When Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III launched Cable News Network (CNN), he was taking a financial risk. According to his autobiography, he didn’t have enough capital to fund the channel until it reached breakeven. He saw two potential outcomes: The value of the channel would become clear, and raising capital would become easier. Or he’d built a channel valuable enough to be acquired. Both were acceptable, so he plowed ahead.

The CNN launch almost gave Turner a nervous breakdown. It launched on time but was a financial disaster. Expenses were twice the budget and revenues were half the budget. Turner was losing four times more than he projected. To make matters worse, ABC and Westinghouse, two multibillion-dollar companies, were teaming up to launch a CNN competitor, Satellite News Channel. They planned to offer the new channel to cable companies for free alongside a short news channel they would also create.

Ted went to war. He created an “all-news channel with a thirty-minute cycle of headline news.” He called the new channel CNN2 and aimed to beat his competition to market in 1982 by six months. He couldn’t afford space on a satellite for CNN2, but he found a solution. Warner Communications wasn’t using its leased satellite space. Turner took Warner’s space and paid for it by allowing Warner to take over all ad sales for Turner Broadcasting and collect a royalty on all ad revenue it generated. It was a risky deal because it meant losing control of his sales operation, but Turner had no choice. He took it further and offered cable operators a 70% yearly discount on CNN subscription fees for three years if they carried CNN and CNN2. He even filed a $300 million antitrust lawsuit against ABC and Westinghouse.

Turner’s strategy worked, but it was costly. ABC and Westinghouse agreed to discontinue their channel if Turner paid them $25 million and dropped his lawsuit. His warfare strategy was costing him $4 million a month, so $25 million, while steep, was cheaper than a prolonged war.

By 1984, CNN, Headline News, and SuperStation were growing, but Turner Broadcasting was too small to compete against the big three broadcast networks for audience and advertising dollars. Turner’s company was generating $280 million in revenue and $10 million in profit. CBS alone was generating $5 billion in revenue. Turner decided that merging with one of the big three was his best option.

But merger conversations with the networks went nowhere. At the time, unfriendly corporate takeovers by raiders were popular. Turner got close to T. Boone Pickens, a famous corporate raider, and learned how that game worked. He then partnered with Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham to issue junk bonds and, in 1985, made an unsolicited offer to take over CBS. CBS fought the effort vigorously and the takeover died. But the publicity from this attempt led to Kirk Kerkorian calling Turner with another offer.

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After his father’s suicide, Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III was CEO of Turner Advertising Company, which he had saved. According to his autobiography, his work life was improving, but his personal life was hectic. His son Teddy was born in March 1963, three months after his father’s death. And by the end of that year, he was getting divorced and Judy had moved with the children to Chicago to be near family. Turner was 25 years old and a divorced father of two. In 1964, he met Jane Smith and married her in less than a year. Shortly thereafter, his son Rhett was born.

Ted wanted to expand. He acquired a Chattanooga, Tennessee, billboard company for $1 million and a Knoxville, Tennessee, billboard company at an estate auction for $53,000. Shortly after these deals, the outdoor advertising business began looking less attractive to Turner because of proposed legislation and advertisers’ exploration of television. Television’s future looked bright, and Turner decided to model his company after Combined Communication, which Karl Eller expanded from a billboard company to include radio and television. Ted bought radio stations in Florida and South Carolina, but he decided he didn’t like the radio business.

By the late 1960s, Turner set his sights on Channel 17, eventually known as WTCG, a financially struggling UHF television station in Atlanta. The owner wanted $2.5 million. Turner didn’t have cash, so he merged with the station. He retained 47% ownership and changed the company name to Turner Communications Group. Turner also bought a bankrupt Charlotte, North Carolina, station, WRET, for less than $1 million; he did this investment personally. The stations were a financial drain. Low on cash, unable to pay suppliers, and at risk of going off the air, Turner did an on-air telethon to raise money. He raised $25,000 and generated goodwill in the community.

Ted recognized that programming should be his focus because it attracted viewers, which led to more revenue from advertisers. His strategy was to find areas where competitors weren’t meeting viewers’ needs and fill those gaps. He paid $600,000 to air sixty Atlanta Braves baseball games a year and went on to cut deals to air Atlanta Hawks basketball games and Atlanta Flames hockey games. His strategy worked: WTGC went from $900,000 in losses in 1970 to $1 million in profit in 1973.

The Braves ownership, losing $1 million a year, offered Turner the chance to purchase the team for $10 million, which he did in 1976. This gave him control of long-term TV rights and guaranteed unique programming.

