Book Review: Call Me Ted
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
I sat on this book for a while. I’m just not the type to really get into biographies. It’s just some guys life, you know? I’m glad I finally decided to read this book. Ted Turner is an extraordinary man, who is still somewhat humble about life while being a great showman and businessman.
I thought the book to be well organized, with each chapter taking a clear break from the previous and delving into a new aspect of his life. His troubles with family life disappointed me, as I’m big on family life myself.
Reading about the beginning of the Cable News Network (CNN) was the most interesting part of the book for me. To hear just how many doubters there were towards a 24-hour news channel, how much they had to struggle, it was inspirational to see the section on the Desert Storm coverage and the validation of Ted’s vision for CNN.
The latter stages of the book, his divorce from Jane Fonda, being pushed out of Time Warner, were a bit depressing, although the Time Warner piece intrigued me b/c I happen to work for Time Warner’s AOL division. Here is an interesting quote that hits close to home for me, in a “Ted Story” (writings by others that know Ted somehow, placed throughout the book) by Jeff Bewkes, pp303-304:
“For his part, Ted remained unusually quiet until the very end. As Jerry [Levin:] was wrapping things up by stressing the importance of the company moving aggressively in all these areas and as people were literally getting ready to get up from their chairs, Ted suddenly spoke up. “So, are you telling us we need to move aggressively to put all our content on the Internet, is that what you’re saying?” to which Rich [Bressler:] and Jerry agreed.
“So, that would include putting material from our magazines on the Internet free of charge, right?” When he got agreement again, Ted turned to Don Logan and asked, “Don, what are you charging for Time magazine?”
Don responded, “What do you mean, the cover price?”
And Ted said, “Yeah, it’s like a buck-fifty, right? And for People it’s something like two dollars, right? So you make millions and millions of dollars from magazine subscriptions now but we’re going to put it all online free of charge?” Ted then waited a beat and said, “So we’re going to put ourselves out of business?” It was hilarious, and typical Ted Turner. After a three-hour presentation on a topic he’s supposed to know nothing about he puts his finger right on the center of the problem.”
An extraordinary guy. Well worth the read just to see into his thought processes and experience all of his amazing accomplishments.
Posted via email from Tom’s posterous
