Remember Ted Turner With a TBS Watch Party

Ted Turner, who died May 6 at the age of 87, accomplished a lot in his long life as a media mogul. By launching CNN, he arguably invented the 24-hour news cycle, the cable news personality, the prime-time political screamfest, and Wolf Blitzer. And some people still liked him anyway.

He married Jane Fonda, an accomplishment aspired to by every young man of a certain age who ever watched Barbarella.

He pushed the Atlanta Braves (who he owned) on America by broadcasting their games nonstop on his TV channels, did pretty much the same thing with World Championship Wrestling (which he also owned), and bought old black-and-white movies so he could colorize them. Sometimes it almost seemed like he was looking for ways to get people to yell at him.

A relative footnote in his vast media empire, and in his obituaries, was his so-called “SuperStation,” TBS — one of the standbys in every family’s first basic cable TV package along with WGN, Nickelodeon, and the USA Network. Any latchkey kid who was home alone with the remote, or taking a sick day, or channel-surfing with a babysitter, was familiar with TBS, which was singlehandedly responsible for whole generations of Americans growing up having accumulated multiple viewings of The Last Starfighter, Rocky IV, and everything Jim Belushi ever made. Can you sing all the words of “Reproduction” from Grease 2 from memory? TBS did that.

So, sure, you could honor Turner’s life and work by watching some TV news, celebrating the United Nations, or trying to stop nuclear proliferation. But for many of us a more evocative commemoration would be getting some Orville Redenbacher or Planter’s Cheese Balls and a can of orange Slice and watching some of the following programs in as random an order as you can manage. Just make sure to start each one at five minutes past the hour.