Good Morning. He bet $10 billion that Americans would watch news at 3am, then proved it. We break down Ted Turner's empire.
We also include a Hollywood mayor race, AI's headcount divide, and a Swiss hantavirus scare (forwarded this email? Join 523k readers).
TOP STORY TODAY
CNN's Founder Dies
Ted Turner, the brash Atlanta entrepreneur who launched CNN as the first 24-hour cable news network in 1980, died yesterday at his Florida estate. He was 87. His family confirmed he passed peacefully after a long battle with Lewy body dementia (NYT).
Beyond CNN, Turner built a cable empire spanning TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and Turner Classic Movies, then sold his company to Time Warner in 1996 for $7.34 billion. He also owned the Atlanta Braves, captained the 1977 America's Cup winner, and pledged $1 billion to the United Nations in 1997. Read CNN’s obituary here.
Turner's net worth peaked near $10 billion in the 1990s before sliding to roughly $2.2 billion by his death, dented by the AOL-Time Warner collapse. He leaves behind millions of acres of conservation land and one of America's largest private bison herds.
Los Angeles Mandami?
Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman, a Democratic Socialist drawing comparisons to NYC's Zohran Mamdani, is challenging Mayor Karen Bass ahead of the June 2 primary. Reality star Spencer Pratt has also jumped in, polling within two points of Raman for second place.
Raman is pushing an uncapped state film tax credit and warning Paramount's $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery deal could trigger heavy job losses, pointing to roughly 1,000 layoffs after Skydance's earlier Paramount acquisition. She rejects the "looney leftie" label, calling herself pro-business.
Bass leads polls but has rolled out proposals mirroring Raman's platform after a Kamala Harris endorsement Monday. A November runoff looms if no candidate clears 50%. Most Angelenos remain undecided heading into tonight's first debate in Sherman Oaks.
CEOs: 80% Cut Staff
Corporate America is splitting into two camps over AI's workforce impact, executives revealed in recent earnings calls and staff memos. Coinbase is cutting 14% of its workforce and PayPal plans to slash 20% over two to three years, both citing AI adoption.
Meta is laying off 8,000 people, roughly 10% of its workforce, while Bed Bath & Beyond's CEO promised investors significant headcount reductions. A Gartner survey of 350 mid-level-plus employees found 80% of companies using AI agents are cutting staff. Block and Snap shares both jumped after AI-related cuts.
The other camp is holding flat. Spotify says it is keeping headcount steady and shipping more, while Axon's president told 5,000 staffers AI won't trigger layoffs. IBM's HR chief predicted the company will employ more people in three years, not fewer (WSJ).
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TODAY’S LIFE ADVICE
Business Lessons from Ted Turner
Ted Turner died yesterday at 87. His memoir Call Me Ted is the closest thing to a playbook for building an empire from a billboard company. Here are 7 tactical ideas you can apply to your business today:
“Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” Turner kept this slogan on his desk for decades. It is not a leadership style, it is a triage tool. Every project, every meeting, every line on your calendar fits one of three buckets. If you are not driving it and not actively supporting it, you are in the way of someone who could be.
Bet on the medium that is going to grow. When Turner inherited his father's billboard business, he had a choice between buying a lousy radio station or a lousy TV station. He picked TV because TV was growing. That single bet became CNN.
Trust your gut over the market research. The big networks polled the audience and concluded news was a clunker. Turner ignored them and bet that if he created the supply, the demand would follow. Polls measure what people did yesterday. They cannot measure what people will love when you put it in front of them.
Stay one step ahead of the bankers. Turner risked his personal wealth to launch CNN and admitted he barely had runway. That pressure is what made the network ship. Comfortable founders build slow. Stretched founders build fast. Run lean enough that the work has to work.
Hire the up-and-comers, not the all-stars. Turner could not afford journalists at the top of their careers, so he found promising newcomers attracted to building something new. They became the face of CNN.
Be willing to be misunderstood. They called CNN "Chicken Noodle News" for years. Turner kept building. If your idea makes sense to everyone on day one, it is not big enough. The mockery is a leading indicator that you might be onto something the consensus has not caught up to yet.
Work like hell and advertise. Turner credited his father's advice: "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise." Every successful entrepreneur in history has one thing the failed ones do not: distribution. Make the thing, then spend at least as much energy telling people about it as you spent making it.
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