Posted on 10/26/2002 12:41:23 PM PDT by GeneD
Ted Turner, hard of hearing and approaching his 64th birthday, has got his groove back.
The billionaire "Mouth of the South," who spent much of last year demoralized and complaining about having been fired, is now looking much more like the corporate rabble-rouser he used to be.
"A great leader has two key qualities," Turner said in a speech this month at the University of Rochester in New York. "He knows where he wants to go; he's able to persuade others to go with him."
After a year of virtual corporate exile, Turner has figured out the first part and is working on the second.
Last year, Turner was so bitter that close advisers wondered whether he might drop off AOL Time Warner's screen, give up his vice chairman's title and start selling most of his stock in the troubled company.
Instead, he has worked his way back into the mix. Publicly, he says he's a team player; privately he's causing a racket again.
First, he helped spark the move to dump AOL Time Warner Chief Executive Gerald Levin. Now, Turner and other big shareholders have focused on Chairman Steve Case. Turner has been telling other board members that Case has been a disappointment since his America Online gobbled up Time Warner a year ago, and that Case should share the blame for accounting issues at AOL.
Case, he and his allies have argued, might have to go.
That's hardly the same Ted Turner who just last year was deeply depressed and complaining loudly that Levin had effectively shut him out of AOL Time Warner, giving him a title but no real power. Levin stripped Turner of his oversight of the Atlanta-based empire he built, including CNN, TBS, TNT and the Atlanta Braves, Hawks and Thrashers.
But Levin's successor as chief executive, Richard Parsons, made it clear that he wants the cable TV pioneer active again at AOL Time Warner. Parsons didn't give Turner anything to manage on his own, but he asked Turner to stay on as vice chairman, has solicited his advice on numerous issues -- particularly related to the TV industry -- and has asked him to take part in monthly strategy meetings with himself, Case and other top brass.
Turner is showing up at the company's New York headquarters more often. When corporate executives unveiled AOL's 8.0 software upgrade this month, Turner appeared briefly on stage, giving Parsons high-fives.
One area in which Turner may have an important voice is the potential merger of CNN and Walt Disney Co.'s ABC News. Parsons gave Turner an early briefing on the concept. And Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner, who has been heaping public praise on Turner recently, says he and Parsons like the merger idea. So far, Turner has successfully made the case for holding off in order to squeeze a better deal out of Disney.
"He's being very much in the fray," says Bill Bartholomay, chairman of the Braves and a longtime friend of Turner. "He's doing what he should be doing. He's a large shareholder, and he should be involved."
Still, it's hard to tell whether Turner's re-emergence at AOL Time Warner is mostly due to other power players wanting to embrace him for his business acumen or because they're trying to placate a big shareholder with a big mouth.
People close to Turner say they think it's mostly the former.
Either way, Turner is looking happier and more invigorated, although AOL Time Warner stock -- and Turner's personal fortune -- have taken a beating. While many of the company's traditional media businesses remain strong, the federal government is still investigating the company's accounting practices, and America Online's downward spiral continues to be a drag on its parent's financial results.
It was those problems -- and the open door offered by Parsons -- that helped rejuvenate Turner.
"He is incredibly concerned that something that he built up is now worth so much less than it was," says Jim Kennedy, a hunting partner of Turner and chairman of Cox Enterprises, a media company that owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "That's really troubling to Ted."
Turner holds a bigger stake in AOL Time Warner -- more than 132 million shares -- than any other individual. People close to him say they don't think Turner seriously considered dumping his holding in the company, primarily because of his emotional attachment to parts of it, including CNN, TBS and the Braves.
Turner has never explained his turnaround publicly, and he declined to be interviewed for this article. But, much as he's regained his footing at AOL Time Warner, Turner also seems closer to getting his bearings personally.
He emerged from a deep depression last year after taking anti-depressants and has gradually come to grips with two painful personal developments: his divorce from Jane Fonda and the death of a young granddaughter from a rare disease.
'A go-getter'
Turner isn't the kind of guy who does well sitting around, counting his money, friends say.
"He doesn't want to be a figurehead," Kennedy says. "Ted is a go-getter."
While Turner is asserting himself on the AOL Time Warner board, Kennedy doubts that he's back as a top power broker in the company.
"Until he has an official role, I don't know that he is," Kennedy says.
Turner's contract as vice chairman runs through the end of next year, and some people close to him think he'd seek the chairman's seat if Case leaves.
Turner has a long and storied history of saying things that pop into his head that he later regrets. Recent examples include his description of the Sept. 11 terrorists as brave and comparing Israeli military actions to terrorism. But Turner has carefully avoided saying much in public about AOL Time Warner this year.