Turner was still focused on growing his TV stations. This required growing viewers, but there weren’t unlimited viewers in Atlanta. He needed to gain viewers in other markets. He kept hearing about “community antenna television,” so he investigated it. This new technology, better known as cable TV, allowed him to access views in other markets. He learned through trial and error that satellites were the key and built the first satellite uplink station in Atlanta. He changed his company name to Turner Broadcasting System Inc. (TBS) and changed the Atlanta TV station name to SuperStation. The first satellite transmission occurred in December 1976.

With TBS distributed by satellite throughout the southeast, Turner recognized he was sitting on a gold mine. Cable was growing rapidly. As cable operators expanded their coverage areas, they added subscribers. As they added more subscribers, the per-subscriber fees they paid increased, which meant more revenue—but few or no incremental costs—for TBS. Programming (i.e., unique content) was the key to capitalizing on this gold mine and growing revenues and profits rapidly.

Tuner saw news as great content, but it was delivered at times that weren’t convenient for everyone. Turner decided to start a twenty-four-hour-a-day news channel to fill this gap and named it Cable News Network, or CNN. He decided to launch on June 1, 1980. This decision would change his trajectory forever.

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Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III is an entrepreneur known for the Turner Broadcasting System, which birthed the CNN, TBS, and TNT cable channels. Everyone in Atlanta knows of Turner, but I decided to buy his autobiography, Call Me Ted, after reading about his financing deal for MGM/UA in the biography of Kirk Kerkorian.

Turner was born in 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was sent to boarding school when he was four years old, when his father joined the Navy and his younger sister Mary Jean and mother joined his father on base. Ted’s father was a complicated man. He moved the family to Savannah, Georgia, when he acquired a small billboard company in 1947. He enrolled Ted in The McCallie School, then a Christian military academy in Tennessee. At age twelve, Ted began working 42-and-a-half hours a week at his father’s company in the summers, usually doing manual labor with outside crews.

Growing up in Savannah, Turner learned to sail by joining his dad on sailing trips. His love for sailing was the deciding factor in attending Brown University, which is located on Narragansett Bay in Providence, Rhode Island. After his freshman year, his parents divorced, and his mother and sister moved back to Cincinnati. After Turner lost a bet and failed to honor a commitment to his father, his father stopped giving him a weekly $5 allowance. Frustrated about the situation with his father, he fell in with the wrong crowd and got suspended for the rest of the school year. To fill his time, he joined the Coast Guard as a reservist until he could return to Brown the following semester. Then, after declaring classics as his major, Ted had a nasty falling out with his father, who refused to pay his tuition any longer. He was forced to leave Brown.

Turner briefly moved to the Miami area but was broke, so he started working for his dad’s company, Turner Advertising Company, in 1959. At 21, Turner married Judy Nye, a fellow sailing enthusiast he’d dated long distance. A few months later, his sister Mary Jean died; she was just 17.

Turner moved to Macon, Georgia, with his new bride to take over a small billboard company his dad had acquired. At just 21, Turner ran the company, and within two years he’d doubled its revenue. His marriage with Judy was rocky, but they welcomed a daughter, Laura, in 1961.

In 1962, Ted’s father made a deal with an entrepreneur from Minnesota to purchase General Outdoor Inc., a larger billboard company based in Atlanta. The $4 million deal was financed with debt, and Ted’s father split the acquired assets with the other entrepreneur. Ted moved to Atlanta to help run the leasing department of the acquired company; his family stayed in Macon.

After closing the deal, the fear of losing everything because of the debt load consumed the elder Turner. His behavior became erratic, and he checked into rehab. One day he announced he was selling a big part of the company to the Minnesota billboard entrepreneur, which shocked Ted because it had only been a few months since the closing. A few days later, in March 1963, the elder Turner committed suicide.

Ted was in shock, but he had to pick up the pieces. He was the executor of his father’s estate. The deal to sell General Outdoors assets was signed the day before his father died. It was an informal handwritten note, but it was binding. Turner started renewing billboard leases with General Outdoors customers in the name of his Macon company, which reduced the value of General Outdoor assets being acquired. The buyer was angry and offered to pay $200,000 to have all leases returned, or Turner could pay him $200,000 to retain all the General Outdoor assets. Turner picked the latter but didn’t cash; he paid using his company stock. Cash was still an issue because the $600,000 first payment on the General Outdoors debt was coming due. Turner went into fire-sale mode and sold his father’s 1,000-acre plantation and commercial real estate to raise the funds. He kept his father’s company intact.

Turner was now ready to start rebuilding his family’s empire, but first he’d have to resolve his personal troubles.

