BOOK REVIEW: Call Me Ted: The Autobiography of the Extraordinary Business Leader and Founder of CNN,by Ted Turner

TED TURNER is probably internationally known for two things. Firstly, for revolutionising the television industry by establishing CNN, the world's first and arguably most successful news channel and, secondly, for marrying Jane Fonda.

But there's more to Ted Turner than that, although his other achievements are probably best known on the other side of the Atlantic. He owned the Atlanta Braves baseball team, for example, and took them from nowhere to respectability. As a sailor he won the Americas Cup and survived the Fastnet tragedy of 1979 in which 15 sailors died.

It's clear from this autobiography that Turner has been the centre of each world he has inhabited for all of his life. He's very much a media mogul in the William Randolph Hearst tradition and like his friend and fellow cable TV giant John Malone he's someone to be admired and respected, even feared.

The Turner story began in 1930s Cincinnati, Ohio. His hard-working father developed a billboard advertising business and through various deals, mergers and acquisitions created one of the biggest such companies in the southern part of the United States, based in Atlanta.

Taking over the reins of the company after Turner snr committed suicide, Ted embarked on an extraordinary development of the advertising company, diversifying into radio and television.

At the same time he spent most weekends sailing out of the Atlanta Yacht Club and none of his time with his family. In fact, it's sailing that finally sees off his first wife Judy (whom he first met at a sailing competition) as she performs an illegal sailing manoeuvre on his boat during a competition in 1963 and he has her disqualified from the race. As Turner so succinctly puts it, "after the race she packed up her sails as quickly as she could".

It's fairly clear that from this point on Turner regarded the acquisition and disposal of women in much the same way as he viewed his business deals. "I wasn't looking to marry again anytime soon but with Judy and the kids gone I found myself needing companionship," he reveals. Enter Janie Smith, a Delta Airways flight attendant who, within a year, becomes Mrs Ted Turner Number Two.

If Turner wasn't really giving family matters much attention he was certainly concentrating on his businesses. By the late 1960s his company owned six radio stations and he began to acquire television assets, beginning with Channel 17 in Atlanta, followed by a station in Charlotte which he renamed WRET after his own initials.

Meanwhile, the home scene with Janie was deteriorating. Turner had hired a driver, Jimmy Brown, to look after the kids (three more with Jeanie) and to cook and buy the shopping. Brown would often spend days drunk in the basement of the house. "This wasn't the healthiest environment for our children," writes Turner, "but in truth my presence at home was not consistent."

By the late 1970s Turner's plans for the establishment of a national news force were beginning to crystallise. What had become the Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) had begun to migrate to satellite and Ted Turner clearly saw the advantages in this coming medium, but cable still dominated the US. Hence when naming his first non-eponymous television service, Turner chose Cable Network News or CNN.

The early stages of CNN, its initial rejection by the Washington news elite and the brinkmanship funding strategies which Turner adopted, are the best parts of this book. From there the story just becomes corporate: acquisition, acquisition, acquisition. It's tremendously admirable and financially eye-watering stuff, but rather dull.

As we all know, CNN went on to be the extraordinary global success it still is, changing television and the American political landscape in the process and providing the template for other channels such as Sky News. It was CNN, not the establishment US networks, that brought the pictures of the Gulf War to the world and it was CNN that set the international news agenda time and time again throughout the 1980s.

Having split with Jeanie, Turner's next female move is staggering, even by his standards. "I read in the paper that Jane Fonda was getting a divorce from her husband. Instantly I thought to myself, Jane Fonda is someone I'd like to go out with." Clearly Jane was someone attracted by this somewhat unconventional, if direct approach and the two became America's media power couple of the 1990s.

Ted Turner has now turned his attention to the environment and the great outdoors and is the biggest landowner in Montana. He's become something of a philanthropist and his Turner Foundation has given away millions of dollars to charitable causes.

Despite one irritating aspect of this book, namely the "Ted Stories" from people such as Bill Gates and Jimmy Carter, Call Me Ted is a ripping yarn, full of the derring-do of a business and media tycoon. The main disappointment about the extraordinary, real-life story of Ted Turner is that it is told by the extraordinary real-life Ted Turner.

• David Harvey is chief executive of the City Channel

Call Me Ted: The Autobiography of the Extraordinary Business Leader and Founder of CNN

By Ted Turner; Sphere, £20 (€21)