When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, future TV correspondent Beth Knobel was in graduate school. Emerging from class, she saw television sets set up in a lobby carrying live coverage from CNN, the 24-hour news channel launched by Ted Turner only a few years earlier.
“Shuttle launches were just kind of routine and the broadcast networks weren’t even covering them anymore,” Knobel said. “CNN did. So when things went so tragically wrong, there they were on top of the story like no one else.”
Turner’s death came at a difficult time for cable news as networks struggle with declining viewership and competition from streaming platforms. Still, media experts stressed that Turner’s creation permanently transformed journalism and television.
“We use the word giant sometimes to describe people that really aren’t giant,” Knobel said. “Ted Turner truly is a giant. He invented around-the-clock news.”
Longtime television analyst Robert Thompson described Turner’s influence as impossible to exaggerate, saying few developments in the 20th century changed journalism, politics and civic engagement more dramatically than 24-hour cable news.
Beyond creating nonstop television news, Turner also transformed news into a global product. Knobel recalled entering the Kremlin during her time as Moscow bureau chief for CBS and seeing CNN broadcasts playing on televisions inside Russian government offices.
“That was the way in which they came to understand what the world was thinking about Russia,” she said.
Turner envisioned a worldwide audience at a time when television broadcasting largely shut down overnight. In the 1970s, many stations stopped airing programs late at night, leaving only test patterns or static until morning. Turner instead imagined continuous news coverage for viewers everywhere.
Former CNN White House bureau chief Frank Sesno said younger generations often struggle to understand how revolutionary the idea was.
“I teach these young people and they have no idea who Ted Turner is,” Sesno said. “This was, in fact, the world of Walter Cronkite.”
When Sesno joined CNN in 1984, critics mocked the network with the nickname “Chicken Noodle News.” CNN initially focused less on celebrity anchors and more on making the news itself the central attraction.
CNN’s influence expanded dramatically during major breaking news events in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One key moment came in 1987 during the rescue of 18-month-old Jessica McClure, who fell into a Texas well. CNN continuously covered every development of the rescue effort, helping establish the model for nonstop live news updates that later became standard across television.
Another major turning point came during the first Gulf War. While many journalists left Baghdad, CNN correspondents Bernard Shaw, John Holliman and Peter Arnett remained in Iraq and reported live from Baghdad’s al-Rashid Hotel during airstrikes.
Knobel said CNN gained a major technological advantage because Turner invested heavily in satellite phone technology before the conflict.
“What they did with that money is to bring in satellite phone technology that no one else had,” she said.
The technology allowed CNN to continue broadcasting even when communication systems were disrupted. Knobel, who later competed against CNN while working at CBS News, said the network consistently maintained a technological edge because Turner was willing to invest in innovation.
The rise of nonstop cable news permanently changed newsroom culture and the expectations placed on journalists. Brooke Erin Duffy of Cornell University said audiences increasingly became accustomed to constant updates and continuous live coverage.
Journalists were expected to remain available around the clock as networks competed to deliver breaking developments faster than rivals. Duffy said the rapid expansion of 24-hour coverage intensified the race for attention across the media landscape.
“I think one of the consequences is the race for eyeballs within the saturated media landscape,” Duffy said. “Time is the currency in news media.”
As other networks adopted CNN’s format, continuous news became the industry standard. What once seemed revolutionary eventually became a normal part of modern life, fundamentally changing how audiences consume information and how journalism operates worldwide.
