Saying Goodbye To Ted Turner Who Was Pro Wrestling’s Best Friend & More
The news of Ted Turner’s passing at age 87 saddened us but it didn’t surprise us. We had heard reports that he was in declining health of a little while now.
For us, and for all pro wrestling fans and historians of a certain age, Ted Turner will be forever remembered for professional wrestling on WTBS/SuperStationTBS/TBS in the 6:05pm ET time slot on Saturday nights and Sunday nights (as well as Saturday mornings at 9:05am ET). Pro Wrestling first started airing with Turner in 1972 on what would eventually become WTBS on national cable in 1976. Georgia Championship Wrestling was the first major flagship show, but other promotions like Bill Watts’ Mid South Wrestling and Jim Crockett Promotions/NWA would also have have homes on the network at various times. Even the WWF was on TBS for that infamous short time in 1984-1985.
Jim Crockett Promotions/NWA would be “the mothership” on TBS with NWA World Championship Wrestling from 1985 until 1988 every Saturday night. Ted Turner would buy out Jim Crockett, Jr. to finally own a pro wrestling promotion of his own in late 1988 after a bitter and unsuccessful attempt to buy the WWF a few years earlier. For a little while in 1989, a Turner Broadcasting executive made the decision to switch NWA/WCW on Saturday nights to 7:05pm to 9:05pm and the ratings went down. In June of 1989, it was Ted Turner himself who ordered the show back to its traditional and successful 6:05pm to 8:05pm spot.
In early 1991, the NWA and Turner stopped working with each other and Jim Crockett, Jr. was gone from the company. Turner had kept Crockett, Jr. on as a consultant out of respect but Crockett, Jr. felt powerless and disgruntled in the new role. The name of the company, and all of the championship titles, was now fully known as WCW- World Championship Wrestling. That confused a lot of viewers because suddenly the entire pro wrestling company was being called the exact same name as the long running TV show on Saturday nights. The name of the TV show then became WCW Saturday Night.
The NWA name and the NWA Titles would come back into WCW in 1992 when Bill Watts was brought in as the new WCW Executive Vice President. That confused viewers once again as they wondered if the WCW Titles or the NWA Titles were the more prestigious championships. It was WCW TV, but the NWA had the long history and legendary name. A Tag Team Tournament was held to decide the new NWA World Tag Team Champions. Steve Williams and Terry Gordy won the Tournament Finals over Barry Windham and Dustin Rhodes at the WCW Great American Bash pay-per-view in July 1992. Masahiro Chono pinned Rick Rude in the Tournament Finals over in Japan (it was a New Japan Pro Wrestling G1 Climax Tournament themed event) to win the vacant NWA World Title in August 1992. The NWA and WCW would stop working together once again in 1993.
Eric Bischoff would replace Bill Watts in WCW in 1993 and he gained even more power in a short amount of time. Hulk Hogan and others would jump from the WWF to WCW in 1994 and 1995. Thanks to Hogan and Bischoff, WCW was starting to get more press and attention than it ever had before.
Bischoff convinced Ted Turner to create a new WCW TV show that would be live each week to go head to head with WWF Monday Night Raw over on the USA Network every Monday night. With Turner’s blessing, WCW Monday Nitro debuted on TNT in September 1995. That was the beginning of “The Monday Night Wars” of professional wrestling. Bischoff’s goal was to overtake the WWF in the cable TV ratings. WCW did just that - for 83 Weeks.
In 1996, Ted Turner did something that would arguably change entertainment and media for the worse. He made the decision to merge his Turner Broadcasting System with Time Warner. When asked why he did it at the press conference, he repeatedly responded by saying “Because I wanted to be big for once! This will make me big! For all I’ve done in my life I’ve never felt big.” He would have a seat on the board, but as expected, he would lose power as the years went by. He soon felt like he made a mistake.
