I didn’t like these rules because they were intended to protect the broadcasters. They didn’t need the help, and it resulted in filling cable systems with channels that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. (We would later challenge these rules in a lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1997, in the case of
Turner Broadcasting vs. the FCC,
we lost by a 5–4 vote.)
These retransmission deals slowed the Cartoon Network’s distribution but we knew it was just a matter of time before we were carried everywhere. Not only did we manage to collect subscription fees for the service but also our ratings were boffo. From my days at Channel 17, I’d learned that a good show—old or new—could compete and the classic Hanna-Barbera shows still were popular. Since some of our younger viewers hadn’t seen these programs before, they didn’t even know they were old. We produced new shows as well, and used Hanna-Barbera’s production capabilities to make hits like
Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo,
and
The Powerpuff Girls
. They also helped us revive the
Captain Planet
franchise by producing
The New Adventures of Captain Planet
.
In short, the Cartoon Network was a huge success. Several years after the launch, I was with Michael Eisner. He leaned over and said, “Do you want to know the biggest mistake I ever made?”
And I said, “No, Michael, what was it?”
“Not buying Hanna-Barbera when I had the chance—I should have never let you get it.”
In addition to launching new channels, I was still eager to make sure that TBS and TNT continued to have access to new and better programming. It was good to have libraries but without a studio I worried that we might get cut off from new content. It would be like the United States having its oil supply cut off—we could survive for a while but pretty soon we’d be in big trouble.
When Martin Davis was exploring selling Paramount, we had conversations but they never went anywhere. He knew that I had spending constraints and he suspected correctly that my board didn’t want me to buy a major studio. This was frustrating for me, as I thought it was obvious by then that owning production and distribution capabilities made sense. I think most of our board members knew it, too. I was convinced that Jerry Levin and the other Time Warner directors would say that they didn’t want us to buy a studio because it was too expensive, too risky, or too distracting, but that what
really
concerned them was that we’d end up competing with Warner Brothers. The terms of their investment in Turner gave them the right to veto such deals, but it bothered me when I thought they would use their veto against the best long-term interests of the Turner Broadcasting shareholders.
I was determined to obtain production capabilities and if they wouldn’t let me buy a big studio, perhaps I could go after a couple of smaller ones. Around that time, I got a call from Alan Horn at Castle Rock Entertainment, a successful production company he had founded in the late ’80s along with a talented team of producers and executives, including Rob Reiner, Glenn Padnick, Andrew Sheinman, and Martin Shafer. They had produced a string of very good movies (including
A Few Good Men, City Slickers,
and
When Harry Met Sally
) and also had experience producing TV series (including
Seinfeld,
which was about to become a huge hit).
A TED STORY
“We Bonded Right Away”
—Alan Horn
(A FOUNDER OF CASTLE ROCK ENTERTAINMENT, ALAN HORN IS NOW PRESIDENT AND COO OF WARNER BROTHERS.)
I had spoken with the investment bank Allen and Company about selling our company and had been fishing around with some potential buyers but we weren’t getting traction with anyone. My wife, Cindy, knew Jane Fonda from some work they had done on environmental causes and I had met Ted Turner years before when I was working for Norman Lear and he and I visited Ted on one of his properties. I remembered him from that time as being great fun and I decided to invite him and Jane over for dinner to talk to him about selling our company.
So Ted and Jane came over to our house and as they walked around and saw my collection of western art, Ted said, “Hell, you’re buying western art and I’m buying the West!” We bonded right away. Ted was very straightforward about his interest in buying our company and very quickly thereafter we worked with his financial people on the subsequent details and had all the deal terms in place.
Another company I set my sights on was New Line Cinema. Run by its founders, Michael Lynne and Bob Shaye, New Line began by producing low-budget films for the college market. Their success grew with
Nightmare on Elm Street
and they had another hit with a live-action version of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
. The films they made weren’t always my cup of tea—especially the horror movies—but they were the right size and I liked Bob and Mike a lot. I liked the fact that they were entrepreneurs who understood how to be successful with limited resources. If we could merge them into Turner, increase their budgets, and allow them to make bigger films, we could grow them into the kind of studio that we were being prevented from buying.
A TED STORY
“I’m Acquiring You Guys”
—Michael Lynne
A close friend of mine named Roy Furman headed up an investment firm that concentrated heavily on the media business. Roy would periodically meet with key people in the industry to talk about ideas and early in 1993 he had a meeting with Ted. Roy had a list of about ten items he wanted to discuss with Ted and around number nine he mentioned New Line. The only reason we were even on the list was because Roy had been involved with our initial public offering—we had absolutely no interest in doing a transaction at that time. But when our name came up Ted zeroed in and New Line became the only thing he wanted to talk about!
So Roy called up afterward and spoke to Bob Shaye and me about the talk with Ted and said, “You’re not going to believe this but Ted Turner is very eager to meet with you.”
At the time we didn’t know Ted at all but in thinking about it, if there was one person we might be open to talking to it was Ted Turner. He’s an iconoclastic guy. He’s not a bureaucrat and we weren’t bureaucrats. If anybody could understand us and if there was anybody out there we might be able to work with, he could be the guy. We still didn’t want to sell but if nothing else we figured it would be great to meet him, so with enormous skepticism we flew down to Atlanta. When we got up to his office Ted showed us all his Oscar statuettes from his MGM acquisition and Civil War memorabilia and then he went on with the meeting as if he had already done a deal with us! It was like someone turned on a switch in him and he said, “I’m acquiring you guys and you’re going to come in here and make more money than your business has ever made before. We’re on the same wavelength. You formed your business and are still running it, I formed my business and I’m still running it.” He just went on and on and it was really overwhelming in a funny and bizarre way.