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Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them via blog posts and audio podcasts

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Metrics (cumulative since 4/1/24):

• Total audio recordings published: 92 (+0)
• Total blog posts published: 119 (+7)
• Average recording: no recordings this past week

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read the autobiography of Ted Turner, founder of CNN, TBS, and TNT
• Had three additional feedback sessions
• Compiled and sorted feedback from sessions completed the week of 7/15/24

Content:

• No recordings this past week

What I’ll do next week:

• Read one biography or autobiography
• Write seven blog posts and record seven audio posts
• Continue reading one of the books about storytelling that I purchased; this is a carryover from last week
• Complete three feedback sessions

Asks:

• Listen to the series on John H. Johnson and provide feedback on how I can improve.

Week two hundred twenty-six was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

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Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them via blog posts and audio podcasts

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• I struggled to create the upcoming series on Felix Dennis. The problem was that the biography focused deeply on Dennis’s personal side and was surface level on his career as an entrepreneur. I had a hard time creating a series about his entrepreneurial journey that satisfied my curiosity and met my expectations.

What I learned:

• I’m getting comfortable with the quality of the content. Before, I wasn’t happy with the preceding week’s work, but I knew I was getting better. I’m still not satisfied with the quality, but it’s good enough that I’m comfortable sharing it outside my immediate circle.
• Reaching out to people individually to make them aware that a series was published had a material impact on the number of listens for the John H. Johnson series. This won’t scale, but I want to do this strategically going forward.
• Don't read books that don’t resonate with me after fifty pages. If the first fifty pages don’t discuss what I care about in someone’s journey, the rest of the book won’t either. I knew this already, but I didn’t follow it for the Felix Dennis biography.
• When I’m picking which book to read for the week, I should factor in the book’s quality or story. I’ve been weighing the length of the book too heavily. A shorter book takes me longer to read if I’m not into it.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

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I finished reading more about Felix Dennis. The first book I read about him, which he wrote, detailed his thoughts on how to succeed as an entrepreneur. The second, a biography, described his journey from his early years through his passing at age 67 in 2014. The latter book contained less detail about Felix’s entrepreneurial journey than I’d hoped, but I still learned some new things about him.

How Did Dennis’s Early Years Affect His Trajectory?

His parents’ dynamic had a big impact on Dennis. His father leaving when Dennis was four put pressure on his mother to provide for her sons. Working as a bookkeeper, she realized a career in accounting could be her savior. She became laser-focused on becoming an accountant so she could provide. The positive was that Dennis saw work ethic and focus pay off for his mother. But her sons were neglected and didn’t get much, or any, motherly warmth from her. Felix followed in his mother’s footsteps: he was laser-focused on his goals and outworked everyone else to make them happen.

His parents struggled to keep their general store open, and his mother struggled as the sole provider. There wasn’t a lot of money, and at one point, Dennis’s living arrangements included an outside toilet and no electricity. Dennis was determined never to live like that again. “Under no circumstances would I stay poor,” he wrote. His determination fueled his pursuit of financial freedom.

Felix was in his early twenties when the Oz trial ordeal began. It was a rude awakening to how the world really works and how unfairly the establishment treats certain people. He decided he needed money to put himself on a fairer playing field with the establishment and to make it possible to defend himself if necessary. This realization about money was another factor that fueled his pursuit of financial freedom.

How Did Dennis Become So Successful?

The Oz trial had a significant impact on British society. It made Dennis an icon and gave him an edge, especially in the publishing world. This standing opened doors for him and allowed him to make several critical deals. His name alone would get him meetings with people or allow him to steal deals that competitors considered won but that weren’t closed.

Dennis was a master at identifying market gaps and filling them with something people would love. He was highly gifted at being in tune with what people wanted. He had a deep understanding of how customers thought and how to create publications that resonated with them. He was what the venture capital world would call a hipster and played this role repeatedly, especially in his partnership with Peter Godfrey and Bob Bartner. Maxim's outsize international success was a result of Dennis’s hipster abilities.

Felix was also an unapologetic opportunist who had a keen sense for markets that were severely underserved or would be underserved because they would grow rapidly.

Another contributor to his success was that he didn’t have a wife or children, so he could work longer hours and take bigger risks without worrying about the impact on his family.

Dennis was gifted with words. He knew how to talk to people in a way that resonated deeply with them. He made everyone he conversed with feel like they were the only thing that mattered. He mesmerized people when he spoke with them. This made him a superior salesman who could close almost any business deal. It also made him a gifted poet and womanizer.

What Kind of Entrepreneur Was Dennis?

