i had seen home movies of earlier christmases that were really not so fun, that were pretty tense. let s put them in the other room, please. run the tv games upstairs, okay, not downstairs. bye-bye. he had three kids in military college. very buttoned up. a semblance of order. when jane came along, there wasn t this order any more. she knew more about us than our dad knew about it. she did her homework. our time together was a happy time for everybody. it was kind of like camelot. ted s family life was thriving. and business was booming. when he hired a los angeles times publisher to run cnn. i worked for some really some unbelievably powerful people. ted rattles my cage. things were about to get even
ted managed to land a talk show host named larry king. one name out of the blue ted calls me and said, listen, we would like to have you come to cnn. i had never seen cnn. that wasn t the only obstacle. larry already had a job. and ted wanted him to start at cnn just four days later. they called the show larry king live. i knew ten minutes into that show, ten minutes talking to mario cuomo, that show was going to make it. ted saw that. ted saw that. cnn was growing. here s looking at you, kid. so was the rest of ted s empire. he bought mgm s entire library of films, including his favorite movie gone with the wind . frankly my dear, i don t give a damn. then launched tnt, a network that would air them. after that cartoon network. turner classic movies. and networks in latin-america, asia, europe, and the middle east. ted s next conquest would be personal.
oh, yeah. it was a with everything everything considered, it was a tough, tough time. i would say for the first eight years it was great. you know, ted is an exciting person and very funny. and very wise. but we always were moving. we lived out of suitcases. i kept saying to him, we need to slow down. jane gave ted an ultimatum. settle down or lose her. and he couldn t do it. if ted were ted but without the need to have my constant presence, we would still be together. there s no question about it. after ten years of marriage, ted and jane divorced in 2001. it was like a knife in ted s heart. terminating our marriage was a very difficult thing to do. and it was very, very sad. because we loved each other and
dollars to the u.n. time warner executives restructured the company. ted was shut out. they offered me an extension on my contract. at $1 million a year and i said, what are my duties going to be. they said, you won t have any duties. ted got shafted, and it hurt. the idea that the guy who built all of it was no longer responsible for overseeing it, mind boggling. you were quoted as saying, for the first time in my life, i had been fired. that s right. none of us in our wildest dreams in that moment knew it could end like it did. it s been very painful experience obviously. because i really loved the company. to make matters worse, during the tumultuous merger, ted had been dealing with even more pain. the death of his marriage. jane fonda says to you, i want a divorce. yeah.
to this day. to this day. ten years after launching, cnn had become the most trusted news outlet in the world. this is cnn. and ted was time magazine s man of the year. and i was only one of two people whose ever been on the cover of time magazine for one thing, and on the cover of sports illustrated for another. did it ever enter your mind that you would have this enormous success? i m sure i must have thought about it. dreamed about it. becoming a billionaire? certainly before it happened, i knew it was going to, because momentum was there. the momentum was there. in 1996, ted sold his media empire for $8 billion. and became the largest shareholder of time warner, the biggest communications company