliminated and worked for Bell Telephone during the Vietnam War era, before becoming a Tele-Communications Inc. cable system company executive in the 1970s.

In the 1990s, the then-52-year-old Malone continued to sit on the board of directors of both the CNN/TBS company that profited from providing programs to cable systems and the Tele-Communications Inc. company that profited from providing cable system programs to pay-TV subscribers. In addition to being a CNN/TBS Director and a Tele-Communications Inc. Director in the early 1990s, Malone was also the chairman of the board of the Wyoming-based Liberty Media Corporation, which owned 50 percent of the American Movie Classics cable-TV programming company in partnership with NBC at that time [and currently owns the MacNeil-Lehrer Productions media firm that produces PBS’s evening NewsHour television show each night].

In 1994, then-CNN/TBS Director Malone’s Tele-Communications Inc. operated 629 cable systems in the U.S. for 7.7 million pay-TV cable system subscribers. In Northern New Jersey, its TCI of Northern New Jersey subsidiary, for example, provided pay-TV cable for a profit to about 194,000 subscribers in 1994. Another Tele-Communications board member at that time, Bob Magness, had also been a director of Republic Pictures, United Artist Communications, Community Tele-Communications and West Marc Communications. Not surprisingly, CNN has not become famous for providing its cable-TV viewers with much investigative reporting about the U.S. pay-TV cable industry or the extent to which cable-TV subscription prices are fixed at an artificially high rate for consumers.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, directors of Time-Warner, HBO, Continental Cablevision, Comcast Corporation, Whittle Communications, American Mobile Systems, United Cable Television, Fashion Channel, Air Atlantic, Frank B. Hall, National Security Bank of Chicago, WMS Industries, Metro Bank-Tech Center and the Cable Advertising Bureau also sat next to Billionaire Ted Turner on the CNN/TBS corporate board.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN/TBS’s Historic 1988-1996 Profitability & Labor Record

CNN's Historic & Current Time Warner Media Monopoly Connection

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner.)

CNN/TBS’s 1986 purchase of MGM/UA left Ted Turner’s media conglomerate with so much debt--$1.4 billion—that in 1987 Turner was forced to sell 37 percent of his inheritance-based CNN/TBS media operation to “a group of 26 cable operators and Time Inc.” and “if the $525 million deal hadn’t gone through, Turner would have been out of cash,” according to CNN: The Inside Story. As a result, “Turner went from owning more than 80 percent of TBS stock to maintaining from 51 to 65 percent" and “the new stockholders, led by Time Inc. and Denver-based Tele-Communications Inc., immediately appointed seven directors to join Turner’s eight board members” who “would have a lot of power over big decisions in the future,” according to the same book.

In its 1990 edition, Everybody’s Business pointed out that “Tele-Communications, the nation’s largest operator of cable TV systems (and therefore an important Turner customer) “ then owned “38 percent” of CNN/TBS’s Class C shares. “Time-Warner, [then] the second largest operator of cable-TV systems and a major program supplier (and therefore both a customer and Turner competitor)” then owned “32 percent of these C shares, and another cable TV operator, United Cable,” owned “8.9 percent of them,” during the early 1990s.

According to the International Directory of Company Histories, “the backing of the cable industry virtually guarantees the success” of CNN/TBS on a financial level. Contemporary American Business Leaders also revealed that “besides the money,” in 1987 CNN/TBS “got access to a built-in market of more than half the 43 million cable subscribing American homes because of its alliance with John Malone, then-president of Tele-Communications Incorporated, and one of the leaders of the investment group.” CNN: The Inside Story also emphasized that “the investment in Turner Broadcasting by cable operators, who had bailed out Turner…had meant the difference.”

Coincidentally, the cable industry which bailed Turner out when he became “financially overextended in the mid-1980s" and which owned a huge chunk of Turner’s CNN/TBS in 1994 “practically deified Turner" in the early 1990s, according to New York magazine (2/1/92), after CNN/TBS started to become a money-making machine. And, also coincidentally, Time Warner’s Time magazine named Turner as its 1991 “Man of the Year”—at the same time Time-Warner owned 21.9 percent of all types of CNN/TBS stock.

