Call Me Ted (17 page)
In our first years as Braves owners, we set an embarrassing record, becoming the first team since divisional play began to finish in last place four seasons in a row—’76, ’77, ’78, and ’79. I went to nearly every home game, watched the away games on TV, and did my best to stay positive, but all that losing was not the toughest thing that happened during those lean years. Far worse was the passing of Bill Lucas, who replaced Alevizos as general manager in 1977. When we bought the team, Bill was director of player personnel—the farm director. It was a big job but Bill had a tremendous work ethic and a knowledge about his players that really impressed me. When I promoted him, I didn’t realize he would be baseball’s first-ever black general manager—I was simply putting the best guy I knew in the position. He did a great job, and in the process, we became close friends.
Then, early in the 1979 season Bill suffered a massive aneurism and passed away. He was only a couple years older than I and the news floored me. Seeing such a young, vibrant guy taken away also made me stop and think about what a short time we all have on this planet and I became more determined than ever to keep moving—to grow the company and make a difference in the world. (Incidentally, Bill’s wife, Rubye, worked with me for many more years as head of our company’s community affairs efforts and ultimately served on our board of directors. Their daughter, Wonya, later became head of marketing for CNN and is now chief marketing officer at Discovery Channel Communications. Bill’s memory is honored next to Turner Field, where one of the streets bordering the stadium bears his name.)
Those initial years in baseball were lean, and I made a lot of bad deals. We did manage to win our division in 1982 before being eliminated in the playoffs by St. Louis in three straight games. (By the way, I’m pretty sure I set another record in that series. I personally caught two foul balls in three games—one in Atlanta and another in St. Louis—I’d be willing to bet that an owner has never done this before or since.)
At the press conference in 1976 when we bought the team I promised that we’d win a World Series within five years. After our four straight last place finishes, the Braves beat reporter from the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
called me and said, “Well, Turner, this is year five coming up. Are you going to win this year?” This was back during the Cold War when the Soviet Union was rolling out all those five-year plans that never panned out so I said, “No, I’m going to be like the Russians and start a new five-year plan!”
Winning the World Series would take much longer than we had expected, but it would be worth the wait.
The SuperStation
W
ith WTCG and WRET both making money I was more confident than ever that television was where I wanted to be, but even as we moved out of the red I was concerned that our options for meaningful growth were limited. WTCG’s share of the Atlanta market had grown from next to nothing to about 15 percent, but against the tremendous resources of the three network affiliates it was hard to see us pushing that number much higher. Prices and sell-out levels of our ad inventory were growing, as were the number of homes with UHF receivers, but these variables could only increase so much. It was time for another quantum leap. I concluded that what we needed was a bigger footprint—a broader territory and larger number of viewers. Broadcast networks accomplished this by assembling a string of owned and/or affiliated stations across the country but from where we were, duplicating that model was almost impossible. I had to figure out a different way. I used to compare myself to the bear that went over the mountain to see what he could see, and now it was time to take another look.
In the mid-1970s, Channel 17 was the only independent station in a major southeastern market outside of Florida, and the Braves were the only Major League Baseball franchise in the region. I knew that our programming would be of interest to viewers outside Atlanta. I also saw that in places like Albany and Macon, Georgia, people were signing up for a new service to get local stations they were unable to tune in with their antenna and/or a better picture for stations they were already receiving. This technology was often referred to as CATV, for “community antenna television,” or more simply, cable TV. I concluded that our next big opportunity would be to push WTCG’s distribution beyond Atlanta—to become an independent station that served the entire Southeast—and we would use cable to get us there.
To learn more I decided to go to my first National Cable Television Association, or NCTA, meeting. There I learned about experiments undertaken by broadcasters and cable operators to use microwave technology to relay signals from broadcast towers to the cable plant. From there, the signal was sent down a cable into the subscriber’s home. This made sense to me and I could see an immediate, clear path toward expanding WTCG’s reach. I learned a lot at this meeting and I met some great industry people, including an NCTA researcher named Don Andersson. Don was a smart guy, and not only did he understand how these new technologies worked, he also grasped the promise they held for aggressive independent broadcasters. Realizing I needed someone with Don’s expertise I hired him and put him in charge of figuring out how we could use microwave technology to expand our territory and market our service to the young cable industry.
