Ted Turner and Me

You want your ten minutes?

A lot of people ask, 'how do you get a meeting with someone who can make a difference?'

Here's one way that worked for me:

Most people spend their lives thinking about or talking about what they are going to do, but few actually do anything.

This is because no one ever taught them what to do.

Many years ago, I thought I had a pretty good idea on how  to run a TV newsroom much more cost effectively. But who was I? I had not spent years in TV newsrooms. I just had an idea.

So I wrote a letter to Ted Turner, who was then running CNN.

I didn’t know him and he sure as heck had never heard of me. I was no one.

But I wrote anyway.

It was a short letter, only three paragraphs. But I got to the point right away.  I said,  ‘you make television all wrong’.  I said, ‘I know a better way to do this’. Then I said, ‘you give me 10 minutes, and I will give you the world – or whatever part of it you don’t own already.’

Then I mailed the letter.

Who knows?

Three days later my phone rang.

It was Ted Turner.

“You want your 10 minutes, you got ‘em. You be in my office tomorrow morning at 9 am”. Then he hung up the phone.

The next morning I was in his office at 9 am.

And there he was.

He looked at me and he looked at his watch.

“Go” he said.

“You make television all wrong”, I said. “You do it in a crazy and expensive way.  Every one of your reporters should carry a small video camera and shoot all their own stuff.”

He was looking at his watch.

Then he looked up.

“You’re right”, he said. “I know…”

“I know how to cut your staffing and increase your coverage of the world all at the same time…”

“Stop!” he said.

I thought my time was up.

Then he turned to his assistant.

“Get me Pat Mitchell”.

Pat Mitchell ran CNN in Atlanta.

The assistant came back in.  “She says she’s in a meeting”.

Turner went nuts.

Screaming.

“You tell her she works for me, God damn it”…

In an instant Pat Mitchell was on the phone.

“Yes?????”

“I got this Michael Rosenblum here in my office” he said.

“He got this idea on how to make TV news with those little home video cameras”….

He hung up the phone and turned to me.

“You get on a plane now and you go down to Atlanta and see Pat Mitchell and you tell her I sent you”.

Then he came over to me. He’s a big guy.

Then he smacked me on the shoulder.

Pow!

“You a smart Jew”, he said.

“You gonna make me a pile of money”.

And that was how I met Ted Turner….and Pat Mitchell.