From Newsgroup: alt.obituaries

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKKQoPcW84U

TCM's 2019 tribute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOqHBV3AshE

TCM has done a tribute to Ted Turner, its founder, the man who famously
bought movie libraries when they were cheap and saw great future value
in them.

MGM went from the most family friendly, classiest studio who kept dancers
and musicians employed by the thousands in case they were needed in the background of a fabulous musical production, to a company in bankruptcy
after bankruptcy after bankruptcy. When the company had become the
biggest joke ever, unable to raise the cash needed to produce the next
James Bond movie, Hollywood's greatest money-making franchise decade
after decade, hopes turned to cheapo but popular Hot Tub Time Machine
hoping its earnings would provide the studio with working capital. Well, embarassingly, MGM never could raise the cash and made the deal with arch
rival former "poverty row" studio Columbia to get Casino Royale financed
in a multi-picture deal. (Note that this ended litigation about who owned adaptation rights to the original James Bond novel.)

Behind the scenes, Ted Turner simply bid on what he wanted from the
carcas of MGM, its library through the early '70s.

The most criticized thing Ted Turner did was colorize movies, thinking
it was a way to bring a new audience in. Well, this ended up being a way
of creating restored masters from which crisp B&W prints could be struck
and quality digital prints could be presented on television. Eventually
they backed off on colorization and just did preservation.

Turner founded TCM as a way to broadcast the old movies. TCM raided
Robert Osborne from AMC, which was already in the business. AMC was also starved of access to movie libraries Ted Turner would come to control.

Turner's favorite movie was Gone With the Wind. When TCM went on the
air, it was the first movie presented. In Ted's honor, TCM will air it
again tonight, 8 pm EDT, 5/10/2026.
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