Ted Turner has, at least in the eyes of film fans, perhaps the worst reputation of any living person.\u00a0 The commonplace idea that I hear from fans is that he is assured of a place in Film Purgatory for his colorization efforts and that he only really deserves praise for Turner Classic Movies, which was something he didn\u2019t care about very much.<\/p>\n
Bunk, I say.\u00a0 Bunk.<\/p>\n
Let me address a minor sticking point here: some of my dear readers may say that since I\u2019d like to sell my pilot for Dr. Film <\/em>to Turner Classic Movies, then I probably am giving a suspect opinion so that I can butter up a potential buyer.\u00a0 Again, not so.\u00a0 Ted is long gone from any active position at Turner Classic Movies, and I\u2019ve been singing Ted\u2019s praises for years, far before Dr. Film <\/em>was even a gleam in my splicing block.<\/p>\n Ted may be the single greatest contributor to film preservation in the history of the 20th Century. \u00a0 He\u2019s certainly in the top 10.\u00a0 Don\u2019t believe me still?\u00a0 Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n MGM has had a troubled history since the late 1950s; they had a big sale of their studio memorabilia as early as 1970 and they were bought and sold and bought and sold and bought and sold (I think that\u2019s actually the right number.)\u00a0 At a particularly low point in 1986, Ted bought MGM\u2014the entire studio, films, buildings, everything… lock, stock, and barrel.\u00a0 People said he was crazy.<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t the first time.\u00a0 Turner bought a floundering TV station in 1970, renamed it WTCG.\u00a0 It was still broadcasting in black and white, so he held a telethon to raise money to get color equipment.\u00a0 He sold bumper stickers and sold ad time cheaply just to keep cash flowing.\u00a0 People said he was crazy.<\/p>\n He was one of the first people to buy space on one of those giant, old-fashioned satellites.\u00a0 These are the ones that used to litter the countryside at every hotel with a FREE HBO sign.\u00a0 But Turner\u2019s station was just up there for free, not some premium channel.\u00a0 He generated his money from ads.\u00a0 People said he was crazy.<\/p>\n Turner dreamed of having a media empire, and he had only a measly UHF TV station and a space on a satellite.\u00a0 He renamed his station WTBS, nicknamed it the Super Station, and then set his sights on another goal.<\/p>\n He started another station, this time on satellite only<\/em>, and called it CNN.\u00a0 It was a 24-hour news channel.\u00a0 Everyone said he was crazy.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t enough news for a 24-hour cycle, they said, and tiny Atlanta, Georgia was too remote from the hubs of the universe (Los Angeles and New York) to get any decent news coverage.\u00a0 I remember people making fun of him.<\/p>\n In the late 1980s, with CNN a success, Turner fought for squeezed space on the large satellites and got another station on the air: TNT.\u00a0 He did every deal he could with as many carriers as he could to get it on the air.\u00a0 People said he was crazy.<\/p>\n But I jump ahead of myself.\u00a0 Remember I said that Turner wanted a media empire?\u00a0 He dreamed of owning a movie studio and making his own movies.\u00a0 In 1986, with MGM in the doldrums, having merged with United Artists, also in the doldrums, underwater with debt from films that failed to make money, Turner thought it might be a good chance to buy the studio.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t work out.\u00a0 Many people claim that Turner was acting as a corporate raider, just cherry-picking the items he wanted from the studio, but I tend to believe that Turner hoped to maintain the studio as it had been.\u00a0 For whatever reason, Turner and his investors sold off the studio and its assets one by one, except for one item: MGM\u2019s film library.<\/p>\n In the mid-80s, with one station, and another planned, it made sense for Turner to have access to a large film library, and MGM had it: the entire Warners library pre-1948; the entire MGM library to 1986, and the entire RKO library.\u00a0 All of this material was deemed worthless by most experts.\u00a0 It had been played to death on local television over a period of 30 years.\u00a0 There was no real home video market for any but a few titles.<\/p>\n Amazingly, Turner did what no one else would do.\u00a0 He poured money into preservation.\u00a0 New 35mm prints were made for distribution to theaters.\u00a0 MGM\u2019s restoration efforts, which had started years earlier, were stepped up and enhanced.\u00a0 Turner entered the home video market, even the laserdisc market, which was just starting.\u00a0 Anything that even had a chance of selling was issued.<\/p>\n When TNT (Turner Network Television) launched in 1988, Ted scheduled it full of films that hadn\u2019t been seen in years.\u00a0 They were all transferred from beautiful 35mm prints.