Summary

One in a series of evenings and special screenings presented as part of The Museum of Television & Radio's 7th Annual Television Festival in Los Angeles. (The Museum was known at that time as The Museum of Broadcasting.) Presented with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the festival celebrates the excellence and diversity of American television and is dedicated to television's creative community. This seminar honors television mogul Ted Turner and the ten-year anniversary of Turner's pioneering Cable News Network (CNN). Robert M. Batscha, president of The Museum of Broadcasting, begins by welcoming Turner, who introduces a tape compilation of several major live broadcasts of news stories on the cable channel. The first segment features live coverage of the launch and explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986; this is followed by footage of United States air raids against Libya in April of the same year, including live reports from Libya and announcements from the White House. The next highlight features the Iran-Contra Hearings of 1987, with footage from the Congressional testimony of Oliver North. Following this, viewers see coverage of the October 1987 stock market decline, the 1988 Democratic and Republican National Conventions, the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing in 1989 and the Chinese government's demand that CNN halt satellite transmissions, and the revelry that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. After the screening, Turner takes questions from the audience and discusses the following topics, among others: his level of involvement with day-to-day operations at CNN; the beginnings of his career; initial reactions to the idea of an all-news network; CNN's early days; the financial success of Turner's company; the possibility of Turner's selling CNN; the pay scale of CNN employees; Turner's goals for the future; how the executive perceives CNN's importance in the global community; the difficulty of reporting stories on television when there are no visual images to accompany them; Turner's opinion of high-definition television; and the imperialism of the American media.