Dennis was a founder. Most of the businesses he was involved in started from nothing. As his empire and resources grew, he bought some publications, too.

Dennis believed that making money was a skill. He applied it to publishing, but he believed he could have applied it to any industry and done well. His confidence in his moneymaking skill led him to take risks that others wouldn’t dare take.

Dennis was also a marketing genius. He instinctively knew how to get and keep people’s attention. This served him well in publishing because attention was what he sold to advertisers.

Dennis was a colorful entrepreneur who changed publishing in the UK and the United States. I’m still curious about some aspects of his journey and will be reading more about him.

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In 1994, Jolyon Connell recognized that newspapers were bigger but people were busier, so they had less time to read them. He created a weekly digest magazine, The Week, to solve this problem. When Felix Dennis heard about the magazine, he invested. Within a year, he had 51% ownership. According to the biography about Dennis, he saw the magazine’s potential and had the resources at Dennis Publishing to take it to the next level. Realizing “the reader was king,” he focused on building a solid subscription base by adding value for readers. It worked, and the U.S. version launched in 2001. The Week was on a par with Newsweek and Time magazines and gained Dennis a level of respect from other publishers, which had avoided him before.

In 1995, Dennis Publishing launched Maxim magazine. The secret to its breakout success was a gap in the market. No one was publishing magazines for young men, ages 18 to 34, as they were for young women. Women’s magazines were more general. Magazines targeting men were specialized. Young men interested in science or physical fitness also “watched sport[s], talked about girls, and ate chicken wings.” Maxim filled this void by appealing to the universal interests of all men in a bold way. It sold 350,000 copies in the UK when it launched.

In 1997, Maxim U.S. was launched by Dennis and his two U.S. partners, Peter Godfrey and Bob Bartner. Creative marketing became a key to U.S. success. Maxim became known for throwing unbelievable parties, which gained celebrity attention and made attractive female celebrities inclined to pose on the magazine’s cover. It also creatively engineered getting promotion from Howard Stern, whose radio show was one of the most popular in the nation. Maxim was a gigantic success in the U.S. and sold 1.2 million copies per issue—10 or 20 times more than rivals like GQ and Esquire. At one point, Maxim U.S.’s ad rates rivaled TV ad rates. Maxim gained a cult following because, as Dennis put it, “it was the first beer truck to reach the desert.” Maxim positioned itself as the best conduit to connect advertisers with a large audience in this hard-to-penetrate demographic.

In 2007, Maxim was wildly successful in various countries when Dennis Publishing sold Maxim, Blender, and Stuff magazines to private equity firm Quadrangle Capital Partners, netting $240 million.

Flush with cash, Felix started to lean more into a passion he'd be developing for almost a decade, poetry. He bought a home on Mustique Island in the Caribbean and spent most of his time there, writing poetry. He published books of poetry and even went on tours reading his poetry in the U.S. and UK. Then, in 2011, Felix began to have health issues. First it was throat cancer, which shocked him. He was lucky; he survived after successful neck and mouth surgery. He eagerly resumed his poetry tours when, in 2013, he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. That diagnosis was devastating, and Felix decided to spend his remaining time mostly alone. On Sunday, June 22, 2014, Felix passed away.

Dennis was a pirate and maverick who happened to also be an entrepreneur. He enjoyed going against the establishment and shaking things up. He forced his way into what was then a stuffy industry and left a lasting impression on it. His outsize success forced his peers to respect him and change how they thought about the publishing business. Dennis’s track record of success over decades was undeniable, and many of the publications he started still exist today. But for all his success in publishing, his true passion ended up being writing and sharing his poetry. Building a publishing empire was a means to that end for Dennis.

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Felix Dennis began to hit his stride after selling MacUser magazine in 1986. According to the biography of his life, he’d landed on a strategy: creating magazines in growing markets, building them up, and selling them to larger publishing houses. That strategy helped him build his initial capital base, but it was about to change.

When MacUser was sold, Dennis and his partners realized that the biggest ad source was computer component sellers. Ads were driving massive revenue for those sellers, they discovered. The trio decided to launch Micro Warehouse as a mail-order company selling computer parts. It helped that they’d managed to secure 24 pages of free advertising as part of the MacUser sale.

The trio landed on two magic ingredients. They used sales to individual users of Mac computers inside corporations as a trojan horse to eventually sell parts to PC users (a much bigger market) in those organizations, too. And they offered $3 overnight shipping to build trust with corporations that weren’t yet comfortable with mail order. These ingredients, along with Dennis creating an attractive catalog, quickly produced $500 million in annual revenue. When the company held its IPO in 1992, it was receiving ten thousand calls from customers daily. The IPO was a huge financial success for Dennis and his partners.

