Excerpt from 1978 Playboy interview with Ted Turner:

PLAYBOY: Why didn't you (retire after taking over your father's outdoor advertising business)?

TURNER: I heard about a television station for sale. It was Channel 17, a U.H.F. independent in Atlanta. When I bought that, everybody just hooted at me. The station was really at death's door--we lost about $2,000,000 in the first two years. I didn't bullshit anybody: I told them I didn't know anything about TV. But now we're socko. We've got all the reruns, all the sports in Atlanta and people love us. Our movie inventory includes about half of the 6000 or 7000 movies ever made. We even have news: It comes on at four in the morning. Our news director gets pies thrown in his face a lot.

PLAYBOY: What kind of news operation is that?

TURNER: It's great news! We tell about the boy scouts doing something good. What do you want, how many children got killed in a school-bus accident in Chile? The network news is just half an hour of gloom and doom, with a few sports scores interspersed. I don't think that's public service. The way they present the news, I think it does more damage than any entertainment program. How does I Love Lucy hurt anybody? Or the Saturday Georgia Championship Wrestling? You know, television news has done a tremendous amount to destroy our faith in our institutions. When I read a newspaper now, I flash through the headlines on the front page, where all the sensationalism is. I don't need that. Then I flip to the sports page, which I enjoy. Then I go to the business page, read that, and then I read the cartoons. If I have the time.

PLAYBOY: Does anybody watch your newscast at four in the morning?

TURNER: Well, we've got a 100 percent share of the audience. We're the only 24-hour-a-day station in Atlanta, so nobody else is on. That's when people who work in bars and things are getting off. They love it. Bill Tush, my low-budget Walter Cronkite, does funny things, like trying to get a head transplant. He held up Cronkite's picture in front of his face all through the broadcast one night. Some nights he just reads through the Associated Press wire. If he comes to a story he doesn't like, he'll say, "Oh, that's too awful, I'm not going to read that," and he'll throw the copy over his shoulder. They throw pies a lot, usually lemon meringue. We also do little three-minute news capsules in the afternoon, before the Mickey Mouse Club starts at three.

PLAYBOY: How do you know what people want to see?

TURNER: I looked at what other U.H.F. stations were doing and studied the rate books, dummy. It's tough for a little station to compete against the networks. We're a nitwork.

PLAYBOY: What else do you run on your station?

TURNER: Oh, Bonanza, Mission: Impossible, Star Trek, Night Gallery, The World at War--that's my favorite--and, of course, sports. Sports is what finally gave us respectability in Atlanta so we could get some of the big advertisers, like Delta Air Lines and Coke.

PLAYBOY: Aren't you trying to start a sports cable network?

TURNER: Yeah, WTCG is the first station in history with a satellite network. There wasn't a satellite earth station to transmit from Atlanta, so I am the first guy in the history of the world to own his own earth station. Bought it for $750,000 from RCA. We lease it back to RCA and rent time on it. Our signal goes up 23,000 miles to a SATCOM II satellite--we have one of the 24 transponders on it--and can be received all over the United States, Canada and Hawaii. Channel 17 is on cable networks in 27 states already.

PLAYBOY: Is that how you followed the Braves while sailing in Newport?

TURNER: Yeah, I had to buy my own satellite receiver. That cost $35,000. We set it up in the back yard at Conley Hall and ran a line up to the TV set in my room. I could watch the Braves playing anywhere in the country.

PLAYBOY: Was it difficult getting FCC permission to do that?

TURNER: The FCC had to change the rules a little bit. And now we've got everybody in the world suing us. The networks are scared to death of cable television and now that we're on satellite, they're really scared. We're sucking up the market. But NBC, ABC, CBS, the Motion Picture Association of America, the N.B.A., the baseball commissioner's office, the N.A.B., the BBC, the National Hockey League and an assortment of other people are trying to stop us. Can you imagine that? A little old raggedy station with 100 employees and a bunch of torn-up furniture is going to destroy television and cause the motion-picture industry to collapse! I'm going to run for President just to stay in business.