Ted Turner, the brash sportsman and entrepreneur whose ambition and instincts led to a media empire that included groundbreaking news network CNN, has died, CNN reported yesterday citing a press release from Turner Enterprises. He was 87.

A Reuters report, which cited CNN, said no cause of death was given. In September 2018 Turner revealed that he had Lewy body dementia, a degenerative nerve disease.

One nickname was not enough for a personality as roguish and bold as Turner’s. He was known variously as the ‘Mouth of the South’, ‘Captain Outrageous’ and ‘Terrible Ted’.

He became a billionaire by taking over his father’s billboard business, buying a television station in 1970 and parlaying that into what would become a vast ground-breaking television group.

Turner, according to the Reuters report, became one of the most powerful figures in US media and entertainment, his networks ‌ specializing in news, sports, re-runs, and old movies. But he did not stop there. He added the MGM/UA movie studio to his portfolio before making an even bigger move — merging his Turner Broadcasting System with Time Warner in 1996.

Turner headed the new company’s cable networks division and was its leading shareholder, but he had trouble fitting into a corporate system after decades of free-wheeling as his own boss. He eventually lost control of his networks.

Turner also became one of the world’s leading environmentalists, one of the largest landowners in the United States, and a major philanthropist, giving $1 billion to the United Nations.

With a slender mustache, gap-toothed grin, dimpled chin and mischievous glint in his eye, Turner pursued a range of passions. In the 1970s he owned the Atlanta Braves baseball team and the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association and skippered his yacht the Courageous to the America’s Cup. The many women in his life included Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda.

In 1986 he started the Goodwill Games, an Olympic-like competition, and two years later bought a wrestling organization that provided more TV content. His concerns about nuclear war ⁠led him to co-found the Nuclear Threat Initiative in 2001. Forbes estimates Turner’s fortune at $2.8 billion. “If I only had a little humility, I’d be perfect,” he once said.

Robert Edward Turner III was born in Cincinnati on November 19, 1938, moving to the South with his family when he was 9. He was sent to military schools where he became a champion debater and yachtsman.

He enrolled at Brown University in Rhode Island and angered his father by studying the classics rather than business.

Turner got in trouble for having a girlfriend in his room, among other offenses, and he never graduated.

He joined his family’s advertising company in Savannah, Georgia, selling space on billboards. At 24 he was left in charge after his father killed himself.

The business was sold to pay debts but after a family debate in which Turner was victorious, he repurchased the firm and made it successful. In 1970, against the counsel of advisers, he bought a failing Atlanta UHF television station, now called WTBS, for $2.5 million.