by Lisa Napoli
This page She found herself daydreaming: Hank Whittemore, CNN: The Inside Story: How a Band of Mavericks Changed the Face of Television News (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), 189.
This page who some called “the dictator”: Peter Arnett, Live from the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World’s War Zones (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 325.
This page The bush-league errors: “This Was CNN,” Atlanta magazine, June 2005.
This page But when a tape operator: CNN original Rick Brown, e-mail interview with author, August 8, 2018.
This page struggling to make payroll: Richard Zoglin, “Network in Red, but Deficit Shrinking,” Atlanta Constitution, January 23, 1981.
This page “I SUPPORT CNN”: Claudia Cohen, “Turner’s Bold Scheme to Save TV Network,” New York Daily News, January 7, 1981.
This page “Several $100 bills”: Howard Rosenberg, “Cable News Network Survives First Year,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1981.
This page “greedy bunch of jerks”: Christian Williams, Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way: The Story of Ted Turner (New York: Times Books, 1981), 12.
This page CBS President Bill Small: Harry F. Waters, “Ted Turner’s Empire: A Sports King Tackles TV News,” Newsweek, June 16, 1980.
This page “Someday, I’m going to own”: Bill Leonard, In the Storm of the Eye: A Lifetime at CBS (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987), 221–22.
This page “I’m concerned about the journalism”: Richard Zoglin, “CNN Success a Bit Fuzzy,” Atlanta Constitution, January 23, 1981.
This page his nickname at CBS had been “Jukebox”: Reese Schonfeld, as quoted in unpublished Chris Chase manuscript, chapter 38.
This page economy into a tailspin: Shaw said this later in the broadcast as he bantered with Daniel Schorr.
This page he sat at Shaw’s feet: Kenyon in “A Fond Farewell to Bernie Shaw,” Larry King Live, March 8, 2001, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0103/08/lkl.00.html.
This page “We don’t have any information”: Whittemore, CNN: The Inside Story, 191.
This page the suit would have to wait: Reese Schonfeld, Me and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN (New York: Cliff Street, 2001), 218; Seth Kantor, “Ted Turner Sues Reagan, Networks,” Atlanta Constitution, May 12, 1981.
This page “While a worried nation sought information”: Nicholas Von Hoffman, “Networks Bottom out on Top Story, Ithaca Journal, April 10, 1981.
This page ad-hoc mobile satellite unit: Schonfeld, Me and Ted Against the World, 159.
This page An early employee noted: John Baker, Chicken Noodle News, 175.
This page A viewer from Yukon Territory: Sidney Pike, We Changed the World: Memoirs of a CNN Satellite Pioneer (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2005), 63.
This page Once, even, a letter: Former WTCG employee Bob Sieber, e-mail to author, May 27, 2019.
This page “I just wanted to let you know”: Robert Goldberg and Gerald Jay Goldberg, Citizen Turner: The Wild Rise of an American Tycoon (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1995), 283.
This page Conservative Ted had been taught: Ted Turner, Call Me Ted, 207.
This page “The Commies,” Ed had told him: Ibid., 8.
This page Some said he’d established: Peter Ross Range, “Playboy Interview: Ted Turner,” Playboy, August 1983.
This page He wished to visit every country: Christian Williams, Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way: The Story of Ted Turner (New York: Times Books, 1981), 272.
This page in a remote location with Ed Sullivan: “Fidel Castro Interview on Ed Sullivan—1959,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjpnfDwWd7Y.
This page “How would we be Communists?”: Jerry Bowles, “A Thousand Sundays: The Ed Sullivan Show,” Windsor Star, October 11, 1980.
This page “Only real public opinion”: Gil Klein, “National Press Club in History: What Fidel Told the Club,” The National Press Club, August 21, 2018, https://www.press.org/news-multimedia/news/national-press-club-history-what-fidel-castro-told-club.
This page “The Other Woman”: John Aldock, oral history interview by Judith S. Feigin, Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit, May 11, 2010, https://dcchs.org/sb_pdf/complete-oral-history-aldock.
This page In her suitcase: Gary Perilloux, “Liz Wickersham Recalls Visit with Fidel Castro, Who Turns 78 Today,” Port Arthur News, August 13, 2004; Liz Wickersham, telephone interview with author, July 30, 2019.
This page tantalized by her swimwear: Perilloux, “Liz Wickersham Recalls Visit with Fidel Castro, Who Turns 78 Today.” Castro asked Wickersham on her second visit to Cuba why she hadn’t brought along the swimsuit.
