Ted Turner is changed our media landscape with CNN. He pushed the new news cycle into a new era of speed and real time coverage. I still remember watching the beginning of the first Gulf War via CNN at night. Creepy, unreal - but real nevertheless.

He later sold CNN for a handsome profit, but continued his groundbreaking work with the Ted Turner foundation and the incredible pledge to give one billion dollars to the UN. Apart from that he is the largest landowner in the US and also has a started a restaurant chain.

Although highly successful he still is very critical of the media business and politics - not afraid to raise his voice. I loved his recent comments about the decline of his brainchild CNN and celebrity news (quoted from AP News on myway.com):

“I would like to see us to return to a little more international coverage on the domestic feed and a little more environmental coverage, and, maybe, maybe a little less of the pervert of the day,” he said in a speech to CNN employees outside the old Atlanta mansion where the network first aired."

“You know, we have a lot of perverts on today, and I know that, but is that really news? I mean, come on. I guess you’ve got to cover Michael Jackson, but not three stories about perversion that we do every day as well.”

His remarks won applause and laughter from CNN employees, but the moderator for Turner’s remarks, CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, said: “But everyone else is doing that. Why do you think it’s important not to?”

Turner replied: “Somebody’s got to be a serious news person. Somebody’s got to be the most respected name in television news, and I wanted that position for CNN.

“I wanted to be The New York Times of the airwaves. Not the New York Post, but The New York Times. And that’s what we set out to do, and we did it.”

Amen to that - kick that Wolf Blitzer Crap!