Ted Turner has lost 89% of his $10.5BN Fortune [AOL in Freefall]

The New York Post ^ | July 26, 2002 | Paul Tharp

[SlickWillard]

July 26, 2002 -- The stock collapse of AOL Time Warner yesterday is dragging a virtual who's who of media moguls into pikersville.

A growing accounting scandal sent shares of the world's largest media company to their lowest level since the early 1990s.

[ksen]

I wonder if Ted is gonna call up the U.N. and ask for some of his money back...

Heh heh, my thoughts exactly. ;^)

[TC Rider]

I wonder how that billion dollar endowment he made to the UN is holding up. heh heh

[old school]

Sic transit gloria!

[Marysecretary]

God will NOT be mocked. Whatsoever ye sow, so shall ye reap. Can't say I feel too bad about this one.

[stand watie]

aw, gee. too bad.

couldn't happen to a more appropriate guy.

free dixie,sw

[trad_anglican]

Gerald Levin has become a tragic figure over the magnitude of his losses. His 29-years at the company gave him a stock and option nest egg valued at around $529 million at the time of the merger. Today it's worth just $24.5 million.

just $24.5 million. I must have a cold, stone heart because it refuses to bleed for this poor, poor man. How will he shelter, clothe and feed himself on such a paltry sum?

[Marysecretary]

YESSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BIGZ]

We obviously need an investigation.

Did "Hanoi" Jane have inside information?

[AdA$tra]

Perhaps he will sell Kansas and Nebraska back to us native hicks and hayseeds out here in flyover country.

This is proof that the free market works. I knew it was a bad idea to allow these mega-mergers in the entertainment, news and internet industries. This is the correction to that big time mistake.

[My Favorite Headache]

There is a God.

[TC Rider]

His ex-wife Jane Fonda was much luckier and escaped major damage from the wipeout. In her prenuptial pact with Ted, she got a maximum of $10 million in AOL stock, but in the past year she gave away most of it to environmental causes and liberal Democrats running for public office.

Hmmm, opensecrets.org is only showing about 40K of donations by Hanoi Jane, since '99.

Makes one wonder if maybe she gave the actual stock to a few campaigns. Where's the reporting on that?

It's interesting that she gave $500 to Erskine Bowels in NC, who promptly gave it back.

What's the matter Erskine? You worked for Clinton for years, what's the problem with another war protester?

[Delbert]

He deserves to be penniless and homeless, he's an a$$hole. Send him to middle east to fight alongside the Palestinians!

[fight_truth_decay]

Ted Turner, Angler of the Year
By Reid Collins
Published 3/6/02 12:01:00 AM


Fifteen or twenty years ago, the bestowal of that title wouldn't have raised an eyebrow, but today we speak of fish, and it has raised quite a few. For Ted Turner, of CNN fame, has been named Angler of the Year by the prestigious "Fly Rod & Reel" magazine, the "magazine for American fly-fishing." Turner now owns more land than comprise some small nations, 1.7 million acres, mostly in the western United States. His husbandry of it has irked natives, thrilled environmentalists, and generally added to the controversy his name evokes.

When Turner purchased the 113,000 acre Flying D Ranch south of Bozeman, Montana, in 1989, he closed the several rights of way natives had used for years to travel across it, easements that also led some to Cherry Creek, a stream that flows through the place. This change in status quo led some natives to declare that their land was also closed to access "by Ted Turner." A license plate sprung up declaring: "Not So Fonda Jane," a reference to his then third wife, Jane Fonda.

Turner's occasional pronouncements on Christendom, his donation of one billion dollars to the United Nations, an outfit as cherished in the West as drought, and his insistence on banishing cattle from his spreads and raising buffalo in their stead (better for the land and particularly for streams) were only partially offset by his generosity to conservation and environmental projects. (He helped preserve a Buffalo jump in Montana and has donated millions annually to conservation projects in connection with the 14 ranches he owns in New Mexico, Montana, South Dakota, Colorado, and Nebraska.)

So when he backed a Montana Fish and Game Department plan to poison all the fish in Cherry Creek, and the mountain lake it flows from, Turner animus ran amok.

The waters had been barren of fish until about a century ago when they, like many western streams, were stocked with non-native trout; browns, rainbows and brookies. The state's plan: kill all those fish and re-stock the place with the endangered westslope cutthroat. In its various forms the cutthroat is the only trout native to these parts. If Lewis and Clark ate a trout in Montana, it was a cutthroat. Turner has offered to pay nearly all the half a million dollars the Cherry Creek project is estimated to cost. Opposition has gathered like a thunderhead and the lawsuits are rumbling through the courts. Why kill all the fish to stock a batch of another kind that never lived there?

But who shows up on the cover of "Fly Rod & Reel" magazine's inaugural 2002 issue? It is Ted Turner, named FR&R Angler of the Year. He is at streamside, wearing hat, dark glasses, fishing vest, pole in crook of arm and holding what looks to be not a cutthroat but a big brown trout. Turner's quote, "fishing is good for the soul," is repeated from the article announcing his award and the magazine editor-in-chief Paul Guernsey predicts that "more than a handful will disagree with Ted Turner's selection."

Guernsey was right. So many wrote in that he had to cancel one department in April's issue in order to print what he thought would be all the missives. A typical one begins, "I almost threw up when I received..." Another quoted Turner's "all Christians are losers" observation. Some suggested a pay-off. Several wanted subscriptions canceled. Guernsey thought the flood had subsided until Turner made his appearance at Brown University where he suggested that the September 11 terrorists were brave and explained geo-economic imbalance as the cause of the trouble. Like a late hatch, another flurry of anti-Turner letters arrived in the Rod & Reel creel. There was one more "Ted-is-a-good-guy-letter," says Guernsey, and he's publishing that one in the June letters column.

Cancellations? Real ones? Guernsey quotes the circulation department as saying there were about 30 over the award itself, and then another half-dozen or so following the Brown remarks. Like most fly fisherman, editor Guernsey is an optimist and says the magazine gained more than 3,000 in circulation last year. Guernsey says the award to Turner brought some "needed attention to the plight of the westslope cutthroat trout, and that makes the controversy worthwhile."

Oh, yes. That darned westslope cutthroat.


Reid Collins is a former CBS and CNN news correspondent.
"Says it All...One Nation..Under Ted!"...

[Mudboy Slim]

Love it..LOVE IT...LOVE IT!!!

Soshlist Big Guv'ment Whore!!

MUD

[Lee_Atwater]

Although many misguided people think Case got the short end in this matter. Case/AOL is the real "winner". The Time Warner shareholders got the shaft in a major way.

It will be interesting to see what happens. Will AOL sell off assets like the sports teams? They should get good money for the Atlanta Braves ball club - the problem is finding a buyer for a major league baseball team right now.

How about shutting down CNN? That would be cool :).

[Psalm 73]

"Quite a climb down for ol' Ted."

Should we take up a collection? ; )

[TrappedInLiberalHell]

...in an ironic twist, Turner has decided to 'black-and-white-ize' the company's books, to remove the red ink.

[Jonathon Spectre]

Couldn't happen to a more worthless communist.

[Lexington Green]

I'd like to think the boycott of CNN and all-things-Turner helped bankrupt these commies.... Disney's time is coming.