Some Wednesday Reads

 There will be no Triple Crown winner this year.

It's understandable this year as in last year because the Belmont is run at a shorter distance, something not available to the previous 13 Triple Crown winners.

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Obituary:  Cable news pioneer and founder of the great channel Turner Classic Movies, Ted Turner, 87, has died after a lengthy battle with the dread Lewy Body Dementia.

He started WTBS in the 1970s before launching CNN in 1980. After he acquired the MGM film library, he started a great cable channel, Turner Classic Movies.  This channel is about the only thing I miss over no longer getting cable/dish television.

Turner had an "aw shucks" type of demeanor that fooled people into thinking he wasn't smart, but he was, shockingly so.

Snip:

Robert Edward Turner III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati. When he was 9, his family moved to Savannah, Georgia. After being expelled from Brown University for sneaking a female student into his room, Turner came to Atlanta to work for his father’s billboard company.

His ambitions at that point were broad, he later recalled: “I used to tell people I wanted to become the world’s greatest sailor, businessman and lover all at the same time.”

After his father’s 1963 suicide, Turner took over the company. In 1970, he bought an independent UHF station with a signal so weak it didn’t even cover Atlanta.

On Dec. 17, 1976, he began transmitting the station to cable systems across the country via satellite. It became TBS Superstation. “It was the start of something bigger than we ever imagined,” Turner said.

TBS’ collection of old movies and “The Andy Griffith Show” reruns was augmented by Turner’s acquisition of baseball’s Atlanta Braves, which slowly attracted fans across the nation and declared themselves “America’s team.”