Ted Turner's Cable News Network began broadcasting from a former antebellum mansion turned studio in Atlanta, promising to stay on air 'until the world ends.' Skeptics mocked the venture as 'Chicken Noodle News,' doubting anyone would watch news all day. Within a decade CNN's live coverage of events like the Gulf War made it an indispensable global institution and reshaped how the world consumed breaking news.
Ted Turner bet his fortune, including the profits from his UHF station and Atlanta sports teams, on the improbable idea that Americans would tune into news programming around the clock rather than waiting for the network anchors' nightly half hour. He bought a defunct country club, the Progress Club, on Techwood Drive in Atlanta and converted its ballroom into a working newsroom, famously declaring at launch that CNN would broadcast 'until the end of the world,' at which point it would play the national anthem.
The first broadcast, anchored by Lois Hart and Dave Walker, opened with a report on the attempted assassination of civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, hardly an auspicious sign for a channel still finding its footing. Industry veterans predicted swift failure; the major networks barely acknowledged the upstart.
CNN struggled financially for years but found its defining moment in January 1991, when it was the only network with correspondents broadcasting live from Baghdad as the Gulf War began, riveting audiences worldwide and coining the term 'the CNN effect' for how live television coverage could shape foreign policy and public opinion in real time.