Producer (15 page)

When the furniture arrived to fit out our brand-new newsroom, we laughed at the grungy spotted chairs and old desks
that Ted had sent us from one of his offices in Atlanta. The sofa for the bureau chief’s office had such horrible stains on
the cushions, we really didn’t want to imagine where they came from. No one could ever have predicted the high-tech, wealthy,
global communications center that we would become one day. For now, we were happy to have torn, stained chairs and broken-down
desks so we could sit and work in between scrambling around. We had three months to prepare for the first day of twenty-four-hour
news and we worked our butts off, but we were pathetically underequipped. I remember bringing in Ajax and old rags, trying
to get spots off the old metal desks before our staff saw them.

We had inadequate answering machines back then, there was no call-waiting, and we had one big old fax machine that was such
a dinosaur, we could barely lift it. Was it ever an old clunker! You’d put a piece of paper in the paper feed, push a button,
and a lever would start making a
cha-chonging
noise. It took about a minute and a half to send a simple fax, groaning and chugging all the while, on paper that curled
up at the edges, and it took about the same amount of time and noise to receive one. But at least we had our very own fax
machine.

In fact, that was about all we had because with next to no money, we needed to justify every little purchase we made. We were
computerized, attached to a system, but we couldn’t take a computer on the road or to any of our homes. There were no portable
computers back then, and there were no hard drives, so you could save a few things along the way but there was no storage
for data. You may be thinking,
But Ted Turner was loaded. Why did you have to scrimp and save every penny? Was he cheap?

No, he wasn’t. Just keep in mind that starting a news network is a huge undertaking. In fact, it’s astronomical, since it
has to
include various newsrooms throughout the nation and Europe. To create CNN, Ted had to upgrade his original newsroom in Atlanta,
create another in New York, one in London, one in Los Angeles, and of course, a bureau in Washington. Ted was funding this
venture personally, and as we put together the Washington bureau, he was the only one who was certain it would work. Everyone
chuckled under their breaths that this was a shot in the dark, that it would never work, so why was Ted bothering?

He clearly didn’t care or pay any attention to the naysayers. A revolutionary thinker and inventor, he just kept moving forward,
building up the center in Atlanta and setting up all the others. Ted once said to me with a big smile and a long drawl, “There
are going to be a lot of ladies working here because I can pay them less.” As chauvinistic as that sounds, it was true. Women
earned less than men, and hiring them could and did help him save money. But with so many women on staff, his suggestion that
we needed to use less toilet paper was laughable. A group of women skimping on toilet paper? I don’t think so.

In the spirit of saving every penny when we first began, along with directives to skimp on toilet paper, we were not allowed
to buy Styrofoam or paper cups. How would we drink coffee, the mainstay for weary reporters and workers who often missed sleep
when the news cycle got heavy? I had received a gift of six cups for my college graduation so I brought them in to the bureau.

As we labored to create this revolutionary concept, I met Ted Turner for the first time with George in a restaurant that was
part of the Hilton, which would eventually come to be known as the Hinckley Hilton because of the assassination attempt. At
first, I judged this forty-three-year-old man. Ted was handsome, sure, but he was old. Actually, at twenty-six, I
thought I was old, too. Ted had a deep drawl when he spoke, and even though I had lived in Virginia when I attended Hollins
University and had heard plenty of Southern accents, Ted’s drawl was so thick, it was almost cartoonish. One of the first
things I heard him say was, “Remember, George, I want a lot of happy news on this network. Happy news. We’re always faced
with a lot of sad news, so I want just as much happy news.”

I was a little put off by that, but of course, I kept my mouth shut. Whenever I saw Ted, it was a big deal since he came around
so seldom, and we were all on our best behavior. Even my friend Gail Evans, a former White House Civil Rights unit staffer
who had assisted the special counsel to the president, said that when she first met Ted, she was filled with angst. Ted appeared
on Larry’s show on May 14, 1991, and spoke about the beginnings of CNN.

KING:
Let’s go back to the origins of this network… The concept of CNN—how did that begin?

TURNER:
I was in the radio business before I got in television, and even though we only had small-market radio stations and none of
them were big enough to support all-news operations, I was aware that there were formats in the major cities like New York
that had all-news radio stations, and they worked. It just made sense to me that on cable, which was going to have lots of
channels, that an all-news channel would be a benefit both to the cable systems and to the viewers.

KING:
When people laughed at it, which they did when it started—did that bother you? That other networks said it wouldn’t last and—

TURNER:
… you’ve got to remember, other networks were hoping it wouldn’t last… if it did work it was going to lead to
the death knell of their news dominance that they’d had up until that time.

KING:
Did anything turn the tide at CNN? One event or series—

TURNER:
Not that I can think of. It was a good concept, it worked from the beginning, and it’s just gotten stronger as time went by
and people learned about it and then learned how to use it.

KING:
Well, I’m interested in what moguls think because you’re on a different plane than the rest of us.

TURNER:
Well, I don’t consider myself a mogul. And one thing I don’t do is give advice publicly over the air to my competitors.

KING:
All right, tell me what’s coming as you envision it—2000, what can we see at home? What is it going to be like?

TURNER:
Well, right now, when you really think about it, a lot of cable systems have forty, fifty, or more channels and the video
stores have unlimited viewing options there. We already have a bewildering array of choices in television, but I’m told now
that technologically they are increasing the number of channels that they can get onto cable in fiber optics and that the
number of channels may double or triple by the year 2000.

KING:
So we’ll have a hundred and one choices?

TURNER:
Sounds like it.

