On June 1, 2023, more than 500 current and former CNN employees gathered on the steps of CNN Center in downtown Atlanta for a group photograph — a tribute to the man who built a 24-hour news network that changed how the world receives information, and to the building that housed that ambition for more than forty years.
Ted Turner was not there in person. At 84, suffering from Lewy body dementia, the founder of CNN is no longer involved in the network's operations. But he sent a letter that was read to the crowd, and its message carried the same restless confidence that drove him to launch CNN on June 1, 1980, with 1.7 million cable subscribers and a roomful of skeptics.
"In my launch speech at CNN's original Atlanta headquarters in 1980, I shared my vision for how CNN's national and international coverage would 'bring together in brotherhood and kindness, and friendship and in peace, the people of this nation and this world,'" Turner wrote.
A Downtown Atlanta Institution
CNN Center opened as the Omni International complex in the 1970s and became CNN's headquarters when Turner chose the downtown location for his upstart network. The decision was a statement: at a time when the television industry was centered in New York and Los Angeles, Turner planted his flag in Atlanta's city center.
The building's newsroom became the stage for some of the most consequential moments in broadcast journalism. Live coverage of the Tiananmen Square protests. The fall of the Berlin Wall. The Gulf War — which drew one billion viewers worldwide, the largest audience for a non-sporting event in television history.
For downtown Atlanta residents, CNN Center was more than a media company. It was an anchor, a landmark, and a reason the rest of the world knew where downtown Atlanta was.
"The Story Is Being Rewritten"
Turner's letter acknowledged the network's recent turbulence — leadership changes, political coverage controversies, the departure of prominent anchors — but refused to frame the gathering as an ending.
"Is there more work to do? Of course," he wrote. "CNN's story is being rewritten, just like the story of the world it covers in real time."
He pointed to the building's pending sale and CNN's planned relocation to the Techwood campus near Georgia Tech as a homecoming rather than a departure: "Soon these three red letters will find a new home, just a few miles away. In many ways it is a homecoming of sorts — to its roots, where it all began in 1980."
The alumni who gathered that day — some from as far as South Africa and the United Kingdom — posed with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Turner and the iconic red CNN letters that had stood at the building's entrance for decades. It was unofficial. It was emotional. And for downtown Atlanta, it was a reminder that the buildings we walk past every day carry stories that shaped the world.
Original reporting by GPB News Staff, Georgia Public Broadcasting, June 2, 2023.