Q/A with Ted Turner: Changed landscape of sports on TV; Receives overdue Sports Emmy Lifetime Achievement honor by Ed Sherman
May 7, 2014
By Ed Sherman
The Sports Emmys were Tuesday night in New York. It is the big annual gathering of broadcasters and sports executives as they celebrate the year in TV sports. You always have to be careful because you might get hit with someone’s ego.
Yet last night, all of these superstars and mega power brokers were dwarfed by one man: Ted Turner.
Turner was this year’s recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In the announcement, NATAS chairman Malachy Wienges said, “The world of sports and news television has been forever changed by the vision of this one man.”
Indeed, before Turner changed the world TV news and journalism with CNN, he altered the landscape of sports on television. In 1970s, his move in airing Atlanta Braves and Hawks games on WTBS was a forerunner for ESPN and other sports cable networks, national and local, serving fans a 24/7 menu of games, sports news, talk and analysis.