[Subsequently, in October, 1996, CNN finally became a subsidiary division of the Time Warner media conglomerate, after the Democratic Clinton Administration allowed Time Warner to acquire and merge its media monopoly operation with Ted Turner’s Turner CNN/TBS media monopoly operation--despite the existence of U.S. anti-trust laws that prohibit the monopolization of the U.S. media industry by media conglomerates like Time Warner/CNN. And the CNN “alternative” news network, CNN, is still today little more than a TV variant of the Time Warner media conglomerate’s Time magazine culturally and politically straight mind-set; and just another propaganda tool of the Militaristic U.S. Establishment in the 21st-century.]

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN/TBS’s Historic “Godfather” & Corporate Connections

CNN's Historic MGM/United Artists Connection

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner)

To provide more programming for his Channel 17 Atlanta Super-Station (renamed WTBS in the 1980s) and for the new TNT cable channel it planned to establish in 1988, Turner’s CNN/TBS acquired Hollywood’s MGM/United Artists for $1.5 billion in 1986. It then sold off all of its MGM/UA assets within six months for $800 million—except for the MGM film library of 2,280 titles, which included Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ In The Rain, Citizen Kane, Casablanca and Miracle On 34th Street. The Turner Entertainment Company [TEC] film library “subsequently acquired 750 pre-1950 Warner Brothers films as well as the rights to 750 RKO pictures in the U.S.,” according to The Sky Barons by Neville Clarke and Edwin Riddell. The CNN/TBS/TEC media conglomerate thus possessed the world’s largest inventory of old movies prior to 1994.

As Forbes magazine (1/4/93) noted during the early 1990s, “a key element in Ted Turner’s success” had “been his insistence on owning as much programming as possible.” The same magazine observed that “because” Turner owned “many different outlets, he” was able to “use the same programming in many different ways” and “he also” was able to use “each of his networks to cross-promote the others.” Ironically, although Turner’s CNN/TBS claimed to be against censorship in the early 1990s, about 2,700 of the MGM, Warner Brothers or RKO films contained in the CNN/TBS/TEC film library of about 3,700 movies had still not been broadcast by Turner’s super-station or TNT to U.S. cable TV viewers as of 1993, apparently for commercial reasons, according to Forbes magazine (1/4/93).

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN’s Historic & Current Time Warner Media Monopoly Connection

CNN's Historic Jerry Falwell & Jesse Helms Connections

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner.)

During the Reagan era, TBS/CNN’s then-chairman of the board, Ted Turner, was a friend of a [now-deceased] right-wing religious extremist named Jerry Falwell. As Contemporary American Business Leaders recalled, “Turner, like his friend Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, viewed MTV as a moral corrupter of youth.” The same book also noted that, in support of Jerry Falwell’s right-wing social and cultural agenda, “Turner took on MTV, the music video cable channel, unveiling his `Night Track’ in June 1983, which was to play a `pop-40 light’ series of videos.”

It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks also noted that in 1981 “Turner…found himself aligned with the Reverend Jerry Falwell…in demanding that the three major networks return to more wholesome programming like Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best." The same book also revealed that on June 19, 1982 Turner spoke to a right-wing Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Philadelphia and “after urging the veterans to join him in his quest for a congressional investigation of network television” Turner “gracefully accepted the VFW’s annual `News Media Award’ as the man who had done the most that year to promote `traditional American values.’”

Turner was also a friend of the ultra-right North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms during the Reagan era and on June 27, 1984 Turner gave “a rousing speech before Washington’s National Conservative Foundation” in which “he vowed he would soon take over one of the Big Three” TV networks, according to It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks. Although Turner’s media conglomerate had lost $77 million on its CNN TV subsidiary operation during the previous five years, “in 1985 Turner decided to take over CBS” after “his friends Jerry Falwell and Senator Jesse Helms had announced their intention to take over the network to end its `liberal bias'” according to Contemporary American Business Leaders.

Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms by Ernest Ferguson also revealed in 1986 that “In a deposition before CBS attorneys, Turner admitted that he had held extensive discussions with Helms and the ultra-right FIM [Fairness In Media] about how they might cooperate in their efforts.” Turner also apparently told a Rotarian luncheon ground in the 1980s that “I think we’d be in a hell of a mess…if we didn’t have a Right Wing.”

But Turner’s 1985 bid to take over CBS was unsuccessful because Turner did not yet have enough money in his bank account to acquire CBS at that time. In response to Turner’s attempt to take over CBS, “CBS filed actions in both New York State and federal courts, accusing TBS of a litany of…security violations, as well as conspiracy to defraud…” according to It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN’s Historic MGM/United Artists Connection

CNN's Historic Apartheid Regime & Citibank Connections

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner)

As security for the initial increase in TBS/CNN corporate debt that resulted from his broadcasting system establishing CNN in 1979, Ted Turner utilized some of his one-ounce, solid gold South African Krugerrand coins. During the years when the apartheid regime ruled South Africa, Turner—despite anti-apartheid movement calls for people not to purchase Krugerrand coins—apparently “bought $2 million worth” of Krugerrand coins “at $275 an ounce,” which rapidly increased in value, since “within a year” after Turner’s Krugerrand purchase “gold had hit $800 an ounce,” according to CNN: The Inside Story. From his investment in the apartheid regime’s Krugerrand coins, Turner “made over $3.6 million profit,” according to It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks.

Turner’s CNN operation wasn’t as profitable at first as his Super Station’s broadcasting of wrestling matches, baseball games and basketball contests to pay-TV cable viewers had been. As Contemporary American Business Leaders observed:

“The first three years were terrible for CNN. It lost oceans of money.”

Yet despite losing $24 million between 1979 and 1982 as a result of his CNN operation, Turner—like Australian global media mogul Rupert Murdoch—was able to convince a few Manhattan-based banks to rescue him financially in the early 1980s. During the early years of the Reagan Era, Turner’s TBS (its name had been changed from TCC in 1979 to TBS) was given a $50 million loan for three years from Citibank and Manufacturers Hanover Trust to enable him to keep his money-losing “alternative” CNN operation going when it was still losing $2 million a month. Turner’s TBS/CNN was also lent $190 million from a Chemical Bank-led consortium and $50 million from First Boston during this same period. Not surprisingly, CNN did not provide its pay-TV viewers with much in the way of hard-hitting investigative reporting about Citicorp between 1980 and 1994.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN’s Historic Jerry Falwell & Jesse Helms Connections

CNN's Historic Atlanta Braves/Hawks' Sports Connections & Origins

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner)

To provide sports programming for the pay-TV cable viewers of his “Super-Station” without having to pay a third-party for the right to broadcast games, former CNN Owner Turner purchased The Atlanta Braves in 1976 for $9.6 million and, in 1977, also acquired the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. As Current Biography noted in 1982, by owning the Braves Turner avoided “contract disputes and negotiations over broadcast schedules.” Not surprisingly, “alternative” CNN hasn’t, historically, often provided its viewers with much investigative reporting about racism in the ranks of the NBA team owners or among major league baseball team owners (or much investigative reporting about the institutional racism of all the non-sports world business firms owned by these folks--from which these professional sports team owners also make big money).

In 1979 the then-41-year-old Turner decided to enter the world of “alternative” electronic journalism. As CNN: The Inside Story by Hank Whittimore noted, the then-multi-millionaire Turner “decided to take every nickel of profit from his growing Super-Station and from the sale of any other asset of Turner Communications Corporation, and pour it into the cable news network.” After selling his WRET-TV Channel 36 station in Charlotte for $20 million to Westinghouse and being given a $20 million credit line by First National Bank of Chicago, Turner was able to set up his CNN “alternative” media news operation in 1979.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN’s Historic Apartheid Regime and Citibank Connections