City: Atlanta, GA

Category: Media

Telephone: (404) 827-1700

Description: Turner Broadcasting System, the mega-corporation that owns The Wizard of Oz, The Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, Turner Network Television, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, Gone With the Wind, The Jetsons, CNN and Headline News, Yogi Bear, The Shawshank Redemption, Johnny Quest, and Huckleberry Hound (this list could fill the whole book!), remains a major media player even after the merger of the company with Time Warner and the ill-fated America Online. Turner Broadcasting System Inc., prior to the sale, employed 8,200 people worldwide. The company entered the television business with the purchase of a single Atlanta UHF television station in 1970. Ted Turner had moved to Atlanta in 1963 and quickly turned around his family’s failing billboard company. In 1976 Channel 17 became the first cable superstation when its signal began beaming from a satellite 23,000 miles out in space. WTBS Super-Station had fewer than 700,000 subscribers, who were treated to a mixed bag that included old movies and TV shows, Atlanta Braves baseball (TBS bought “America’s Team” in 1976), and commercials for odd products such as Slim Whitman records and a kitchen-full of peelers, slicers, and dicers. Today it’s America’s top-rated 24-hour basic cable service. When Turner launched CNN in 1980, detractors scoffed at the world’s first 24-hour, all-news network. In the years since, its U.S. subscriber base has grown from 1.7 million to more than 77 million, and CNN has shown the world everything from the 9/11 attacks to the War in Iraq to O. J. Simpson’s car chase. Through the years, TBS continued to launch networks (Cartoon Network, Headline News, Turner Network Television, Turner Classic Movies) and acquire subsidiaries (Castle Rock Entertainment, Hanna-Barbera Cartoons Inc., New Line Cinema). Turner Entertainment Company also owns more than 3,300 film and TV titles, including Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, King Kong, Casablanca, Ben-Hur (1926 and 1959 versions), and Citizen Kane. TBS founder Ted Turner was hailed as “prince of the global village” by Time magazine when it named him Man of the Year in 1991. In September 1995, after lengthy negotiations, Time Warner bought TBS for $7.5 billion. The resulting megacorporation is the world’s largest entertainment company. Time Warner sold to America Online in 2001 in what turned out to be a near disastrous move. AOL-Time Warner is now back to plain old Time Warner. Turner, disillusioned with it all, resigned from the Time Warner board of directors in 2006, leaving the room to a standing ovation. Despite the fact that many operations are now conducted out of Time Warner’s offices in New York, the Atlanta facilities still play a major role in the company and in Atlanta. All you have to do is drive down I-75 to see the colossal TBS studios between 10th and 14th Streets and the red CNN sign is omnipresent at the downtown CNN World Headquarters.