Ernie Johnson pays tribute to Ted Turner: ‘He was an everyman to me’

Credit: TNT Sports; Robert Deutsch/USA TODAY-USA TODAY NETWORK

Across all the sports properties and programming that Turner Sports put on over the years in its various forms, nobody has represented the network to more fans than Ernie Johnson.

In fact, Johnson’s relationship to Ted Turner, who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 87, was a family affair. Johnson’s father and namesake was the voice of the Atlanta Braves under the stewardship of Turner, who put the team’s games on his TBS network starting in the late 1970s.

After being hired at the network himself, the younger Ernie Johnson became a beloved fixture on NBA, MLB, and college basketball coverage. Johnson even worked NFL, Wimbledon, golf, and Olympics coverage at a time when Turner Sports (now TNT Sports) was a more prominent sports broadcasting destination.

Johnson joined CNN shortly after the news of Turner’s passing to honor the late media titan.

“I would say it’s a melancholy kind of day here … and it’s a day of reflection, really, for me,” Johnson said. “It’s been a long time since he’s had direct involvement with the company, and the way things go these days with acquisitions and mergers and all that stuff, but deep down, in here, I’ll always be Turner.”

Johnson also described Turner as a visionary in the sports and media industries, starting with his plan to make the Braves a national team through TBS.

“I think that what he did back then really has set the standard for what we’re doing these days, how we watch live sports,” Johnson explained.

“It was his vision to say … number one, he bought the Braves so he could put the Braves on TV. So it was programming time, OK? There was an agenda there. Because he wasn’t a big baseball guy. But the Braves were on TBS, and then he was like, why don’t we use a satellite to beam them all over the country? And then the Braves were America’s team.”

Turner also helped popularize pro wrestling by competing with the WWE in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and played a role in the birth of 24/7 news when he launched CNN in 1980.