Of them as i possibly can as time allows. We will be broadcasting excerpts of this interview on Second Thought this friday. You will hear me what we do reid to keep consistence while we are going. Im so excited to speak with lisa napoli, who got her first journalism job at cnn after interning at cnn new york and dc bureaus as a teenager. Shes a reporter for the new york times, marketplace, msnbc, and many other outlets. She is author of two previous books ababout the man who made the mcdonalds fortune and the woman who gave it all away. Lisa, thank you so much for being with us, really excited about talking about this book. Lisa back at you, thank you so much, i use the Atlanta History Center for research so im delighted to be virtually what the constituency now. Its difficult for people watching to imagine life before news was all the time or what Television News look like before cnn launched four years ago. Just how out there was this idea of 24hour, 24 7 Cable News Network before cnn . Lisa until ted turner turned the switch on w tcg channel 17 over on west peachtree street on that, there was no tv all night. Its really hard for people to imagine but before cable had come along and before ted had the idea, television stopped after usually the late movie. It was off all night until it fluttered on at dawn. The idea of an allnews or all anything channel was like a spaceship from mars. Crazy, unimaginable. The man behind this shot, ted turner, people of a certain vintage no w tcg channel 17 here in atlanta made him a legendary figure here also owning the Atlanta Braves helped a lot. s early life maybe not so well known. He inherited the business of billboard business from his father, hard drinking, womanizing, ted worked for on and off were some of the early signs of the unfiltered persistent risk loving entrepreneur he became . Lisa he inherited the billboard business and from the very beginning he saw he was theatrical. He saw grandeur in even a billboard but it wasnt enough for him. As he got first into radio and then into tv he was just a no holds barred kind of person. The first thing he did really in any measure was steel the braves telecast from wsb by coming in and overbearing. He didnt have the money really, he certainly didnt have the audience but he stole it from wsb but he would do things, ive heard from a number of people that he would stomp on peoples desks and say, by add time for me even though he had no abthey had no idea who he was and why they should spend add time from him. He was a very colorful and no filter person who was persistent. Its a classic business story, he didnt take no for an answer. He didnt let anything defeat him. Even the fact that nobody was watching his television station that he spends money that he really didnt have on. This business that he started, it also started with tragedy. He was left holding the reins of his fathers business after his father killed himself. He was just 24 years old at that time. He started buying radio station, then this first ab give us a sense of how fran g uhs or cable stations were at that point . Lisa napoli i dont know who is out there but for people who might remember the time when you had to get up off the couch and turn a dial to tune into a station and maybe have rabbit ears on top of the television to just precisely tune in a station, uhs versus vhs, it was super friends, it was called the lunatic fringe because it was very hard to tune in and even if you had the right devices. There was very little that was airing on it. They had to really scramble for programming. It was a big gamble, it sounds glamorous to buy a television station but that kind of television station was really in the motherland at that time. s. The concept was. As part of the licensing run a television station, you needed to show a certain amount of Public Affairs on the air. And ted was decidedly anti news which is why this is such a great story. He was not a crusading news fellow at all. He crusading against the news but he had up at a certain part of it on the air. He talked with the young radio announcer was stumbled into the station pretty hope he is out there, hes out there say hello. Bill. He stumbled into the station it with all these other young folk who were just tantalized by the prospect of television, he basically had been the sort of guy who through the short straw is the station and announcer had treated the requisite newscast. It evolved over time into a fun requisite newscast that was not like any other. Now we have lampooned in the news on that all the time. But he and the crew in the middle of the nights or it aired in the middle of the night, fitted joke newscast because they didnt want to really do a serious one. They had to persuade their boss, the station manager that it was okay that it would fulfill the fcc requirements for news. And it became they did it tongueincheek for themselves. But it turned out that the station was being sent out a crummy southeast. And ultimately around the nation. And it became the sort of signature or one of the signatures of the entire statio station. Along with the georgia chapin shipper wrestling. [laughter] guest one critic called it a masterpiece of bad taste. For a television station. But i do want to get where i talk were started be broadcast outside of the state. There was an fcc rule change in 1972 which met bill started getting fan mail from outside of atlanta. So the question was why were people watching a georgia station and nebraska . Guest because they could. Even now, even those of us who remember those days, it is so hard to imagine that there is a time when there are just a few stations. And when most of them went off at night, few were left up at night in kansas, and there was bill in the middle of the night doing funny things it seems like it was live, wow, you kept watching it because you are so thankful there is a late night movie and builds entertain you. So is proof of concept without them calling at that. Basically ted, this storage is the perfect marriage. And i love that it is centered in atlanta had not a typical Media Capital like los angeles, or new york, or