Ted Turner Says Only 2 Cable Firms May Survive

Ted Turner, the founder of CNN and vice chairman of AOL Time Warner Inc., predicted Wednesday that consolidation of the cable industry will result in only two operators still standing within a year or two.

“It’s sad we’re losing so much diversity of thought,” Turner told a luncheon audience at the cable industry’s annual Western Show here.

Turner is retiring from AOL Time Warner at the end of December.

He did not specify which of the seven dominant cable operators will survive. But he said cable operator AT&T; Broadband would be sold within two years and the losers of that bidding war probably would be forced to merge to compete. “If AOL Time Warner gets it, that will force Comcast and Cox to merge,” he said.

In a wide-ranging interview at the show by cable industry publisher Paul Maxwell, Turner took some jabs at rival media moguls such as News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch. He chided Murdoch, and Viacom Inc. Chief Executive Sumner Redstone for “hanging on to every nickel” rather than giving millions of dollars to charity like he has, adding that he donated $250 million last year.

Turner also took several swipes at AOL Time Warner Chief Executive Gerald Levin, who he claims fired him from a job he loved after orchestrating a merger between AOL and Time Warner in January 2001.

“I get a lot of pleasure from my land, but if Jerry gets his hands on it I’ll probably lose that too,” said Turner, who merged his cable empire, Turner Broadcasting System, with Time Warner in 1996. “I didn’t have 51% [of the stock]. I got a little overconfident.”

Turner said his biggest regret was not taking cable mogul John Malone’s advice to keep Time Warner out of a consortium of cable companies that rescued Turner Broadcasting after a highly leveraged purchase of the MGM film library more than a decade ago.

As part of the deal, both Time Warner and Malone’s Liberty Media Corp. gained rights to veto Turner’s expansion.

Turner said Levin kept him from buying NBC in 1995 for $5 billion, a precursor to his company’s merger with Time Warner.

“The big winner is the one who will put purchasing power together to afford to buy [rights to] the Super Bowl, the NBA finals, the Academy Awards. I could see we weren’t going to have that as a cable programmer. You become marginalized if you don’t have the prime real estate [of a broadcast network],” Turner said.

He said Levin dashed his dream of owning a network. “I was really brokenhearted when Jerry vetoed the NBC acquisition,” Turner said.

Turner said had he blocked Time Warner from the cable consortium, “I would have had NBC five years ago, [then] bought Time Warner and fired Jerry.”