Long before live sports dominated television and drove billions in media rights deals, the televised sports landscape was limited, local, and low-priority. In this episode, we explore how Ted Turner saw something no one else did: that sports weren’t just games — they were powerful, 162-game-long TV shows. And when he turned the worst team in baseball into a programming goldmine for his upstart UHF station, he didn’t just change his channel — he changed the entire business of sports.
From the rise of color TV to the birth of cable, Ted Turner saw that sports could be more than entertainment — they could anchor an entire network. When he bought the Atlanta Braves, it wasn’t for wins; it was for airtime. He packed his station with baseball games, outrageous stunts, and a whole lot of personality, turning a last-place team into the South’s favorite pastime. Along the way, he redefined sports ownership, took on the league’s old guard, and helped lay the groundwork for the 24/7 sports era we live in today. This is the wild, unlikely story of how one media maverick turned a struggling team into a national phenomenon — and rewrote the rules of both television and sports in the process.
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Credits
Writing, research, and production by Web Barr.
Artwork by Dylan Lathrop.
Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).
Chapters
Sources
Books used in Episode 3. Get em here!
Media Man: Ted Turner's Improbable Empire
Clash of the Titans: How the Unbridled Ambition of Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch Has Created Global Empires that Control What We Read & Watch Each DayCall Me TedCable Cowboy: John Malone and the rise of the modern cable-TV businessMe and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNNTube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television
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