d. C. So basically ted ennis and mary band of tb folks, together with a moment in time that technology allowed, or pumping out what they were doing first locally, then regionally then nationally. And showing the power of 24 hour news. The power of cable which was a very unsexy thing and in trouble right now. But then it was like the internet, or the tesla of television at that time that allowed tv to rev up, god help us, to new heights. Host that was also a shot across the bow at the three Major Networks that had been deciding what news was and what programming should be for a really long time. They created this kind of wild west. And ted turner one sin. But as you said he was not a news guy. And he was considered a downer. Salt was the appeal for him starting an all new 24 hour news station . Submit it once she got word that a little upstart called Home Box Office was playing around with cable the same way he was playing around with cable, that is going more regionally than just in the area where it was licensed. He heard about this guy, jerry live in and his hbo and how they were going to be met up to a satellite and then broadcasted around the nation, he wanted to do that too. And he nipped jerry lippin was going to do that with movies. And movies were tough because read a license it and get all the rights to them. He wanted to do it maybe with sports. But if he did it with sports would cannibalize the main ingredients of channel 17. So he thought, maybe i will do it with music and somebody said thats a dumb idea. No one will ever watch music on television. So finally the last grasp of what he could do with this technology, it really was a way to use this new technology, was news. Alt news radio had just started bubbling up in some markets. Somebody thought that might be interesting. And even if that wasnt his thing is his entree into using the satellite as a way to spread a station throughout the nation. Sue and news has no copyright. News has no copyright. It is expensive to produce but they found the cheapest way to produce it and thats the next part of the story. So when heres a question from gm et cetera really enjoyed the book since it started doing jokey news quote unquote, late at night to fulfill the fcc requirements for Public Service programming, did anyone of the sec take notice they were doing comedy riffs on Current Events rather than straight news . Guest i never noticed anything that suggested that. Maybe somebody out there knows. Because there are no records from that station. Everything i found was kind of cobbled together from peoples personal archives. But no ive never found anythin anything. That is part and parcel but nobody really cared. No one was paying that close of attention. As a general manager there, he was apparently a gust in a steer grown up on premises. And he basically took issue with it. And bill said, nobody said theres a rule as it had to be serious. So they managed to get away with it. So what i think there is not a lot of oversight of the stations at that moment in time. So many of them came and went. People went out of business with them. Ted picked up another one and a fire sale in charlotte because the man who started that just couldnt make it add up. So they were just really on the lunatic fringe. Guest there was some serious involves. In they said thats what theyre thing wrong with Television News becomes a major player. He has a vision far beyond what the Big Three Networks are doing. So what is his vision . And how does ted turner come into this . He embodies a number of men at the time who are trying to buck those networks. For years people been trying to pierce that network stranglehol stranglehold, not just the news but on entertainment. But the problem always was that it was impossible to bust through. Because they owned literally the airwaves. Until then been struggling in various jobs over the years to try to figure out how to do it. As had some other men. And basically, he had been trying to sell news2 ted for wtc g as an independent for years. He had a news service that he was involved with. And he thought that, one that he started one previous to the one he started he was involved with he just wanted ted to get on board because other independent stations had an kit ted kept saying no, no absently not a hate the news i will never do the news. So ted did decide to do news. That is who he called was reese. Reese was as hardcore news as ted was anti news. So they made a very unusual pai pair. But they both had the same goal in mind. And that was busting the conventional system of the networks. Sue and someone just commented that ted was cable before cable was cool. He didnt actually say that though until the early 80s after cable did start getting cool. Because up until the point it was cool, nobody understood or cared, even the people who worked for him for the large part, thought he was crazy. The other thing he did, virginia, that ive not mentioned yet along with bill touching playing movies and sports, no one would buy these commercial time from him. So he got into the direct mail. Again today we go on the internet, we order something in his second will be at the door in a couple of hours. Back then, if you could watch a Television Commercial for a product like a ginsu knife and order it and get it delivered, that was a thrill. Besides convenience, it was utilitarian. So those kind of ads were the mainstay of teds broadcasting. And as he was able to get that station out more and more and even cnn at the beginning, it was able to prove that people were watching. Because orders were coming in from all over the United States and also the caribbean. So there was mail coming in. Because there were no ratings. There was a hunger to watch this stuff. Going to put up point in the end because it comes into the story a little bit later. But teds renegade reputation was wellestablished by then. One critic says starting a new station was attila the hun running summer camp for the elderly. [laughter] there so many great question questions. There is a wonderful scene where he comes and sees ted it is ramshackle station or rate and snow