

So it’s only in our lifetime, those of us who are a little bit older, that we’ve seen cable become a force.

And somebody, a bunch of guys who were really smart, including Ted Turner along the way, recognized that you could make this a bigger and splashier affair.
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It was just a way, if you lived in the hinterlands and couldn’t get broadcast TV nearby, that you could get those signals. Napoli: It’s so important to remember - and we forget this now that our iPhone is a TV studio in our hands - that cable was just a utility. And this is one of this entrepreneur, Ted Turner, it was one of his insights. It wasn’t like the whole thing was linked up. And news just seemed the cheapest way to get into the business.īrancaccio: And he got the overnight crowd there for a bit.īrancaccio: And remember what cable TV used to be: extremely localized in a certain region. He wasn’t so into news, but he was into the idea of experimenting with this concept. But it was basically a way for Ted to make use of this very sexy new technology, which is marrying the cable with the satellite. Lisa Napoli: Well, Ted Turner was an insomniac himself. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.ĭavid Brancaccio: So what was the CNN thing originally? News for insomniacs? Lisa Napoli, writer and author of “ Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News,” joined “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio to trace the network’s history.

What was once a small outfit based in Atlanta has grown into a giant of cable television.ĬNN launched in June 1980, when Georgia entrepreneur Ted Turner figured out that, using satellite distribution, you could make local cable TV go national and, ultimately, international.ĬNN was in third place for viewership, according to Nielsen, this week, behind the top contender, Fox News, and second-place MSNBC. The 40th birthday of the Cable News Network, CNN, came and went on June 1.
