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Reese Schonfeld, TV executive and co-founder of CNN, dies at 88

July 29, 2020 at 6:59 p.m. EDT
Reese Schonfeld, CNN president, with newscaster Reynelda Muse in 1980. (Joe Holloway/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Reese Schonfeld, a news executive who teamed with businessman Ted Turner to launch CNN, the world’s first 24-hour news network, then later co-founded the Food Network, died July 28 at his home in Manhattan. He was 88.

He had Alzheimer’s disease, said a daughter, Juliette Schonfeld Reverand.

Mr. Schonfeld, who had been expelled from Harvard Law School for gambling, was nothing if not a risk taker. Early in his career he produced newsreels shown in movie theaters, and by the mid-1970s he was running an agency that provided news programming to independent television stations.

In that role he met Turner, a brash sailor, sports-team owner and cable TV entrepreneur who was looking to make a bigger name for himself. Mr. Schonfeld, who had been thinking about developing a 24-hour news network for several years, never expected Turner to bankroll such an effort.

“I hate news! I’ll never do news!” Turner often said, Mr. Schonfeld recalled in a 2005 interview with the Archive of American Television. But with other programming — TV dramas and comedies, movies and sports — dominated by other networks, news was the only option left for Turner to make a national mark on broadcasting.

“Out of nowhere,” Mr. Schonfeld told the television archive, “I got a phone call from Ted, saying, ‘Look, I’m thinking about doing 24-hour news. Can it be done? And if it can, will you do it for me?’”

In 1979, Mr. Schonfeld moved to Turner’s home base of Atlanta and became the first president of CNN, which stands for Cable News Network. With Turner’s money, he built the network from scratch, hiring the staff, buying cameras and editing equipment and determining which cities around the world would have CNN bureaus. He even designed the open set, with the anchor’s desk in the center of a bustling newsroom.

“We wanted to show every person doing every job,” he said in a later interview with CNN. “We wanted to show every mistake, everything raw. We wanted the people to live in our newsroom.”

He also wanted Dan Rather as the network’s first anchor, but when Rather stayed with CBS, Mr. Schonfeld hired veteran TV correspondents Daniel Schorr, Peter Arnett and Bernard Shaw, all of whom became fixtures at CNN.

“I’m betting $100 million on you guys,” Turner said at the time.

“Well,” Mr. Schonfeld replied, “I’m betting my life!”

In a 2001 memoir, “Me and Ted Against the World,” Mr. Schonfeld wrote: “I did not invent twenty-four hour news; a dozen guys thought of that, but I did create ‘fluid news,’ the style that differentiated CNN.”

Instead of repeating 30-minute segments of national, international, sports and entertainment news, CNN would aim to provide as much live coverage of breaking news as possible. Other programs would focus on analysis and policy debates.

“I believed then, and still believe, that the best way to build an audience and sell commercials and make money is to do the best news in the world,” Mr. Schonfeld wrote. “In short, to be original from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. again. In originality would lie our strength.”

Among the network’s largest obstacles was the fact that only about 11 million U.S. households were wired for cable at the time. Mr. Schonfeld admitted that some of his experiments failed and that he should have recognized the on-air potential of an early CNN employee, Katie Couric. He also regretted rejecting a tryout tape from a young TV personality in Baltimore, Oprah Winfrey.

He tried to hire filmmaker and raconteur Orson Welles as the host of a nightly talk show, he wrote in his memoir, but “CNN was a low-rent operation, and Orson Welles was not a low-rent guy.”

As the network became more established in its first two years, the towering egos of CNN’s twin founders began to clash.

“I was the news professional; Ted was the amateur,” Mr. Schonfeld wrote.

Mr. Schonfeld wanted to fire a low-rated late-night host, Sandi Freeman, who was a favorite of Turner’s. Turner disapproved of Mr. Schonfeld’s hiring of Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden to argue conservative and liberal viewpoints on “Crossfire,” which ultimately became one of CNN’s most popular programs.

As the network was gaining credibility and ratings were on the rise, Turner fired Mr. Schonfeld in May 1982. The wound never entirely healed.

“I’m just saying Ted Turner should’ve taken better care of our baby,” Mr. Schonfeld later wrote.

In 1984, Mr. Schonfeld helped develop the first 24-hour all-news local cable network, “News Twelve,” on Long Island. Later, despite having no interest in cooking, he became a co-founder of the Food Network, which made its debut in 1993. He discovered and offered a hosting job to New Orleans chef Emeril Lagasse, who became one of the network’s first stars.

“They were good jobs, and both networks have succeeded,” Mr. Schonfeld wrote in his memoir, “but they were carpentry. At CNN, I was an architect.”

Maurice Wolfe Schonfeld was born Nov. 5, 1931, in Newark. His father had a glass and mirror business, his mother had been a bookkeeper.

(He became known as “Reese” because a younger sister had trouble pronouncing “Maurice.”)

In high school, Mr. Schonfeld was a bit of a renegade and spent much of his time playing cards and arranging neighborhood bets. At Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1953, he supplemented his income from winnings at poker and, especially, bridge. When he was a senior, he and a partner won a national bridge tournament.

During his first year at Harvard Law School, Mr. Schonfeld was expelled for gambling. He moved to New York and took a low-level job with United Press Movietone News, which produced newsreels for theaters around the country.

While working full-time for the news agency, he attended law school at Columbia University, graduating in 1959. He continued to work for the newsreel company and then, after it went out of business in 1963, for a television branch of the United Press International news service.

In 1975 he founded the Independent Television News Association, which packaged news segments for local TV stations. He never practiced law.

His marriage to Karen Lamberti ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of more than 40 years, Patricia O’Gorman of New York; their daughter, Reverand; five children from his first marriage, Ellen, Ida, Alex, Orrin and William Schonfeld; a brother; 12 grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

In 1999, Mr. Schonfeld sold his interest in the Food Network for more than $10 million. In later years he served on the boards of several companies. He wrote a blog about the news, often taking critical aim at CNN, until 2017.

For Mr. Schonfeld, CNN had been the dream that had come true, then fled too soon.

“I thought the task was simple,” he wrote in “Me and Ted Against the World.”

“If we delivered the facts about everything we saw as important in the world, people would act righteously, and the world would be a better place. What newsman could have a better dream than that?”

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