comes through, it comes to the roof it is a bit of a dive. And they talk about what it would actually take to create a new station so can you give us a little sense of that conversation . Well basically, they were at odds because reese could not imagine would start a new station in a place like atlanta in the late 1970s. Ted wanted it to be in atlanta he didnt really understand exactly what he wanted to have on it except he wanted to have this channel. Reese was very excited about the idea of finding a star. And they felt they needed some sort of journalistic credibilit credibility. Because teds reputation at that point was super wild. He was a yachtsman of the year, he was publicly drunk, he was publicly crazy, all over the place with women. And so they needed somebody sobering. And reese said i think we should try to go after dan rather. And it wasnt entirely clear who dan rather was. That is how checked out of the news world he was. That story comes from reese. I dont know that it is absolutely true. I believe it in the sense that ted just did not watch the news. It was not important to him. It would make sense he wasnt certainly home at 6 30 at night when the network news ran. Too busy working all the time. And sailing. And running around his lady friends. It was not very clear most famous news man in america was second after Walter Cronkite. Would be maybe possibly someone who go after. He had another show. Cbs had to cut back on another show that dan rather did. Reese was pretty sure if they had enough money they could pull him, theyre pretty confident. Select that was part of the talent they were in atlanta. This is far away from new york or los angeles, television capitals that were there at that time. In the other challenge, reese never imprisoned in hour of live television. Hes signing up to do this 24 7 365 days a year. It was a real hustle to find that and turn and abandon country club into an elaborate sets and a newsroom. So what does it mean to bring people to atlanta . What kind of challenge . Guest it wasnt entirely clear anyone would watch this. Even veteran newspeople, only some saw this is an intoxicating proposition. It thought it was outrageously insane that anyone would watch it. If thats what watching the news is like eating your vegetables. But back to your question, basically ted found as a location or his people found an old left for dead country club at tech wood. It was the old Progressive Club that had been sitting there for years. It was maybe going to be developed maybe not. They had to retrofit this old club with wraps it up pretty quickly in order to have it ready. Satellite dishes had to be installed. They were huge, they were not common. He was going to have the largest array of satellite dishes ever installed at that point. But also decides the equipment , and there is a lot of story here about the changing technology, was the human resources. And as you say, convincing people to move to atlanta for something that might not work, was not a foregone conclusion. So basically, a reese and his folks, Ted Kavanaugh was one of his chief producers but he may be on the call to. They decide what they needed to do was get cheap labor, the tried and true is to go out and find young people who were willing for less than minimum wage, offer the chance to have this starry eyed moments in television that they could not get because they were only three networks in a few hours of news produced every day. There is no chance for them to get work if they were not the creme de la creme. So that is what they did. Several of the men including Ted Kavanaugh went out and went to Journalism School and rallied around people. And well, hundreds of tapes were streaming into the makeshift quarters on west peace tree streets. Their people in local news who are dying to have the chance to be on the air or produce network news, again there were not that many opportunities at the actual networks. There were people who were willing to put their life on hold. The other thing that happens it was also incredibly unusual at the time, people find it fascinating, is that hiring couples was verboten. Or keeping couples pretty few had met your husband or guy at the television station you worked at, you would have to leave. If reese could get a 241, a couple maybe one was a camera person was an anchorwoman, he went for it. And it was cheaper to move them. They were invested in the place because everybody was marching towards this deadline of 1980. Tech wood drives facility helping the tax. And basically making it all up. We do know that they did pass on one upandcoming journalist named oprah winfrey. One named charlie rose, so although they were able to stop in the story is remarkable how they got this going in a year. It was like a started before startups actually happened. Operating like a Training Camp for text. It just crackles with excitement at this frat house atmosphere. How fresh for those stories when people told them to you . Some people held back the really fun drugs and stories that is still here about now. Especially 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 with the rest of their lives, whether they stayed in television or scurried out of the business after a year, they all had a memorable incredible experience. Because how often do you get to build something completely new . I think in many ways it ruined a lot of people. After you have that thrill of the building something from scratch, Everything Else in the aftermath is going to seem hohum. You start wedging into an existing structure. But this book was so much fun to write, and parsed because there is no clearcut obvious source. Cnn did not help me in any way. And even if they had, i would not have relied entirely on what they had to say. Because this is so completely not a corporate book. It is so anti or un corporate for it is not the message you want to get out about a place that might have failed. That all the people that came there did not know what dhec was going on. He is not a clearcut blueprint toward success. It was a majestic experiment and could have been a tremendous accident. I guess were talking abo