Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News

by Lisa Napoli

Overview

NPR Best Books of 2020

The wild inside story of the birth of CNN and dawn of the age of 24-hour news

How did we get from an age of dignified nightly news broadcasts on three national networks to the age of 24-hour channels and constantly breaking news? The answer—thanks to Ted Turner and an oddball cast of cable television visionaries, big league rejects, and nonunion newbies—can be found in the basement of an abandoned country club in Atlanta. Because it was there, in the summer of 1980, that this motley crew somehow, against all odds, launched CNN.

Lisa Napoli’s Up All Night is an entertaining inside look at the founding of the upstart network that set out to change the way news was delivered and consumed. Mixing media history, a business adventure story, and great characters, Up All Night tells the story of a network that succeeded beyond even the wildest imaginings of its charismatic and uncontrollable founder, and paved the way for the world we live in today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781419743061
Publisher:	Abrams Press
Publication date:	05/12/2020
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,155,313
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Lisa Napoli began her career as an unpaid teenage intern at CNN’s New York bureau in the summer of 1981. As a journalist, she has worked at the New York Times, Marketplace, MSNBC, and KCRW. She is the author of two previous books, Radio Shangri-La and Ray & Joan. She lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

March 2001 1

Chapter 1 The Little Girl in the Well, 1949 5

Chapter 2 The Lunatic Fringe 13

Chapter 3 Girdle 'Round the Earth 36

Chapter 4 Watch This Channel Grow! 61

Chapter 5 Captain Outrageous 85

Chapter 6 "No News Is Good News" 109

Chapter 7 Every Drop of Blood 136

Chapter 8 Reese's Pieces 162

Chapter 9 Until the End of the World 193

Chapter 10 Duck Hunting with Fidel 207

Chapter 11 The Little Girl in the Well, 1987 231

Afterword: June 2000 241

Appendix: Timeline 247

Notes 251

Bibliography 283

Acknowledgments 291

Index 295

Editorial Reviews

The book is fast-paced and chock-full of fascinating tidbits and hilarious anecdotes.

The National Book Review

This detailed account of the birth and life of live 24/7 coverage unfolds with great energy. It tells the story of how journalism was transformed by a cast of quirky and brilliant characters with lots of vision and hard work. This book shows how important it is to understand CNN's history and backstory to fully appreciate where we are today in cable news and fast journalism.”—Soledad O’Brien, journalist, CEO Soledad O’Brien Productions

“… an artful, anecdote-rich account of Mr. Turner and CNN.”—The Wall Street Journal

“…a breezy, tightly-written origin story.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A page-turning hybrid of biography, media analysis, and business history.”—Kirkus Reviews

“The book is fast-paced and chock-full of fascinating tidbits and hilarious anecdotes.”—The National Book Review

"It’s a fun and instructive read that will give you more respect for what the network has become."—Emiko Tamagawa, senior associate producer, NPR's Here & Now

From the Publisher

“Abdul is one of our most gifted communicators and fiercest advocates for the ideal of health care as a fundamental human right. In Healing Politics, he draws on his invaluable blend of experience as a doctor, public health commissioner, and political leader to bring a sorely needed sense of empathy and humanity to the debate over how to mend our fractured society.

Pod Save America - Jon Favreau

2020-01-16
The origin story of CNN, the success of which demonstrated the public’s “voracious appetite for news it didn’t even know it had.”

At the center of this tale, of course, is Ted Turner (b. 1938), the unpredictable Atlanta-based billboard advertising tycoon who refused to believe the countless observers who argued that a 24-hour news network was a crazy idea that would never last. Throughout the 1970s, Turner began acquiring obscure, underperforming radio and television properties. As he gradually learned about the dissemination of news, he wondered whether the burgeoning cable-TV technology could become the foundation for nonstop news from around the world. With masterful reporting and clear prose packed with memorable anecdotes, Napoli, who began her career in 1981 as an unpaid intern at CNN in New York and whose previous book chronicled the lives of Ray and Joan Kroc, crafts a multipronged business thriller: How will Turner raise adequate money to back the risky venture? Will his lack of diplomacy, bizarre personal behavior, and sometimes-offensive beliefs sabotage his ability to hire anyone capable of making his vision a reality other than visionary Reese Schonfeld (co-founder of CNN and the Food Network)? Is there enough news to fill the screen 24/7? Will an adequate number of potential viewers install cable TV to sustain CNN beyond the first year? As the author develops the journalistic and financial angles related to the development of CNN, she skillfully works in tangential ventures, such as Turner’s strategic purchase of the Atlanta Braves and his travels to Cuba, where he met with Fidel Castro. The narrative starts to wind down in 1987, when Turner sold a major stake in his empire to Time Warner. (His marriage to Jane Fonda receives little attention.) AT&T purchased Time Warner in 2019, “but CNN survives,” writes Napoli in closing, “and not even the mighty phone company can obliterate its founding story, nor the spirit of exploration that created it.”

A page-turning hybrid of biography, media analysis, and business history.

Kirkus Reviews

… an artful, anecdote-rich account of Mr. Turner and CNN.

The Wall Street Journal

This detailed account of the birth and life of live 24/7 coverage unfolds with great energy. It tells the story of how journalism was transformed by a cast of quirky and brilliant characters with lots of vision and hard work. This book shows how important it is to understand CNN's history and backstory to fully appreciate where we are today in cable news and fast journalism.

journalist, CEO Soledad O’Brien Productions - Soledad O’Brien

…a breezy, tightly-written origin story.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"It’s a fun and instructive read that will give you more respect for what the network has become."

senior associate producer, NPR's Here & Now - Emiko Tamagawa

This detailed account of the birth and life of live 24/7 coverage unfolds with great energy. It tells the story of how journalism was transformed by a cast of quirky and brilliant characters with lots of vision and hard work. This book shows how important it is to understand CNN's history and backstory to fully appreciate where we are today in cable news and fast journalism.

journalist, CEO Soledad O’Brien Productions - Soledad O’Brien