Behind the glass ahead, a working newsroom hums beneath the CNN sign, the very spot where on June 1, 1980, Ted Turner told Americans they could have news around the clock. The building itself was originally constructed in 1976 as the Omni International complex, a hotel and shopping center attached to a sports arena. Turner purchased it and retrofitted it for his cable news operation, which the established television networks dismissed as Chicken Noodle News.
Turner, a flamboyant Atlanta media mogul who had already bought a struggling UHF television station and turned it into WTBS, one of the first cable superstations, was operating on a combination of genuine vision and almost reckless confidence. CNN proved the skeptics wrong within a decade, becoming essential viewing during the Gulf War in 1991, when Bernard Shaw reported live from Baghdad as bombs fell. Turner sold CNN to Time Warner in 1996, and the network has since become part of Warner Bros.
Discovery. The building remains CNN's operational hub. The lobby is open to the public and the view into the working newsroom connects you directly to the idea that changed television.
Atlanta made Ted Turner, and Ted Turner made twenty-four-hour news.