The unlikely rise of billionaire Ted Turner, who was expelled from Brown University and served in the military before launching his media empire

Forbes (3) had estimated Turner's net worth at roughly $2.8 billion. But the path to that fortune was far from conventional. Long before he reshaped Americans' TV habits, the Atlanta businessman nicknamed "The Mouth of the South" was expelled from Brown University, served in the U.S. Coast Guard and inherited his father's billboard business after a devastating family tragedy.

From an Ivy League expulsion to an unexpected inheritance

Turner enrolled at Brown University in 1956 (4), where he initially studied classics before switching to economics. His time in Providence ended abruptly (5) when he was expelled after being caught with a female student in his dormitory — a serious infraction at the institution in the late 1950s — as detailed in his 2008 autobiography "Call Me Ted."

As his time at Brown came to an end, the Vietnam War was beginning to escalate. Turner enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve to fulfill his military obligation before he could be drafted into another branch, according to his Society for American Baseball Research biography (6). He had actually begun training with the reserve while still at Brown, drawn in part by his passion for the water as captain of the university's sailing team (7). After being expelled, he rejoined his Coast Guard Reserve unit to complete the remainder of his service obligation.

The detour shaped him in unexpected ways. Turner met his first wife, Judy Nye, through his Coast Guard tour, according to the Society for American Baseball Research (6). The couple married in 1960 and had two children, Laura and Robert Edward IV, before divorcing a few years later. Decades after his discharge, in 2013, the U.S. Navy Memorial recognized Turner with its Lone Sailor Award (8), an honor reserved for Navy, Marine and Coast Guard veterans who have distinguished themselves in their civilian careers.

After serving three years with the Coast Guard, Turner returned to Atlanta to work at his father's company, Turner Outdoor Advertising. But tragedy struck in March 1963, when Turner's father, Ed Turner, died by suicide. At just 24, Ted Turner took control of the family billboard business — a company his father had agreed to sell shortly before his death. Turner aggressively unwound the deal and assumed control of Turner Outdoor Advertising, setting the stage for everything that followed.

Launching a 24-hour news revolution

In 1970, Turner used proceeds from the billboard business (9) to acquire Channel 17, a struggling UHF television station in Atlanta. He rebranded it WTCG — short for "Watch This Channel Grow" — and bet on a then-novel technology: satellite distribution.

In 1976, WTCG became one of the first U.S. stations to beam its signal nationally via satellite, creating what became known as a "SuperStation." The same year, Turner paid roughly $10 million (9) to buy the Atlanta Braves, partly to guarantee his station a steady supply of live programming. Then came the bet that would define his career. On June 1, 1980, Turner launched the Cable News Network — CNN — the world's first 24-hour cable news channel. Industry observers ridiculed the venture, dubbing it the "Chicken Noodle Network," according to Bloomberg (10). But CNN's saturation coverage of major events, including the 1986 Challenger disaster and the 1991 Gulf War, turned cable news into a permanent fixture of American media.

In 1991, Time magazine named Turner "Man of the Year" for "influencing the dynamic of events and turning viewers in 150 countries into instant witnesses of history," according to CNN's obituary.

Turner's legacy: part empire, part philanthropy, part conservation

Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner (11) in 1996 in a deal that made him the combined company's largest individual shareholder. The subsequent AOL-Time Warner merger announced in January 2000 (12) — at the time the largest corporate merger in history at roughly $165 billion — proved disastrous when the dot-com bubble burst. Turner said he lost billions of dollars in personal wealth (13) in the collapse, and he stepped down as vice chairman in 2003.