In early 2001, Time Warner would then merge with AOL to become AOL Time Warner. Jamie Kellner became the new head of Turner Broadcasting. That would spell the end of pro wrestling on TBS and TNT. Kellner not only canceled WCW off of Turner TV, AOL Time Warner wanted to sell the pro wrestling company as a whole (it was owned by Time Warner after the 1996 deal with Turner). WCW was sold to their rival the WWF to end The Monday Night Wars for good. For a while WCW had the WWF on the ropes but it couldn’t deliver the final knockout blow. In the ultimate irony, the WWF would own them to close out perhaps the biggest chapter in pro wrestling history. No more WCW. No more pro wrestling at all on TBS for the first time ever.
Over the decades since the megamergers, Turner lamented if he still had some control WCW might not have been sold, or at the very least, some other pro wrestling company would have continued on his network namesakes. He also hated what CNN and Cartoon Network had become since he no longer had any say in those networks he created as well. Pro wrestling would surprisingly return to TNT and TBS many years later in another historic moment with the newcomer AEW- All Elite Wrestling in 2019.
Ted Turner was an eccentric person. He had the reputation of being a rich international playboy globe trotter while the other side of him was like a down to earth kid at heart.
In addition to pro wrestling, Turner loved classic cartoons. During the 1980s and 1990s, children could catch The Flintstones and Scooby Doo on TBS at 3:05pm ET after school Monday-Friday. Turner bought the Hanna-Barbera studio and library in 1991. The cartoons would create another new network which would be a 24/7 channel all about cartoons. Cartoon Network was launched in October 1992 and it remains on the cable and streaming dials to this day. Things have now become so nostalgic that a majority of the classic Cartoon Network shows streaming rights were obtained by Tubi as of couple of months ago. They can be viewed 100% for free on Tubi. https://tubitv.com/series/300019075/courage-the-cowardly-dog
Ted Turner even created his own cartoon superhero. He always considered himself to be an environmentalist who was very concerned about climate change and pollution. He came up with the idea of a superhero who would not just save people but also the environment from disasters. He wanted it to be an educational cartoon to teach kids lessons for future generations. Captain Planet was born out of those ideas with the help of co-creator Barbara Pyle. The cartoon would air at 5:35pm ET on Sunday evenings on TBS starting in 1990 …. right before NWA/WCW Main Event at 6:05pm ET. Reruns of Captain Planet can be seen every morning in 2026 on METV Toons.
For those that weren’t around to see the TBS non-pro wrestling programming in the 1980s and 1990s, it can best described as what METV and a few other “retro channels” are today. Reruns of shows like “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Leave It To Beaver” (even “The New Leave It To Beaver”) were a big part of the identity of the network as much as the pro wrestling and classic cartoons.
In 1994, Turner launched Turner Classic Movies, a 24/7 network celebrating classic films. In recent years, movie historians were worried the channel would be going away but the new Warner Brothers Discovery (yes, another merger) decided to keep it going. In all fairness, the lineup of the movies they show hasn’t changed much in all these decades later. Many of those classics and more can been seen on Tubi, YouTube, etc. for free. TCM has the broadcast rights to only a select movie library and that’s why they show the same movies over and over.
As we were writing the end of this tribute to Ted Turner, we saw AEW paid tribute to him on their social media. They said tonight’s episode of AEW Dynamite live on TBS will be dedicated to him. A lot of people noted to us that his involvement in the world of pro wrestling is getting glossed over or not mentioned at all in the various mainstream media obituaries today. We see his name has been trending for several hours with Cartoon Network linked to him on X.
Generation X will never forget planning our trips to the mall as kids around World Championship Wrestling on Ted Turner’s TBS on Saturday evenings in 1989 and 1990. We couldn’t trust our VCRs to record back then and we never knew what would come out of the mouths of people like Ric Flair, Terry Funk, and Jim Cornette to start a new feud. We had to rush home “just in case” and we also hoped the Atlanta Braves weren’t going into extra innings.
