He gave the world 24-hour news and it's never been the same since.
Ted was a wild person.
He lived large.
He changed the world.
Ted created the first ever global television service.
He saw the power of it to unite the world.
And it was a moment in time that just doesn't exist any longer.
It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Sam Fenwick.
Ted Turner founded CNN in 1980 and changed the media landscape forever.
We hear from the people who knew him, worked with him and inherited the world he built.
And aluminium hits a four-year high the hidden cost of the war in the Gulf that's quietly coming to your supermarket basket.
So Ted Turner, the man who invented 24-hour news, has died at the age of 87.
Turner launched CNN on the 1st of June 1980 in the basement of abandoned country club in Atlanta, with almost no money, a skeleton crew and a hunch that people wanted news, at any time of the day or night.
This news service will be called the Cable News Network and will program continually updated half-hour segments of national news, business news, sports and features, 24 hours a day.
I know that we will succeed and I pledge to you that we will not let the American public down.
And here's how the station sounded in those early days.
This is CNN Headline News.
You're in tune with the world.
Now.
It took a bit of time to find its audience, but 10 years after it started, CNN was broadcasting to 150 countries.
When the Gulf War broke out that year, it was the first war ever broadcast live, and it was only on CNN.
Ted Turner eventually sold his networks to Time Warner for nearly $7.5 billion.
He called CNN his greatest achievement of his life.
Christiane Amanapour is CNN's chief international anchor.
His vision and his influence and his presence really, really live on.
Every single new president who took the helm at CNN would always, even when Ted was no longer officially at CNN, would go down to Atlanta, visit him, persuade him of their bona fides, persuade him that they were going to hold CNN dearly and with great care.
Ted Turner never vanished.
His presence will live forever.
He changed the world.
BBC is a great operation with the World Service, but Ted created the first ever global television service 24-7 TV.
It was fundamental.
It just changed the world.
And Brian Stelter is CNN's chief media analyst.
He spent most of his career within CNN.
And I asked him what kind of figure Ted Turner was to the people who worked there.
Ted Turner was the North Star.
He is the North Star.
Whether you met him, whether you worked with him, whether you were a CNN original who was there for the launch in 1980, or whether you're a production assistant who just joined the network or writes for the website, you know that Ted's vision is what created CNN, through really sheer force of will, through determination, through determination.
All sorts of challenges.
He fought to give birth to CNN, to bring it prominence, to give it distribution around the world and to have it be taken seriously.
And through that success and through the endurance of CNN, you know Ted's legacy is going to live on forever.
The Gulf War of 1991 was cited as the moment that CNN proved Turner right.
What did that moment mean for the network and for the idea of what news could actually be in the future?
The Gulf War was so important because CNN had unique access in Baghdad, inside Iraq, narrating the events at the beginning of the war.
It was really the only way to see and hear what was happening inside the country at the start of the war.
But I will say by 1991 there had been a decade's worth of news coverage at CNN of live on the scene, breaking news coverage.
And that is really the bread and butter, right?
That is what Turner and his team did.
Really presented and created.
And it's important to say there's a team, because Ted Turner would have been the first to say he didn't know a lot about the news business, but he recruited the right people.
He brought in the right talent.
He brought in the right executives who wanted to bring the news onto the screen, to make the news alive, to take people to where it was happening.
And Baghdad 1991 was the ultimate example of that.
Let's hear it from Lisa Napoli now.
She's written a book accounting CNN's founding.
Her book is called Up All Night.
And she started her career as an unpaid teenage intern at CNN in 1981, a year after Turner launched it.
And I asked her what it was actually like to be in the building at that time.
Well, you know, I started out in the World Trade Center where the New York City Bureau was.
And I was very young, very dumb, as most people at 16 are.
And no one really understood the enormity of what was happening.
It was just exciting to be in a TV newsroom.
What I didn't understand then was the context and no one in the United States had cable.
So I couldn't even go home and watch it in Brooklyn.
Then when I walked into the old defunct concierge, And the idea...
Behind it was simple, wasn't it?
I mean, Ted Turner used to get home from work and the news was over.
But what he actually built was something that completely changed the business model for journalism.
Yes, but he didn't realize that when he was doing it.
That's what's so interesting.
He wanted to watch news or watch television late at night.
He wasn't really into news.
What he was interested in was the technology that allowed him to take a television signal in Atlanta and beam it first across the United States and then ultimately, around the world.
We forget today that we can just call anyone anytime pretty much.
Back then, that was not possible.
That was space age, sci-fi.
And he did that with CNN.
But then what he also did was change the way news was presented, change the way it was paid for and sold.
But again, that took a while because it didn't make any money for a very long time.
The idea that people would tune in to news 24-7 took at least 10 years to really click in to the zeitgeist, because people just didn't want news all the time then, not like they do now.
Well, look at us now.