We had a lot to think about as we flew back to New York. Bob and I had always enjoyed being independent and emotionally we weren’t ready to sell our company. But in many ways Ted was right—we were on the same wavelength. We had very similar business experiences and were in many respects similar kinds of people.
New Line and Castle Rock were solid companies run by great people and we quickly negotiated deals with them. I didn’t know if the board would approve one, both, or neither but it came down to a vote at the board meeting in the summer of 1993. We were meeting in a room at the St. Regis Hotel in New York, and Bob Shaye and Mike Lynne from New Line and Alan Horn from Castle Rock each had to make presentations directly to the board. This was an unusual practice and it turned out to be an unusual meeting. I remember the Time Warner directors being particularly difficult. To open the questioning of Michael Lynne and Bob Shaye, Michael Fuchs, at the time the head of HBO, asked, “Isn’t it true that you guys just make B movies that most people really aren’t that interested in?” It was a tough way to start, but Bob and Mike answered by explaining that they didn’t think of movies as A or B but instead tried to produce ones that would be profitable.
The discussions continued to be contentious and right up to the vote it wasn’t clear which way it would go. During a break in the meeting someone asked for individual vote counts, so we went around the table and one by one, the three Time Warner directors made similar statements filled with legalese like, “I have not consulted with my colleagues on this but I’ve studied the film business and believe that its risky nature will add to the volatility of Turner’s earnings.” They all said pretty much the same thing but instead of voting against the deals or exercising their veto right they claimed a possible conflict and abstained.
The way it wound up, we needed one more vote from an outside director and it all came down to Brian Roberts from Comcast. His company was not in the film business so he wasn’t conflicted. Brian said that we were doing a good job running Turner, and that these film companies seemed to make good strategic sense to our company, and he enthusiastically supported the deals. (To this day, when I see Brian I thank him for letting me get into the movie business.) After being denied the chance to go after a major studio, for about $600 million we had acquired two smaller ones and I was determined to make our new programming ventures succeed.
At the same time, I was pushing TNT to produce more and better original movies and miniseries, and the one I was most excited about was
Gettysburg
. I had always had great interest in the Civil War, and one of my favorite works on the subject was Michael Shaara’s
The Killer Angels,
which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. Ron Maxwell adapted the book into a screenplay and would also serve as the director of the project, which we had originally designed to be a miniseries for TNT.
Gettysburg
would be our most ambitious original production, and Maxwell’s terrific script helped attract an incredible cast including Martin Sheen, Jeff Daniels, Tom Berenger, and Sam Elliott. The National Park Service allowed us to shoot on the Gettysburg battlefield and as the dailies started coming in I knew that this miniseries was going to be great. I got so excited about the production that Maxwell asked if I wanted to make a cameo. I let them cast me as Colonel Waller T. Patton, a Confederate officer. There I was in full uniform and makeup out there in the fields with a huge battalion of Civil War reenactors. When it came time for my part, Maxwell yelled “Action!” and I led a charge only to be shot down. (Years later, I also made a cameo in
Gods and Generals,
a follow-up to Gettysburg, but curiously, neither of these performances led to any more acting offers!)
I was so impressed with the quality of this production that it gave me an idea—before it airs on TNT, we should release it in theaters. The first, obvious objection I received was that the movie would be way too long. Even if they edited aggressively, it would be hard to bring it in under five hours.
“No problem,” I joked, “at five hours, we could charge double!”
I thought that
Gettysburg
had a chance to become a classic epic in the tradition of
Lawrence of Arabia
and
Gone With the Wind
and I figured that a theatrical release would only add to the title’s value when we aired it on TNT and released it on video. I tried to get the New Line and Castle Rock people excited about it but they kept saying it was too long to play in theaters. I explained that we were working hard to shorten it and they’d understand my enthusiasm if they’d just take a look at it.
Alan Horn at Castle Rock had given me a particularly hard time about the movie’s length and during a trip to Los Angeles I called to tell him I had a version I wanted him to see. When he said he could do it that afternoon I asked him what time.
“I can probably do it some time after lunch, say around 2:30. Would that work?” he said.
“Well, that depends on what time you’re planning to have dinner!” I answered.
In the end, Maxwell and his team managed to get the film down to four hours and fourteen minutes—still making it the longest American movie ever distributed—ten minutes longer than
Cleopatra
. When I saw the final version, complete with Randy Edelman’s beautiful score, tears welled up in my eyes. It was a proud moment for me to see this heroic story told so beautifully. New Line agreed to be our distributor and while it did prove difficult to get such a long movie into theaters (they had only half the chance to sell tickets as they would for a two-hour feature), we got some great reviews and wound up doing a little more than $10 million at the box office. That was far below the film’s $25 million budget but it wound up doing very well on TNT and has had very strong home video sales over the years.
Gettysburg
continues to be shown in classrooms, and to this day it remains the film production of which I’m most proud.
By the end of ’93, the Cartoon Network was clearly a winner and despite the board’s initial objections, we were also in the movie business. As TNT aired more contemporary product and sports like the NBA, I wanted to make sure we continued to get value out of our classics library, too. But rather than license the movies to a competitor like American Movie Classics, we decided to start another channel of our own—and in April of ’94 we launched Turner Classic Movies. Kicking off with a splashy event in the heart of Times Square (I got to flip the switch right in front of the JumboTron), the network struggled for distribution at first but when people saw the channel they fell in love with it and it became a moneymaker within a couple of years.
The early 1990s were a period of tremendous growth for us but I still wanted one more jewel in our crown. Even as we added new libraries, production companies, and cable channels, I worried that when I died, my tombstone would read, “Here Lies Ted Turner. He Never Owned a Broadcast Network!”