KING:
So do you envision this as a less profitable business, or a more profitable business?

TURNER:
Well, I think that the very smart will figure out a way to profit and prosper, but it’s going to be tough for a lot of people.

Ted was a man of the future, and he made an impression on everyone, not necessarily a good or bad one. He was just
Ted, a largely invisible figure with clout and power reminiscent of Charlie on
Charlie’s Angels
who was known for remaining invisible while he ran things. In a similar way, Ted hovered in the background, he wanted it
that way, and when he hired a president for the network, Reese Schonfeld, he told him, “Hey, Reese, I’m giving this to you.
I’m not into micromanaging. Just do it your way.” I was lucky that Reese, the first president of Cable News Network, and I
got along.

When Sunday, June 1, 1980, came around and it was time to go on the air, it felt like we were cranking up a three-ring circus.
We were poorly coordinated (how could it have been otherwise?) and we were hideously unsophisticated. But it was official.
We were going on the air.

At 5 p.m. EST, Cable News Network was launched with no mentors in sight. First on the air was an introduction by Ted Turner
saying, “We won’t be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that
will be our last event… and when the end of the world comes, we’ll play ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ before we sign off.”

At the time, Jimmy Carter was in the White House and the United States was reeling from a protracted hostage drama in Iran.
That was covered in our first newscast, anchored by husband and wife team David Walker and Lois Hart.
Moneyline
, a financial show that survived in its original format for over twenty years, premiered in 1980. Over time, the show moved
more toward general news along with economic and political commentary, and it was renamed
Lou Dobbs Moneyline
and later
Lou Dobbs Tonight.
This program remained on the air until the end of 2009, when Lou Dobbs did his last show for CNN.
Evans and Novak
, a weekly Saturday interview program, was also created in 1980, hosted by conservative syndicated
columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak of the
Chicago Sun-Times
. And still, we were the laughingstock of the news world.

I was surprised when I found out that my friend Gail Evans, who lived in Atlanta and was tapped by Ted as an editorial assistant,
was having a very different experience than I was. It seemed that the Atlanta news bureau was getting as much encouragement
as we were being ridiculed. In the Atlanta headquarters of Turner Broadcasting, Cable News Network was located in the basement.
Originally a Jewish tennis and swim club, Ted had converted it to offices. He installed satellite dishes adjacent to the old
swimming pool, and Gail’s office used to be a locker room, believe it or not. The Georgians, particularly those living in
Atlanta, knew all about Ted and they were excited about his latest idea. In fact, they expected it to work, which was a shot
in the arm to the people there who were putting it together.

In Washington, however, a city that was jaded and competitive as hell, we had to fight the odds every single day. We were
ridiculed regularly and maybe the strangest part of all was that, as yet, Cable News Network was not being televised in Washington,
even though we were broadcasting from there.

The 1980 Republican National Convention, like all conventions, separated the relevant from the irrelevant news agencies, and
our brand-new network was struggling against the tide of the cooler and well-established agencies. George Watson, Bernie Shaw,
and I were sitting in our makeshift anchor booth in Detroit, feeling inadequate and staring with envy at ABC, CBS, and NBC
in their large, well-equipped booths, the reporters wearing their bush jackets (all the rage at the time) with stopwatches
around their necks. And there we were, in our pathetic excuse for a booth as we scurried out on the floor,
scouting and begging for interviews. Bernie Shaw’s producer, Sandy Kenyon, and I would ask different people, “Can you come
be interviewed on Cable News Network? Please?” And then we had to explain what it was.

We had to escort each delegate to our modest booth that was poorly soundproofed. I wistfully looked at the lavish setups of
food at the other network booths and then back to us, where we had a pathetic cheese platter with cheese cubes so old, they
had turned shiny. I got so hungry after a long day and evening, I remember picking up a cheese cube and tossing it in my mouth.
Then, when I absentmindedly brushed my hand against Bernie Shaw’s leg, it left a greasy mark on his pants. I looked at him,
he looked at me, and we both started laughing out loud. Bernie was the highest person on the totem pole of CNN and I was the
lowest. Imagine how he felt, having left ABC with a huge soundproof booth and catering that would make your mouth water, to
join CNN that could boast only greasy cheese cubes. Thank God we both had a sense of humor, because we could have been working
at that big ABC booth but we had chosen to be where we were.

In June 1982, a political debate show on late night television,
Crossfire
, was launched on CNN, hosted by liberal Tom Braden and conservative Pat Buchanan. These two men had debated on a daily radio
show since 1978 and they were so popular, the show was elevated to prime time. When Pat Buchanan left in 1985 to become communications
director for the Reagan White House, conservative columnist Robert Novak took his place. He was already the host of a talk
show on our network as well as a regular contributor on
The McLaughlin Group.

Today, our network has thirty-six bureaus (ten domestic, twenty-six international), more than nine hundred affiliated local
stations, and several regional and foreign-language
networks around the world. But from July 14 to July 17, 1980, when we attended the thirty-second Republican National Convention
at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Michigan, we were beginners in a field of die-hard veterans. Former California governor
Ronald Reagan was being nominated for president, with former Texan congressman and CIA director George H. W. Bush as his vice
president, running on the slogan “Make America Great Again.”

When I look at the historical origins of CNN, I realize that if I had waited around for someone to show me what to do, I would
still be waiting. I never studied political science or communications in college. I just used the old trial and error method
as did my colleagues, and we got back what we put out. March 2010 marked my thirtieth year at CNN, and I can say without reservation
that just about everything that has occurred in my adult life has had something to do with CNN.