This page Only a handful of outsiders: Juan Reinaldo Sánchez, The Double Life of Fidel: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Líder Máximo (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 12.
This page some of her film was: Liz Wickersham, e-mail to author, August 2, 2019.
This page bringing the blond beauty a steak: Perilloux, “Liz Wickersham Recalls Visit with Fidel Castro.”
This page “What makes you think”: Turner, Call Me Ted, 209.
This page Communists didn’t have horns: Ted Turner, interview by Michael Rosen, Television Academy Foundation, June 12 and December 6, 1999, https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/ted-turner.
This page People at their core: Gary Smith, “What Makes Ted Run?,” Sports Illustrated, June 22, 1986.
This page “He can say it in Spanish”: “Meeting with Fidel Castro,” raw footage, February 1982, DVD copy provided by Ted Turner.
This page “We receive an important”: New York Times News Service, “Castro to Go Cable to Plug U.S. News,” Miami News, February 22, 1982. Ted shocked his executives when he showed this promotion and wished to air it. He even had the tape recut after they refused to run it, but they still refused.
Chapter Eleven: The Little Girl in the Well, 1987
This page Kids didn’t fall into wells every day: Ray Richmond, “How TV Covered Jessica’s Ordeal,” Orange County Register, May 21, 1989. Also based on my conversations with KMID’s DeAnn Holcomb and CNN’s Tony Clark.
This page This fortress-like building: Turner Director of Interior Planning Marty Harrell, e-mail to author, August 22, 2019.
This page For anyone who didn’t know: The Turnstyles, “He Was Cable When Cable Wasn’t Cool,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K0J12W0hcw.
This page “Within the next three years”: Michael Schrage and David A. Vise, “Murdoch, Turner Launch Era of Global Television,” Washington Post, August 31, 1986.
This page “I’m trying to get bigger”: Stratford P. Sherman, “Back from the Brink,” Fortune, July 7, 1986.
This page “My main concern is to be a benefit”: Gary Smith, “What Makes Ted Run?,” Sports Illustrated, July 23, 1986.
This page “lazy, drugs, homosexuals, sex maniacs”: Nick Taylor, “American Hero as Media Mogul,” Atlanta magazine, September 1982.
This page Would it have made a difference: Reese Schonfeld, Me and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN (New York: Cliff Street, 2001), 285–92.
This page Crime Watch Tonight: James Verini, “Reese’s Pieces: Mr. Schonfeld, Forgotten Founder of CNN, Is a Man of Many Projects,” New York Observer, January 29, 2001.
Afterword: June 2000
This page “bastard at the wedding”: Reese Schonfeld, Me and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN (New York: Cliff Street, 2001), xiv, 362.
This page “CNN is my thing”: Schonfeld, Me and Ted Against the World, 330.
This page He’d shopped: Schonfeld, Me and Ted, 342–47.
This page “I’m in spiritual and mental”: Paul Farhi, “Nothing Left but Billions: Put Out to Pasture, Ted Turner Looks for Grass That’s Greener,” Washington Post, April 4, 2001.
This page CNN isn’t the agent of peace: Schonfeld, Me and Ted Against the World, 329–30.
Thi
s page Numbness then morphed into: Schonfeld, Me and Ted Against the World, 362.
This page Take it as long as you: Daniel Schorr, Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism (New York: Washington Square Press, 2001), 319.
This page That tape of “Nearer My God”: The CNN Doomsday video can be seen at https://jalopnik.com/this-is-the-video-cnn-will-play-when-the-world-ends-1677511538.
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To tell the origin story of CNN required many thousands of hours of research and reading, as well as the generous assistance of many people. As this book was not authorized by CNN, I had no access to corporate archives, nor was there one single repository for information.
I am ever grateful to archivists and archives, librarians and libraries, and to individuals who archive or record their personal histories in some form or fashion, then make them publicly available. My research was also enriched by the work of authors who have tackled this story, or other aspects of broadcast history, from other perspectives.
Of particular help was the audio source materials associated with the Goldberg and Goldberg biography of Ted Turner, which they generously left to UCLA, and the Television Academy Foundation’s “The Interviews.”
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Archives and Research Libraries
Cotton Alston photographs, VIS 247, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center
David Bell, Personal Archive Collection
Edwin Diamond Political Audiovisual Collection and Steven H. Scheuer Television History Interviews, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY
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Harry Reasoner papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin
Daniel Schorr Papers. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas
Ted Turner Personal Archives
George Watson Papers, 1955–2017, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin
