Please submit your questions use the q a feature i will integrate as many as i can as time allows we will broadcast this friday im so excited to speak with lisa who got her first journalism job at cnn in turning new york at the nbc bureau as a chief reporter for the New York Times and msnbc and many other outlets authoring to prevent on two previous books about the man who made the mcdonalds fortune. Thank you for being with us im really excited to talk about your book. Back at you. I am delighted to virtually be with that constituency. Are glad to have you. Its difficult for some people who are watching to imagine what life was like before the news is all the time or even what it look like somehow out there was this idea of the 24 7 Cable News Network . And tell ted turner turn the switch on all night, there was no tv on my its hard to imagine but before cable had come along and before ted had the idea normally television stopped after the late movie and off all night and then came back on at don. So the idea of an all anything channel was like a spaceship from mars. It was crazy and unimaginable. So ted turner behind the moonshot channel 17 here in atlanta it made him a legendary figure here also owning the atlanta braves. But maybe what is not so wellknown he inherited the business the billboard business from his father hard drinking womanizing so what were the early signs the risk loving entrepreneur that he became . He was in the billboard business and from the very beginning he was theatrical and saw grandeur even in the billboards but it wasnt enough for him as he got into video and then tv the first thing he did really in any measure was steel the braves telecast to come in and over bidding he didnt have the money or the audience but he stole that but he would do things as i have heard from a number of people and stomp on their desks and say by add time for me although they had no idea who he was or why they should and he was colorful with no filters but a classic business entrepreneur story and did not take no for an answer did not let anything defeat him even the fact nobody was watching his television station and spent many he didnt have. This business that he started he was taking the reins of his fathers business after he killed himself. Yes. In and started to buy radio stations then wcb jade man all 17 on channel 17 so tell us what it was like when he bought it. People who might remember the time you had to get up off the couch to turn a dial to tune into the station and rabbit ears up on top of the Television Just to two in on tune in they call that the lunatic fringe it was very hard to tune in even if you have the right devices. There was very little on it and they had to scramble for programming kind of television station was in another land at that time and man who got into the business, mostly men were real risk takers and hoping it could be parlayed. So for ted to take the chance to go into that business was wild in and of itself and then to do things like the braves and put other sporting events on the channel and crazy movies no one else would air. His crazy newscast in the middle of the night people really started to tune in even though they didnt admit it necessaril necessarily. So tell us more those who knew bill when he was on the ai air. As part of the licensing to run a television station you needed to show a certain amount of Public Affairs on the air and he was anti news which is why this is so great. He was not crusading the news at all but he had to put a certain amount on the air. Bill was a young radio announcer who stumbled into the station. I hope if hes out there. Say hello and with all these other young folks who were tantalized by the prospect, he is the guy who drew the short straw as the station announcer to do the requisite note on the newscast out over time it turned find that was not like any other now we have lampoons all the time but he and the crew in the middle of the night when this aired did a jokey newscast because they didnt want to do a serious one. We had to convince their station manager that it was okay and still fulfills the fcc requirements. If they did it tongueincheek for themselves but it turned out the station was being set out around the southeast and ultimately around the nation. And it became a signature of the entire station. Georgia championship wrestling. [laughter] one critic called it a masterpiece of bad taste. But i do want to get to talk about it what is broadcasting outside of the state with the sec rule change in 1972 so he started to get fan mail outside of atlanta so why were people watching a georgia station in nebraska . Because they could. Even those of us who remember those days it so hard to imagine a time when there were just a few stations. And most of them went off at night if you were up in kansas there was bill in the middle of the night doing funny things and it seemed like it was life come you kept watching it because you were so thankful there was late night movie. So it was a proof of concept basically this is the perfect marriage and i love that it was in atlanta not a typical Media Capital like los angeles or new york so ted and his merry band of folk together with a moment in Time Technology allowed would first go local and regional the national to show the power 24 hour news and the power of cable but it was like the internet or the tesla of television at that time that allowed them to go to new heights. Also a shot across the bow in the three Major Networks who had been deciding what news was or what programming should be for a long time now ted turner once in but hes not a news guy so was the appeal to him to start the 24 hour station . Once he got word Home Box Office was playing around with cable the same way he was, doing more regionally not just the area where was licensed he heard about jerry levin and hbo be met up to a satellite and then broadcast around the nation, he wanted to do that. He knew of jerry would do with movies that was tough because you had licensing and had to get rights, he wanted to do it with sports. If he did that it would cannibalize the main ingredient of channel 17. He that maybe i would do it with music. Somebody said thats a dumb idea nobody will watch music on television so finally lastly what he could do with this technology, it really was a way to use this new technology was news. All newsradio started to bubble up some people thought that might be interesting even though that wasnt his thing but it was his entree into using the satellite to spread the station throughout the nation. And the news has no copyright it is expensive to produce but that was the cheapest way to produce it. One says i really enjoy this book once they started to do the joke news late at night to fill of ce requirements did anyone at the fcc take notice they were doing comedy rather than straight news . I have never noticed anything that suggested that. There are no records from that station everything i found was cobbled together from peoples personal archives. I think part of that is nobody really cared. Nobody was paying that close attention. The general station manager there he was austere and he basically took issue with it and bill said nobody ever said there is a rule that has to be seriou serious. So they managed to get away with it. I dont think there was that much oversight at that time because so many came and went and then he picked up another one in a fire sale in charlotte because a man who started that couldnt keep that up. They were the lunatic fringe. Journalist who thinks the beauty tv everything thats wrong with Television News and becomes a major player and has a vision far beyond the Big Three Networks so how does ted turner come into that . He embodies a number of men at the time. For years people were trying to stranglehold not just the news by entertainment but the problem always was its impossible to bust through because they owned literally the airways. So they were struggling in various jobs over the years to figure out how to do it. And basically he tried to sell news to ted as an independent for years. He had a new service he was involved with and he though thought, one that he started previous to the one he started and he just wanted ted to get on board because other independent stations were testing and he said no. Absolutely not. I hate the news i will never do the new so when he did decide. Thats who he called. And as hardcore he was anti so they made an unusual pair but they both had the same goal in mind was bucking the conventional system of the networks. Ted was cable before cable was cool. That he didnt say that until the early eighties after it did start to get cool because up to that point nobody understood or cared even the people who worked for him for a large part thought he was crazy. The other thing he did, along with bill playing movies and sports, nobody would buy these commercial time from him so he got into direct mail. Today we have the internet to order something in seconds but back then if you could watch a Television Commercial for a product like the ginsu knife and order it and get it delivered that was a thrill. Besides convenience it was utilitarian so those ads were the mainstay of his broadcasting and then he to get the station out more and more and even cnn in the beginning could prove people were watching because orders were coming in from all over the United States and the caribbean. So there was mail coming in that was evidence that there was a hunger to watch this. And then the caribbean comes into the story later. But his renegade reputation was wellestablished by then and then the idea of him starting a news station like attila the hun running summer camp for the elderly. [laughter] there are so many great quotations in this book he such a colorful character. Theres a wonderful scene where reese meets tad in his ransack all station rains coming through the roof it is a dive. They talk about what it would take to create a new station. Can you give us some of that conversation . Basically they were at odds because he could not imagine you would start a new station in a place like atlanta in the late seventies. Ted wanted it to be in atlanta. He didnt really understand what he wanted to have on it except except to have the channel that reese was very excited of the idea to find a star. They felt they needed journalistic credibility because teds reputation was wild at that point publicly drunk, crazy, all over the place with landon and they needed somebodys sobering and he said we should try to go after dan rather but it wasnt entirely clear who dan rather was at ted turner. Thats how checked out he was. I dont know that story is absolutely true but in the sense that ted just did not want the news it wasnt important to him and it would make sense he was not home at 6 00 oclock at night when the network news ran because he was assumed to be working all the time and running around with lady friends. It wasnt clear he waited now with the most famous news man in america was or second after Walter Cronkite would be. Maybe possibly someone they could go after. Cvs i just cut back on another show that dan rather did so they were pretty sure they had enough money and was confident. So this is far away from new york or los angeles and and then he had never even produced an hour of Live Television now looking at 365 days a year it was a struggle to find that staff to turn this abandoned country club into an elaborate set. So what does it mean to bring people to atlanta . Also it is not entirely clear anybody would watch this. Even veteran news people saw that this was the intoxicating proposition people just thought it was outrageously insane. At that point watching the news was like eating your vegetables. That basically ted found the location in Old Country Club the old Progressive Club sitting there for years may be to be developed or maybe not an they had to retrofit the whole club with rats in it pretty quickly in order to have it ready. Satellites had to be installe installed, they were huge, not common he would have the largest array of satellites ever installed at that point. Besides the equipment theres