Microwave distribution technology was straightforward, but there were limitations. Signals were relayed from one transfer tower to another, but the stations required a direct line of sight between them and could be no more than twenty-five miles apart. With one of these relays costing about $35,000 to set up, it took about $150,000 to go just one hundred miles in one direction; a lot of money for fledgling cable companies. Making this investment even riskier, consumers were accustomed to getting their TV signal for free. Convincing them to pay was no small challenge but the cable TV companies understood that independent programming from distant markets was a logical way to entice subscribers and WTCG was a good candidate to play this role. Before long, Channel 17 was delivered to places like Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Anniston, Alabama; Albany and Savannah, Georgia; and Tallahassee, Florida. These early systems only had capacity to carry a maximum of twelve channels, but once ours was in these lineups we were just as easy to tune in and our signal was just as clear as the others. Not only did we reach new markets, once we got there, we competed on a level field.
With Don Andersson’s introduction I became friendly with cable TV operators. Always believing in keeping one’s customer happy, I was eager to get to know these new affiliates and I wanted them to like me. I remember a guy who was running a cable system in Atlanta inviting me to Myrtle Beach for a meeting with the Southern Cable Television Association. He wanted me to speak to them about my ideas for microwave transmission and told me how I’d be the first friendly broadcaster they’d ever met. Back then, broadcasters saw cable operators as the enemy. For many years, local TV stations had a monopoly and they viewed cable operators with fear and suspicion. It was one thing when cable helped them improve their signals and get full penetration of their home markets, but quite another when they started importing distant stations. One time, the manager of a Florida station got angry when Channel 17 starting coming into his area. He asked me to stay out of his territory and I replied, “What do you mean, ‘your territory’? If we can get our signal there, it’s our territory, too!” As far as I was concerned, our territory was the United States, and later the world!
This all sounded great but the truth was, adding new viewers via microwave and cable did not help us generate much incremental advertising revenue. When we spoke to media buyers outside Atlanta, all they wanted was ABC, NBC, and CBS. They were used to making two different buys—local and national—and a regional outlet like ours didn’t fit in their plans. We quickly concluded that the only way to generate revenue from our expanded audience was through direct response ads—the ones that sell the latest record compilation or steak knives and end with a phone number to call to purchase the products. To make the most of this opportunity I hired a merchandising man from Atlanta’s Rich’s department store and sent him to all the trade shows where people showed off their latest inventions.
The best products to sell via direct response are unique little gadgets and gizmos whose producers have trouble getting retail distribution. This allows you to call them “Exclusive TV Offers!” and say things like “Not Available in Stores!” We managed to find all kinds: super-glue, steak knives, and vinyl repair kits, among others. Since most of these companies couldn’t afford it, we often produced the TV commercials ourselves, and in some cases both the products and the ads were pretty amateurish. One of the worst that I can remember was a piece of cheap jewelry called the Party Ring. It was magnetic and came with about eight different-colored stones that you could change to match your outfit. The commercial was so bad it was almost funny. It featured an attractive African-American couple out on a dance floor, and in the middle of their dancing the guy says, “Hey, what’s that ring you’ve got there?” She holds it up to the camera and says, “That’s my super-bad Party Ring.” The ads and the products may have been silly but we did manage to sell a lot of merchandise. Direct response revenue would prove to be vital for us while we worked to convince traditional advertisers that we were worth considering.
These challenges on the advertising front, combined with the complications of assembling a series of microwave hops, suggested that being a regional player would provide less upside than I had hoped. It was in early 1975 that I saw an article about communications satellites in
Broadcasting
magazine. Reading it through I realized that instead of using an antenna in Atlanta and hopping across microwave points throughout the Southeast, I could use one satellite “antenna” that’s 22,000 miles up in space and cover all of North America. Our microwave experience proved that cable operators were interested in carrying us and I thought that if we put enough quality programming on the channel, they might even consider expanding their business into major metropolitan areas (at the time, their business was centered primarily in smaller markets where signal quality and availability were the issues). Satellite delivery looked like a great opportunity that might even be our ticket to compete head-to-head and on a national level with ABC, NBC, and CBS.