During this period, Felix launched and acquired several other publications and renamed his firm Dennis Publishing. But he was also dealing with personal demons. He began to hire prostitutes to feed his sex addiction. He also developed an addiction to crack cocaine. These problems and a grueling work schedule led to Dennis being hospitalized and almost dying at age 41. This near-death experience, combined with financial freedom and other factors, would lead to Dennis discovering his true passion and next career.

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After the Oz trial, Felix Dennis was on a mission: to make money so he’d have the resources to defend himself if necessary. And he would make that money doing what he knew best: publishing. Oz magazine shut down in 1973, and Dennis set up a new company, H. Bunch Associates, with Dick Pountain.

According to his biography, their first foray was into the world of Bruce Lee and Kung Fu. They published a poster magazine, which was wildly successful. This led to a variety of merchandising products and a book. All these items did well, and the money rolled in. Bruce Lee saved them.

Dennis started seeking other magazine opportunities. He co-authored a book about Muhammad Ali, which did well. He tried a variety of poster magazines, including Starsky & Hutch. Dennis’s new mindset had taken him from idealistic hippie publisher to opportunistic, mainstream publisher.

He also searched for opportunities in the United States, and set up a new company, Paradise Publications, with Peter Godfrey and Bob Bartner. This partnership would change Dennis’s life.

Around 1980, Felix acquired majority ownership in Personal Computer World magazine because the owner had followed the Oz trial and greatly respected Felix. In 1982, Felix sold the magazine to a large publisher for £3 million. It was his first taste of real money.

In 1984, Felix launched MacUser and began managing his company from New York City. MacUser was in partnership with Godfrey and Bartner. Felix handled creative work, and they handled distribution and printing in the States.

Circulation soared, and in 1986, Ziff Davis bought MacUser magazine for $21 million. Felix and his partners had life-changing money. But Dennis wasn’t done yet; in fact, he was just getting warmed up.

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Felix Dennis founded Dennis Publishing, created Maxim magazine, and cofounded Micro Warehouse Inc. I read Dennis’s book How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets last month and wanted to know more about his journey, so I read the biography of his life, More Lives Than One: The Extraordinary Life of Felix Dennis by Fregus Byrne.

Dennis was born in the United Kingdom in 1947. His father was a war veteran who opened a general store. Though his parents worked fourteen hours a day, the store failed. When Felix was four, his father went to Australia in search of a better life for his family. He never returned. Dennis never saw his father again, and his parents divorced years later.

Like his mother, Dennis was dominant and abrasive, and the two butted heads constantly. Growing up without a father forced Felix to grow up quickly and assume the role of head of the house. He had a disdain for authority from an early age, which led to his expulsion from multiple schools.

Dennis joined a band in 1962 and developed his showmanship skills on stage, but he was kicked out because he was too aggressive and needed to run the show. Around this time, he was expelled from Harrow Technical College and School of Art.

At this point in his life, Dennis was directionless. Then he noticed a magazine called London Oz and, after a night of drinking, recorded his thoughts about the publication. He mailed the tape to the magazine’s headquarters, and it was featured in a BBC story. The founder gave Dennis a bale of magazines to compensate him. Dennis immediately sold all of them, and that led to a 50/50 sales deal. After continued sales success, Dennis joined the magazine’s team. He brought energy and helped the magazine realize that reader demand was stronger than they’d known.

Dennis spearheaded focusing advertising sales on the music industry, which kept the company afloat. He then became the business manager and got the business operations and finances in order. He also developed a keen eye for what would resonate with readers and assisted in the editorial direction of each issue.

The magazine’s 1960s hippie vibe clashed with the conservative views held by the British establishment. When the magazine published an edgy issue, its offices were raided by the Obscene Publications Squad. Dennis and the two other founders were arrested and tried. They were found guilty on two of three charges and Dennis was sentenced to nine months’ incarceration.

The media, realizing the repercussions of these sentences for the media industry, railed against them. The public was outraged. People demonstrated. After political pressure from Parliament, the convictions were overturned on appeal. Decades later, this trial was still talked about as an event that changed British society by advancing freedom against the establishment and challenging its authority.

For Dennis, the trial was life-changing. It highlighted the fact that without money, he couldn’t fight back against “bogus” charges. Had he had money, his case would never have gone to trial. He realized how lucky he was to not be in jail. He’d never thought about money before, but after that experience, it was all he thought about. He never wanted to be unable to defend himself again. He was determined to make money, and a lot of it.

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