I was going to say, you look at that legacy of what kind of spawned out of what he did.
I mean, it's huge.
I mean you could argue that you know the BBC 24-hour channel wouldn't exist without him Sky Al Jazeera, Fox News, all of those.
None of those would exist.
He didn't invent TV, of course.
He didn't invent TV news at all.
But he did see the enormity of the interconnectivity, and he embraced it.
Fidel Castro reached out to him and said, I am pirating your signal down here in Havana.
And I think that this is an amazing idea and I want to meet you.
And Ted Turner, who was a right wing Republican at that time, which was a very different thing then too, got on a plane and went down to see Fidel and got the religion, if you will, of interconnectivity and the power of news.
Now, of course, we also see the destructive power of news too, and we could have a whole other conversation about that.
But it is amazing that he was at the forefront of all of this and that now he's gone.
What would you describe him as then?
Is he an entrepreneur or you talked about his kind of interest in technology?
Yes.
Well, 100 percent.
If you look back at all of the great technology. entrepreneurs of the 20th century.
They were all at the forefront of an idea that was married to the moment in time in which they lived.
Moment in time for Ted happened to be that cable was proliferating and cable sent up to a satellite was proliferating.
He saw the power of it to unite the world.
Ted was a wild person.
He lived large.
He had a wild life that would be politically incorrect.
He'd be canceled in a minute if he lived today.
But he spoke his mind and embraced new opportunities, which is really what the essence of entrepreneurial spirit is, right in the end of the day.
Lisa Napoli.
Mark Thompson is the current CEO of CNN and former Director General of the BBC, and he's praised Ted Turner's innovative spirit.
This is a moment in media for all of us, for the BBC as well as CNN, where we need that spirit today.
Many of our platforms are now in essentially long-term and irreversible decline.
We have to remobilise, reinvent and do exactly what Ted Turner did to TV in the late 70s and, in CNN's case, from 1980 onwards, with so much success.
Brian Stultz is still with us, Chief Media Analyst at CNN.
Mark Thompson.
There now your boss, my former boss, talking about a challenging time for legacy media.
Audiences going to watch their content on YouTube, podcasts, social media, streaming.
How do you think Turner would have built CNN now, if he was starting now?
I don't know if I'm qualified to answer, but I'll take a shot at it.
I think that Turner, instead of launching one channel, would launch dozens or hundreds.
He would bring the camera even closer to the news if he could.
He would bring people to the scene with virtual reality headsets if he could.
He would be using new technology in order to tell stories and connect people.
And I think that's what Mark is getting at talking about Turner's spirit and harnessing that spirit as CNN figures out its digital strategy and tries to grow in new ways.
It's that connection.
It's that swashbuckling, risk-taking spirit that Ted Turner personified and instilled in generations of journalists that we need to be able to reconnect with and remember and bring forward again today.
Brian Stelter, thank you so much for your time.
That was Brian Stelter there, CNN's media analyst, and he was talking about the late Ted Turner.
This is World Business Report from the BBC World Service with me, Sam Fenwick.
It's been another dramatic day for oil markets.
It seems we're saying that every day at the moment.
It started the day at nearly $110 before dropping to $98 and then it went up again to around $100.
Now the move is down to reports that the US believes it's nearing a deal to end the war with Iran.
At the same time as all that was happening, stocks have climbed as well, alongside gains in bonds and markets, all daring to hope perhaps, that this war might nearly be over.
Susan Schmidt is with us.
She's portfolio manager at Exchange Capital Resources.
Their head office is in Chicago.
Today, Susan is joining us from Tokyo.
How is all this kind of playing out?
How are Wall Street and investors feeling about these moves and this announcement from the White House?
That talks have been good, I think was the phrase.
Well, the market is clearly reacting to the news, but the market has reacted to every announcement from the White House.
I think investors are looking at this with just unprecedented volatility happening in the market.
And particularly with the price of oil, it's somewhat become the wild, wild west.
It's very hard to understand the fundamentals behind it.
It's hard to understand the disconnect that's happening between these high prices in the market and yet the pressure from these much higher prices in oil.
And so investors are really scratching their heads.
Because it is weird, isn't it, that they would react so quickly to every diplomatic rumour.
Wouldn't they sort of have taken this in their stride by now?
They should.
And this has never happened before, which I think is why so many fundamental long-term investors are really perplexed by the situation.
But the market does seem to be very reactive.
You have two dynamics in the market right now.
We have the price of oil, which seems to vacillate greatly.
8% move today just on this announcement from the White House.
And then also you have this incredible push from AI-related news that's coming out from chip makers that are reporting on their sales and future expectations.
Interesting.
Susan, stay there.
Well, as you were saying, the oil price isn't the only commodity that's being thrown around by this war.
It's just the one getting lots of attention.
Aluminium has hit a four year high on Tuesday.
