A version of the following article appeared in the May 11, 2026, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.
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The late billionaire media mogul’s time in Charlotte played a key role in his ascent
Ted Turner died last week at age 87. Before starting Cable News Network, he made his mark on the Charlotte media industry. (Photo from Getty Images)
by Mark Washburn
Ted Turner’s wild ride through Charlotte’s broadcasting world in the 1970s began with a bankruptcy and finished with a fortune.
Turner, who died last week at 87 after earning billions, revolutionizing cable television and creating the 24-hour news cycle, spent that fortune creating the Cable News Network.
A little-known chapter of Turner’s chaotic career began in 1970 when he drove up from his local independent station in Atlanta to buy some broadcast equipment from Charlotte’s fledgling Channel 36, which was in receivership after years of losses.
Turner looked the station over and decided he’d just buy the whole thing by assuming its debt of $1.2M.
It was such a hopeless investment that his board at Turner Communications refused to put any money into it, leaving Turner to buy it out of his own pocket.
He changed the station’s call letters to WRET (for his formal name, Robert Edward Turner III) and started showing movies, wrestling, roller derbies and reruns of “The Andy Griffith Show.”
Channel 3 (WBTV) and Channel 9 (WSOC) were Charlotte’s dominant stations. Both were network affiliates, both had large newsrooms and both were highly profitable.
Turner’s WRET barely had a pulse. As a UHF station, its signal was weak, viewers needed a special antenna to receive it, and it wasn’t even on the TV dials of the time that covered channels 2 through 13.
WRET sold prime-time 30-second ads for $24 and found few takers. Over at WBTV, by comparison, 30-second spots were going briskly at $800.
In February 1972, WRET was in such straits that Turner launched a “Save Our Station” fundraiser.
“And as a bonus,” he said from the station’s decrepit studios on Hood Road, “we’re going to run a good movie ... with no commercial interruption.”
He also promised to repay the contributions when the station became profitable. Viewers donated $52,000, including a check for $500. That held off the creditors and kept WRET going.
Turner soon landed a heaven-sent client. Pat Robertson began buying time on the station to air his Christian Broadcasting Network.
Then another religious group began buying hours: the Fort Mill-based "PTL Club" starring Jim Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye.
Finally, in the black
In 1974, the station began making a profit, and in 1976, Turner kept his word: He not only repaid his telethon donors but added 6% interest. One little girl who had mailed in a quarter got back 32 cents.
WRET’s programming also improved slightly, particularly after Turner acquired the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, both league doormats, and started airing their games in Charlotte.
And something historic happened, though no one noticed at the time. Larry Sprinkle, Charlotte’s longest-serving TV personality and still on Channel 36, began hosting afternoon movies on WRET in 1976 — yes, that’s 50 years ago — between gigs on local radio.
Saturday nights featured one of the station’s highest-rated shows, a horror movie with WRET’s announcer, Bob Chassen, rising from a casket in vampire attire as “Dead Ernest” to introduce the feature.
Chassen’s Saturday night shtick was also carried on Turner’s Atlanta station, where it delighted a captive audience. Fan mail poured in to the wisecracking ghoul from inmates at the Atlanta federal penitentiary.
Reversal of fortunes
In 1978, NBC began looking for a new home in Charlotte amid a series of network affiliation changes. Turner’s WRET landed the franchise upon promises that it would improve its programming and do local news.
A news department to compete with WBTV and WSOC was cobbled together, though it would be dreadful for years. Robert D. Raiford, a prominent voice in Charlotte radio, anchored the news and then afterward hosted a no-budget call-in show titled “Call Raiford.”
It was just Raiford, a desk and a telephone. “Sometimes the phone would ring,” Raiford recalled in an interview before he died in 2017. “And sometimes it was just me and the desk and the phone.”
While Channel 36 remained the orphan of Charlotte’s growing media scene, things were changing nationally. Television revenues began soaring and local stations began commanding higher multiples.
In 1979, Westinghouse Broadcasting astonished the industry by offering $20M for WRET, the highest price ever proposed for a UHF station.
Westinghouse said it reflected the potential not only of the station, but that of Charlotte, even then one of the Sun Belt’s fastest-growing cities. (By population, the region was then the nation’s 33rd largest media market; today it is No. 21.)
Turner took the deal.
“That was the money that I needed to start CNN,” he told The Charlotte Observer in a 2017 interview while in town to open his Ted’s Montana Grill in Waverly, No. 47 in the restaurant chain where the menu is built on bison meat (leaner than beef and said to be tasty).
“It carried me for about six months,” Turner said, “till I got another loan.”
Bad boy image was well-earned
Turner’s rakish manners were prominent in his trips to Charlotte. Longtime Charlotte advertising executive Nancy Haynes, now retired, remembered a steakhouse dinner with Turner and WRET manager Sandy Wheeler and his wife, Martha.
“Ted pinched the waitress on the butt, and Martha Wheeler really chewed him out,” she said. “He told Martha, ‘When you’re as rich as I am, you can do anything you want.’
“He was larger than life,” Haynes said, “and a piece of work.”
Mark Washburn is a former columnist and media reporter for The Charlotte Observer. Reach him at [email protected].