"Captain Outrageous" has been "Mr. Mum" on that one.
Industry insiders interpret it to mean that Turner wants to keep his allies for the very dicey tangle over the leadership of AOL Time Warner.
Turner's investment in an organic food business involving Case last year fit not only Turner's interest in organics but also the hope that it might bolster his relationship with the top man at AOL Time Warner, people close to Turner say.
Since then, however, Turner has grown unhappy with Case, particularly related to AOL's problems. Friends say he has no personal animosity toward the chairman. The two still talk. At the launch party for AOL 8.0, Turner and Case joked with Parsons backstage while posing for photographs with comic Dana Carvey and singer Alanis Morissette.
Diminished holdings
Turner is still a billionaire, but he's a lot less of a billionaire than he was. His stake in AOL Time Warner is worth about $1.85 billion; a year ago, when the merger was completed, it was closer to $6.8 billion.
That dramatic drop has hampered his efforts to try to save the world.
Turner's family foundation has put a hold on new funding requests for next year and laid off two-thirds of its staff. Turner has extended the amount of time it will take him to fulfill his $1 billion pledge to the United Nations. (He's given $400 million so far.) And the value of the stock he set aside to fund the Nuclear Threat Initiative is down sharply.
In the meantime, Turner faces hefty expenses to maintain his vast ranch lands, staff nearly 20 homes, outfit his new penthouse pad in downtown Atlanta, pay for TV and movie productions about subjects he's interested in -- such as the Civil War -- and expand Ted's Montana Grill, a bison and burger restaurant chain he hopes will grow to 40 restaurants in two years.
With all that swirling, Turner's income has dropped dramatically. He received nearly $28 million from Time Warner two years ago, including an $8 million bonus, $700,000 in salary and about $19 million in regular stock dividends. Last year, his take dropped to $1 million -- his salary. AOL Time Warner doesn't offer stock dividends, and it didn't pay Turner a cash bonus.
People close to Turner say he is not contemplating selling his ranches to generate cash. And while he has continued to sell blocks of AOL Time Warner stock, he has made only a minor dent in his holdings -- so far.
Vision, not managing
What Turner does not want to do is run the day-to-day operations of AOL Time Warner, people close to him say.
Even when he was younger and running Turner Broadcasting System, Turner spent lots of time away from the business to pursue his passions, like sailing. Besides, his strength was in visualizing the company, not managing it, former associates say.
But Kennedy says Turner hasn't lost his edge.
"Ted's mind is always going a million miles an hour," he says. "Ted's challenge is to pick out the good ideas from all the ideas he gets." What has changed, however, is the empire Turner built in Atlanta. Some of his most precious projects have been ditched or downsized. The company's environmental unit was shuttered last year -- something that never would have happened under Turner's watch. The money-losing Goodwill Games, Turner's gesture for world peace through athletic competition, were killed. And CNN Student News, Turner's vision for spreading a global vision to school classrooms, was cut from 30 minutes a day to 10 minutes.
Parsons has made it clear that the Braves, Hawks and Thrashers are not core assets for AOL Time Warner and could be sold, although the company has said it isn't shopping for buyers. But Turner hasn't shown interest in buying back the sports teams -- or CNN, for that matter -- even if he could afford them on his own, which now is doubtful. Turner likes to find new challenges, not go back to ones he's already tackled, his friends say.
And if his re-emerging power is shaky, it's not unlike what he faced throughout his career, when he launched tiny cable networks to compete against the broadcast Goliaths.
"He loves to take on the giant," says Bob Hope, an Atlanta public relations executive who was a spokesman for Turner in the 1970s and '80s. "He loves to play the David."
Maybe 'Captain Outrageous' isn't so spontaneous
Ted Turner is famous for making outrageous statements when speaking without a script. Time after time they have been explained away as off-the-cuff rantings. But are they?
Bob Hope, an Atlanta public relations executive who was a spokesman for Turner in the 1970s and '80s, remembers Turner coming into his office to rehearse outbursts that he'd later unleash on audiences -- riffs that were interpreted as spontaneous.
"That's not to say he's not eccentric and an interesting personality, but he puts on his drunk-at-a-fraternity act very well," Hope says. "He knows how to get attention when he wants it."
Hope says he never got the impression that Turner statements that have been widely criticized for being insensitive -- such as saying Christianity is for "losers" -- were anything other than spontaneous. "He clearly spouts things out without thinking," Hope says.
Practiced bits were related to business aims, the importance of news and CNN and boosterism for the Atlanta Braves, Hope said.
"It was almost like watching Jerry Seinfeld practice a routine."
Jane must have given him a quickie, to get him to quit calling.
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