The Gulf accounts for nearly one in 10 barrels of the world's aluminium.
And with the blockade now in its third month, it's showing up in your beer, can possibly in your car and in your food packaging.
Let's speak now to Babak Demir.
Hafezi.
He is the CEO of Hafezi Capital and a professor of international business at the American University.
So Babak with oil.
The disruption has hit Asia hardest because that's where a lot of Gulf crude will go.
With aluminium, Is it a different story?
Which regions will be particularly hurt the most by the Strait of Hormuz being closed.
Pleasure being with you.
Yeah, the the effects are going to be distributed through all the areas in the world that are part of the supply chain of manufacturing, because they're the ones predominantly, who actually intake the aluminum and then convert it into whatever the finished wood is.
So we should see the disruptions in the preliminary phases to the manufacturer hubs and eventually, delays in the areas such as construction, which may require multiple quarters or delays in terms of receiving the materials to be able to actually convert them to finished goods.
So I was looking that maybe around a fifth of aluminium from the Gulf will go to the US, Europe again about a fifth and Japan about a quarter.
Are those sort of figures about right?
And is that because Japan make lots of cars perhaps?
Is that what we would think?
That's right.
It's not just cars, but it's also all the other intermediary goods.
Think about AI centers.
All the dot-com materials have some sort of an aluminum in there.
All the data centers have servers.
Those servers and racks are all made of aluminum.
So it's not just that.
It's home HVAC systems within the United States.
It is building constructions, canned goods.
It's automobiles.
So all of those are going to be impacted throughout the supply chain, be it in Japan, be it in the United States, be it in Europe, or be it in China.
And Ford is pricing in an additional cost of $2 billion.
That's roughly double what they had estimated because of these higher aluminium prices.
What do you think that means for the car industry?
The car industry in the United States is going through a pretty bad time.
It's going through the worst time since 2009 financial crisis because there has been an increase of prices after the COVID era.
And then now there's ample amount of supply.
There has been an EV push which hasn't sold very well in the US, And now we have credit challenges and pricing being too off scale with the ability of consumers to actually purchase.
So you add to that an increase in input costs and this is going to affect the auto industry dramatically in terms of less units sold and also having to give incentives, larger incentives, to actually move product.
This could really affect our industry in the long.
We've seen the impact of fertilizer prices perhaps starting to hit people in the supermarket, but also the aluminium prices affecting them too because, Molson Coors, they make beer, don't they?
They're quite a big brand in the United States, added $30 million to their cost in just one quarter.
Do you think they're going to have to start passing those costs on to consumers, and might that start to show up in inflation?
Absolutely.
The way that these things show up in inflation is not all at once, but it's almost like a trickle-down effect and slow effect throughout all the products.
So they don't generally increase it through one product but you will see the increases through all products, even those who are not affected by the, As a means to kind of keep certain products still valid in the market and still viable from a consumer perspective.
So we should see more inflation and adding to that, the increase of oil prices are really going to have a hampering effect in terms of consumers and the ability to consume correctly with the available funds they have.
You've said that the supply chain disruption from this war could last three to five years.
Even if a deal is done today or tonight or tomorrow or this week, does that apply to aluminium?
In certain ways, yes.
Aluminium requires a large amount of energy.
And when you have refineries, oil fields, gas plants and ports being affected in the Middle East the infrastructure being affected that takes three to five years to come back to market.
That requires a long-term investment to be able to rebuild those elements and bring them back into the ecosystem of the global ecosystem.
What we have right now is massive displacement.
We have demand, but we just don't have a supply.
And the supply shock is going to have really, really real effects on consumers globally.
Thank you very much.
Babak Hafezi there speaking to us, Professor of International Business at the America University.
Let's go back to Susan Smith and talk about some other corporate news that has happened today, on Wednesday.
Two big companies have reported, haven't they, today?
Walt Disney, first of all, fewer visitors to its theme park, Susan, but higher revenues.
Fewer people turned up, but they were spending more.
What do you think about what's going on there?
Well, Disney is very happy about it.
And, as they talked about in their guidance, their goal is to keep that attendance rate up in the coming year.
And they feel positive that they'll be able to do that.
Overall, Disney revenues were up 8%.
They were particularly happy about the results in the theme parks and also that streaming business that they have.
Remember that Disney Plus and their streaming has been under pressure to see if it could be competitive with other streaming services.
And that's apparently very much the case.
It's managed to hold up new CEO at the helm there as well.
So a very positive announcement received by the market.
Disney's saying though, that international visitors to their theme parks are down because of higher travel costs.
Do you think that's a kind of Trump economy story or a war story?
At the moment, I think it's a Trump economy story.
I think it is issues more in the United States.
But as we see airfare increases around the globe, we are going to see, I think, hesitancy by the consumer to travel.
And that could be just a switch from airfare to driving trips.