a story here about changing Technology WordsHuman Resources and convincing people to move to atlanta for not too much money for something that might not work. Was not a foregone conclusion. So basically reese and his folks in one of his chief producers and he may be on the call, they decided to get cheap labor to go out and find young people who were willing to work for less than minimum wage offer the chance to have this starry eyed moment in television they cannot get because theres only three networks and only a few hours produced every day. So thats what they did. Several men including ted kavanaugh went to the Journalism Schools and rallied around people and meanwhile they were streaming into the makeshift quarters because it wasnt people in the local news to produce the network news. There were not that many opportunities at the actual network so people were willing to put their life on hold and the other thing that happened that was incredibly unusual at the time, is that hiring couples what is verboten so if you met your husband at the television station one of you would have to leave. So if reese could get to for one or a couple one was a camera person or one was an anchorwoman, he went for it. It was cheaper and then they were invested because everybody was marching to this deadline june 1st 1980 and pitching in. And they would help the tax and basically making it all up. We do know they did pass on Oprah Winfrey and charlie rose. And the story is just remarkable of how they got this going in a year. Its actually before the start up actually happens it just crackles with excitement like the frat house atmosphere. How fresh for those stories when people told them to you . Some people held back the fun drugs and sex stories that i still hear about now that the book is actually out. Because it was a big wild toga party apparently. But everybody who i talked to was so thrilled to be sharing that moment in time because whatever they did the rest of their lives whether stayed in television or out of the business after one year, they all had a memorable and incredible experience. Because how often do you get to build something completely new . In a lot of ways it ruined a lot of people because after that thrill to build from scratch, Everything Else in the aftermath will seem hohum wedging into the existing structure but this book was so much fun to write because there was no clearcut obvious start. Cnn did not help me and even if they had i would not have relied entirely and what they had to say because this is so completely not a corporate book it is on corporate thats not the message you want to get out about a place that all the people who came there didnt know what was going on. It was not a blueprint to success. It was a majestic experiment and could have been a tremendous accident. Talking about the birth up all night. The conversation is recorded for the Atlanta Center virtual author talk series. We have solicitor who said the book was wonderful it was like having a front row seat to turner in cnn what did it make the book you would like to have included . More of the drugs and sex. [laughter] a lot of that i could not verif verify. It wasnt supposed to be completely tawdry but it was very proud i could distill this very concentrated moment in time. I know i left things out but i cannot think of anything major that i felt that i could wedge that in with that sense of excitement is what i wanted to convey it made me happy that it was there. But one of the biggest things that i found i wasnt sure i could find is when ted turner went to cuba to visit fidel castro who apparently had the signal from the inception of the channel i was delighted his staff office made a copy of the video for me because i wanted to see it for archival purposes to understand their interactions because that was enormously controversial that the head of the tv network even a new one would make the track to cuba with enemy number one at the time one of the avowed enemies of the United States with fidel castro on his private island. That was a fascinating twist in the book. He was basically a conservative and even accepted that invitation. Why did he . He was dazzled a world leader was actually watching what he brought its a thrill if you make something and it was so uncertain he had gone through so many obstacles which i detailed in the book that could have killed cnn even before it started that is called a soft launch now it wasnt guaranteed it would keep going it was only a couple million homes to start so now even as an enemy of the United States it was incredibly flattering and at a certain level he thought he was never taken seriously in part because of his behavior and now the idea somebody who is enormously serious is reaching out and wanting to talk with the course he set cnn on after that. We have to fight cnn in the early days with a White House Press pool it seems like an obvious thing now but then was on the fringes of the networks to penetrate that circle and then all of a sudden while still fighting it to have fidel castro say i would like to meet you is petty. You present that is very transformational the television station growing leaps and bounds at that fidel castro was pirating the Cnn Headline News with the Cnn International the work certainly more than a moneymaker is something that could change the world so how deep . I think it went enormously deep and it is important not the most captivating part of the story that while that was going on in the world was changing simultaneously. Its hard for us to remember that was a moment in time it wasnt just ted experimenting it was lots of other people this technology was revolutionizing everything. So as he marched on to penetrate more markets and he got hungry that he would be this person using the wires to transmit this force for good. That was intoxicating to him as well. Absolutely. How did cnn hire broadcast technicians . You can never would have worked without it. As an incredibly wonderful place and there were issues to a third party it was contribution on controversial why they d