How Ted Turner made the Atlanta Braves ‘America’s Team’
Among the many things that Ted Turner will be remembered for, will be his impact on the Atlanta Braves and bringing major league baseball into the homes of millions across the country. Turner died on Wednesday at the age of 87. In the late 60s, Turner began buying up small radio stations across the South, including in Georgia.
In 1969, he would sell those radio stations and bout the struggling UHF television station here in Atlanta, WRJR. He would soon change the call letters to WTCG, and initially ran old movies and TV shows. In 1976, the FCC allowed WTCG to use satellites to transmit programming to cable stations throughout the country.
He then branded it the WTCG-TV Super Station, airing from right here in Atlanta. As cable became more and more popular, many cable providers would carry the station to help fill in their schedules. The number of subscribers would eventually reach 2 million, shooting Turner’s worth to $100 million.
It was that same year that Turner bought the Atlanta Braves, and then the Atlanta Hawks two years later. The station’s call letters were changed once again, this time to WTBS. Turner used the “superstation” to air Braves and Hawks games across the country, making them household names long before the successes in the 1990s and the 2000s.
Turner worked out a deal that brought the Braves into 24 states across the country. “When the superstation came along, no matter where you went, you’d hear, ‘Hey, we watch the games all of the time — in Idaho,’” Turner Sports Broadcaster Ernie Johnson said. “There’s a lot of baseball fans around the country, in the world, because of what Ted did through TBS,” former Atlanta Brave Dale Murphy said during a Braves broadcast on April 10.