Today, it's hard to imagine a time when you couldn't get news any time of day or night. We can just pick up the phone, glance at the computer or flip the TV to any of several all-news channels to see what's happening in the world.
But. little children, there really was a time where none of that was possible. News only came once a day in a newspaper delivered to your door or on short TV broadcasts.
Ted Turner changed all that in 1980 when he launched Cable News Network. Today, we think of CNN and 24-hour news as such a normal part of the TV landscape that we don't realize what an audacious and risky idea it was at the start. No one had done it before; the pioneers of CNN were making up the rules as they went.
In "Up All Night," published in 2020, author Lisa Napoli describes decades of key moments that led to the launch of CNN.
It was far from a straightforward path. Napoli starts the story a good 31 years before CNN's birth with the tale of a girl who fell down a well near Los Angeles in 1949, and the ambitious but technologically clumsy efforts to cover that news on TV.
Napoli's narrative unfolds on two parallel tracks — one about the early development of TV, the other about Ted Turner. The TV news history is a necessary component of the story, but the Ted Turner tale is far more memorable.
Turner inherited an Atlanta billboard advertising business from his father, and in bits and fits, created a wide-ranging business empire. He forayed into television with the purchase of a fringe independent station in Atlanta.
Turner had no interest in putting news on the station — it most showed old movies — but the FCC required some "public service" element, so he reluctantly allocated 20 minutes late a night. The "news" program was filled with gags and parody, including one night where it was co-hosted by a dog. It was an inauspicious beginning for a man who would change the face of TV news.
Napoli portrays Turner as quirky and outrageous. During sales calls he would often throw himself onto the floor to show his determination to get a deal. He was so cheap that he'd cut his own hair and sift through incoming mail at the TV station for uncanceled stamps that could be reused. But he spent big on buying and rehabilitating the Atlanta Braves baseball team and even more on sailboat racing, his favorite hobby.
"His frank, explosive personality was legendary, especially among his inner circle, who warily tip-toed around his ever-changing mood," Napoli writes. "Was he up, or was he down? He'd return from sailing expeditions clutching laundry lists of ideas they'd have to drop everything to pursue, only to find days later that he'd changed his mind. He was like a hyperactive kid, exploding into work in the morning — if he hadn't slept on the pull-out couch in his office the night before — spouting poetry, singing song lyrics off-key, roaming the halls to pump up the staff."
While the first half of the book lays a nice foundation, the book really hits its stride in the second. As the drumbeat grows toward the debut of CNN, a confused frenzy of hiring and preparation goes on behind the scenes. As a reader, even knowing of CNN's eventual success, you wonder if the motley crew assembled for this project can really pull it off.
With Turner watching his pennies, the station ended up hiring dozens of recent college graduates, paying them peanuts and throwing into whatever needed to be done. For the grads, it was energizing buzz of a time, working on a groundbreaking project during the day and partying at night. Napoli calls it "'Animal House' meets 'Network.'"
For all its strengths, the book is hamstrung by a peculiar writing quirk of Napoli's: She is stingy in offering dates for many of the events in the book. This is a history book at its essence, so dates are important. But many of the events in "Up All Night" float in the air untethered to a timeline
Natali tells a detailed story of Turner's participation the Fastnet sailing race in which 19 people died, but never says when it took place, not even the year. Other events are described but never dated, including the critical meeting where Turner decided to start an all-news channel, the landmark launch of CNN"s first satellite, and the groundbreaking of the network's first building.
At one point, Napoli quotes Turner saying, "I hate the news. I'll never do news." This is a funny quote, and would be especially amusing if Turner said it right before deciding to launch CNN. But she offers no date.
The other flaw: There no pictures (at least in my edition of the book). Napoli included dozens of continuing characters. It would be nice to see some of them. Early CNN anchor Kathleen Sullivan is described by a producer as "astoundingly beautiful in a non-conventionally beautiful way." Wouldn't it be nice if we could judge for ourselves?
Similarly, Napoli frequently describes the disorder of Turner's first TV station and later the mess (and "scurrying rats") of the first CNN facility. How about a picture or two of the places?