But generally, it's a long way to drive to a Disney theme park.
You're probably not next door to it.
So they really need that air travel to keep the demand and the attendance high.
Well, you mentioned car trips.
The other company that's had their results out today is Uber, and they're weaker than expected revenues and they are blaming the war in the Gulf.
But its paid membership is going up, and it's feeling optimistic about that.
So how exposed is Uber and other taxi firms to what's happening in the straight and fuel prices in the US and around the world?
So Uber is a great example, not unlike what we're seeing in the companies that produce canned goods and need that aluminum as their raw material.
Remember that Uber contracts with drivers.
The drivers are seeing the increased price of oil that hasn't necessarily been passed through on the costs yet to the rider.
So Uber needs to work on, and will have to manage, a pass-through mechanism to keep drivers engaged so that it's still profitable for the drivers and still compensating for that higher, increased price of gasoline.
Susan Smith, thank you so much for joining us today on World Business Report.
As ever, it's good to hear your insights.
Well, it's less than six weeks to go.
That's all that stands between us and the biggest football tournament in history.
48 teams, 104 games, 16 stadiums across the US, Canada and Mexico.
Donald Trump has been talking up the economic windfall for months.
This will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase the greatness of American world-class athletic competition as we celebrate our nation's 250th year.
The World Cup will also be an incredibly significant economic opportunity for countless American workers and businesses.
It's expected to drive more than $30 billion, Johnny.
I don't know about that.
That sounds like a lot of money.
No, that's true.
Are you sure?
100%.
How much does the country get out of that?
$30 billion.
20%.
Do we get like a percentage of the gross or anything?
That was President Trump there and the FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
Well, that windfall, 30 billion mentioned by the president there, hasn't quite arrived.
A survey out this week from the American Hotel and Lodging Association said hotels in most host countries are seeing bookings running well below expectations.
In Kansas City.
It's worse than a typical June or July, and there's no World Cup in a typical June or July.
Let's talk to Vijay Dandapani.
He's president and CEO of the Hotel Association in New York.
It's one of the 11 host cities.
Thanks for being with us, Vijay.
Trump there saying that this tournament could create nearly 200,000 jobs.
We're just under six weeks out.
How close is that to a reality then?
Firstly, thank you for having me.
But it's not just President Trump.
It was also the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, who said that we in New York and I can only speak for New York would expect somewhere about 12 million new visitors.
It hasn't come anything close to that, and we've certainly not seen any material bump to speak of.
So we estimate that the potential loss of revenue—remember it's potential, because it was based on a promise, not based on history—is roughly 100 million in room revenue alone for us here in New York City.
There are many reasons for that.
Happy to go into any of them or all of them if you'd like.
Well, I mean, five million tickets have been sold for matches.
So the fans do exist.
But nearly 80 percent of hotel operators say that reservations are behind schedule, as you're saying.
So maybe I'm thinking of people just waiting for a bargain.
Possibly, but many of them are also domestic fans and not the international ones which bring in four times the money for domestic tourists.
So a comparable tournament that we have every year, unlike FIFA, which is every four years in different parts of the world, which we have every year in New York City, is the United States Tennis Tournament.
Last year, that brought in 1.3 million visitors, and that's a fact.
This was a promise that has not come anywhere close to materializing based on bookings.
So, like I said, there are many, many reasons for that.
And yes, some tickets have been sold.
Many tickets have been sold.
But, you know, the foreign visitation has just not happened.
So what are your theories behind why people are not coming and booking?
Well, there are many.
One is obviously the essentially unfriendly nature of American visa policy.
Most fans are from South American countries.
And even if you're not, let's say you're from an ESTA country, let's say countries that have the visa-free travel to the United States which previously was just a routine electronic process now ask you questions about your social media, handles your email addresses and should there be anything amiss, as they see it, then you're put in the queue as a regular visa traveler.
Now for those visa countries, the B1, B2 visas.
The wait is anywhere from as few as three to four weeks for Argentina, which is the best case, to as much as a year for Ecuador Peru Colombia, et cetera.
These are all soccer-crazy countries, right?
And so they're not able to get here.
Add to that the very high ticket prices in FIFA.
And for the first time that we know of, a tournament has used what's called dynamic pricing, meaning the price varies.
Now, obviously, resellers do that all the time, but not the tournament.
So Wimbledon, for instance, they don't charge variable prices.
It's fixed.
Somebody who resells their tickets may do so, but not the tournament itself.
So what do you think then, we're just coming to the end now, but what do you think?
Do you think these hotels will eventually get filled?
Well, you know firstly, as July is not, as you already pointed out about Kansas City, July is not a great month for the city as well.
So, yeah, we'll get filled better than last year, but just about.
Okay.
Vijay Dandapani, thank you very much for joining us today on World Business Report.
Thank you to you for listening.
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