\u00a0 That lasted until he found he could make more money with newer material, so the movies got forced out.\u00a0 Those were great days at TNT, though, because there were movies shown there that have rarely been screened since.\u00a0 In the early days of the channel, everything was fair game.<\/p>\n There was a channel dedicated to older films at the time, and that was American Movie Classics (AMC).\u00a0 They even had a long-term lease on the RKO package that eventually expired and reverted to Turner.\u00a0 In those days, AMC was commercial-free, its fees paid by the cable companies who carried it.\u00a0 Turner started Turner Classic Movies in 1994 following AMC\u2019s model.\u00a0 He also made sure that anyone picking up TCM had to pick up WTBS and TNT as well, guaranteeing that he\u2019d have some extra income from the movies.<\/p>\n Ted felt that the best thing he could do was treat his investment with respect so that he could make as much money off it as he could.\u00a0 I say more power to him.\u00a0 Some people look at classic film as some supreme royal sacrifice, something that one does just for art\u2019s sake.\u00a0 Turner did it and made it pay.\u00a0 And he made it pay the right way.\u00a0 Restoration, video availability, cable showings, 35mm booking prints.<\/p>\n We only need look to the example set by Hallmark recently for the other end of the spectrum.\u00a0 They purchased the Hal Roach back library, rather unenthusiastically, as a tax loss investment.\u00a0 They were begged to release Laurel and Hardy films, maybe some Charley Chase titles.\u00a0 SOMETHING.\u00a0 Eventually, Turner Classic Movies got a package out of them.\u00a0 Hallmark couldn\u2019t be bothered to look through what they had.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t care, and the materials languished.\u00a0 Thank heaven UCLA now has all of it and is giving it the care it deserves.\u00a0 The problem is that this stuff could have made them money\u2013maybe not a lot, but some.<\/p>\n OK, I avoided talking about colorization, but here goes.\u00a0 I hate it, I\u2019ve always hated it.\u00a0 It looks fake.\u00a0 Turner\u2019s pushing it was obnoxious, and I didn\u2019t like it.\u00a0 I never saw a single picture that looked better with it, although I\u2019d nominate the nasty color version of King Kong <\/em>as the worst one.\u00a0 That being said, it\u2019s an interesting technical experiment.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always rather suspected that Turner never really wanted to change the world with colorization, but only to get some publicity with the idea.\u00a0 After all, boring old movies never get any press, and he sure got it.\u00a0 He ruffled feathers in the process, but that never bothered him.<\/p>\n Eventually, he even got a chance to make his own movies, and they\u2019ve gotten a fair amount of respect.\u00a0 Maybe he was right the whole time about needing a studio.<\/p>\n (As an aside: you want loyalty to friends?\u00a0 Ted\u2019s your man.\u00a0 Anchorman Bill Tush [with a short u] started with Turner in the WTCG days.\u00a0 He stayed as a news anchor until Ted gave him a weekly show in 1980, a groundbreaking original comedy.\u00a0 When that didn\u2019t gel, Tush got a cushy job at CNN that lasted for many years.\u00a0 Ted takes care of his friends.)<\/p>\n Having accomplished what he set out to do\u2013creating a media empire\u2013Turner sold his stock to Time Warner and cashed out.\u00a0 Turner, for all his flamboyant crazy behavior, seemed to run his stations more efficiently than the conglomerate does.\u00a0 The crown jewel in the collection is probably still Turner Classic Movies, which showcases classic movies from most of the major studios.\u00a0 I love the irony that Warner Brothers bought back their own, \u201cworthless,\u201d catalog of films when they bought Turner Broadcasting.\u00a0 Who\u2019s really crazy?<\/p>\n Turner strikes me as somewhat of a throwback to the brazen showman\/marketer types like Merian C. Cooper in the 1930s.\u00a0 Turner had a vision, and was going to pursue it.\u00a0 He was loyal, but anyone who criticized him could be stepped on.\u00a0 Quality was paramount.\u00a0 Even if it was pro wrestling, he wanted it done well.<\/p>\n We could use a few more people like that.\u00a0 Viva Ted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ted Turner has, at least in the eyes of film fans, perhaps the worst reputation of any living person.\u00a0 The commonplace idea that I hear from fans is that he is assured of a place in Film Purgatory for his colorization efforts and that he only really deserves praise for Turner Classic Movies, which was … Continue reading “Why Ted Turner is Cool”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207,4],"tags":[19,17,18,16],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-views-and-reviews","tag-colorization","tag-preservation","tag-tcm","tag-ted-turner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}