The
Broadcasting
article mentioned that Home Box Office (HBO), a relatively new for-pay movie channel, was planning to start distributing their signal via satellite and that Western Union would be their distributor. I called Western Union’s marketing director—a man named Ed Taylor—and set up a meeting at his office in New Jersey. They sent a car to pick me up at Newark Airport and it was clear that they wanted my business. Shortly into the meeting with Ed, I understood why. Not only was HBO their only other television client, their deal was short-term and as soon as RCA launched their satellite, HBO planned to switch over to them. I learned a lot from Ed during that visit and unfortunately for Western Union, I was convinced that we had to be on the same satellite as HBO. At the time, satellite-receiving antennas cost cable operators about $100,000 apiece, but if I teamed up with HBO, they’d get two channels for the price of one.
I decided to try to coordinate efforts with the head of HBO, a guy named Jerry Levin. I’d met Jerry once before, shortly after he’d gone to work for Time Inc., HBO’s owner. In the past few years since then he had become a passionate advocate for satellite distribution.
A TED STORY
“This Is an Amazing Guy”
—Jerry Levin
I think Ted and I first met around 1973 when HBO was very small and just a tiny part of Time Inc. We must have had fewer than ten thousand subscribers and were kind of going nowhere, but we had the interest of a guy named Jim Shepley, who was our corporate president at the time. Jim happened to be a sailor and he said there’s somebody I’d like you to meet. His name is Ted Turner and he’s interested in the cable business. Why don’t you give him a call? That was all I knew about Ted when I set up our meeting. He came into my office in New York and started talking nonstop about everything he was doing in Atlanta and at one point I think he even got up on the top of my desk. This was in the Time-Life Building where we were already a little bit left to center but it was still a pretty staid environment and I thought, “Oh, my God.” After the meeting I reported back to Shepley and said, “This is an amazing guy—a hell of a personality—I just don’t know what we can do together right now.”
That was our first meeting and we saw each other again on a few occasions at cable conventions but the serious conversation began when we announced that we were going on the satellite. When Ted and I got together then, he said, “You know, if you can get HBO up on the satellite then I can turn my Atlanta station into a national thing. You’re pay TV and we’re advertising support so together we can really lift the cable industry.” That was the beginning of what I thought was a beautiful friendship.
Jerry and I had a great meeting and he liked the idea of teaming up with me since he knew that the more programming we could offer via the same satellite the better HBO’s chances were for getting distribution. With Jerry supportive of my plan, I went to RCA to negotiate a deal. They were more than happy to work with me but there was one major problem. Before you could distribute a channel via satellite you had to get your signal up to the satellite in the first place, and to do this required the use of a send station, or uplink, at the signal’s origination point. In 1976, uplinks existed only in New York (where HBO’s was located), Chicago, and Los Angeles. They told me that by being based in Atlanta I was out of luck since no one planned to build a send station there for at least the next several years.
I thought that over and said, “Well, what would prevent us from building one?”
They had never considered this option but could see no obstacle other than the expense: about $750,000. I asked them if there was anyone in Georgia who could build one for me and they suggested I contact a company named Scientific Atlanta. By now, I was determined to make this work and I quickly set up a meeting with Sydney Topol, Scientific Atlanta’s CEO. He said that while they expected satellite technology to be a big part of their business they had yet to build an uplink. I asked him how much he thought this would cost and he said he would have to do some research and get back to me. I liked Topol and trusted him so I told him that if he offered me a reasonable price, I’d do the deal with him. I can’t exactly remember what price he came back with but it seemed okay and we reached an agreement. We bought a small piece of property in a remote area on Atlanta’s northwest perimeter that would serve as our site and the Scientific Atlanta people got to work.