{"id":727359,"date":"2026-05-06T17:42:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/727359\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T17:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:42:21","slug":"ted-turner-media-mogul-and-former-owner-of-the-braves-and-hawks-dead-at-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/727359\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Turner, media mogul and former owner of the Braves and Hawks, dead at 87"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Turner, former owner of the Atlanta Braves<\/a> and Atlanta Hawks, died Wednesday, Turner Enterprises announced<\/a>. He was 87.<\/p>\n

The Braves confirmed Turner\u2019s death in a social media post Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The Hawks also issued a statement, in which principal owner Tony Ressler called Turner \u201ca true original, a visionary, and a force of nature<\/a> whose impact will be felt for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

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While Turner built quite a career and reputation in sports, he made his money in television and radio. After taking over his father\u2019s advertising company, Turner eventually expanded to radio and television. His television station, WTCG, eventually acquired the rights to broadcast Braves and Hawks games, setting the stage for Turner\u2019s future in sports.<\/p>\n

After years of broadcasting Braves and Hawks games, Turner decided to buy both franchises. In 1976, he purchased the Braves. A year later, he bought the Hawks. Eventually, WTCG became WTBS and Turner had a platform to put Braves games in front of a national audience regularly. Given the state of television media at that point, the Braves were one of the few teams to have a consistent national audience, making them one of the most-watched clubs in the league.<\/p>\n

Turner\u2019s ownership of the Braves was not without its controversies. He almost immediately ran afoul of the league, and was suspended for a year in 1977 by then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn for violating the league\u2019s free-agency rules to sign outfielder Gary Matthews. The team was also docked its first-round draft pick for Turner\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

Neither punishment stuck, however, as Turner successfully appealed and had them overturned by Kuhn.<\/p>\n

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Turner wasn\u2019t done making waves around the league in 1977. With the Braves on a 16-game losing streak that May, Turner actually managed the team for one game. He lost that contest and was told by then-National League president Chub Feeney that it was a conflict of interest for Turner to own the team and be its manager. Turner once again appealed the issue to Kuhn, but was denied this time around.<\/p>\n

In the \u201880s, Turner took on a lesser role with the Braves. The team was eventually purchased by Time Warner in 1996 after it bought TBS. Time Warner eventually sold the Braves to Liberty Media in 2007.<\/p>\n

During his tenure as the team\u2019s owner, the Braves appeared in multiple World Series, winning one of them in 1995. Turner was not involved in day-to-day operations during the team\u2019s fantastic run in the \u201890s and 2000s, but still owned the team when it won the World Series.<\/p>\n

Turner\u2019s ownership of the Hawks was less eventful. The team made the playoffs 15 times during his tenure. In 2004, the team retired a jersey in Turner\u2019s honor.<\/p>\n

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Turner, who was responsible for founding TBS, TNT, CNN and Cartoon Network, announced in 2018 that he was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ted Turner, former owner of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, died Wednesday, Turner Enterprises announced. He was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":727360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3776],"tags":[676,4799,208,3874,7,677,6,90248,5291],"class_list":{"0":"post-727359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-hawks","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-braves","10":"tag-atlanta-hawks","11":"tag-atlantahawks","12":"tag-basketball","13":"tag-hawks","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-ted-turner","16":"tag-the-hawks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116528869821610318","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}