Ted Turner speaks during the CNN World Report Contributors banquet in Atlanta on May 4, 1995. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, file)

NEW YORK (AP) — Ted Turner could never be defined by just one role. He was a media mogul, philanthropist and conservationist. A yachtsman who won boating’s most famous race and owner of a baseball team that captured the World Series trophy.

The brash television pioneer who died Wednesday made his greatest mark on the news business when he launched CNN nearly a half-century ago and with it, the 24-hour cable news cycle — a revolutionary moment that transformed the industry.

His media empire grew to include CNN International, the Cartoon Network, TNT and Turner Classic Movies. Then he used his riches to become one of America’s most extensive landowners, dedicating his final years to preserving natural habitats, saving endangered species and reducing nuclear weapons.

Turner died at age 87 while surrounded by his family, according to Turner Enterprises, which oversees his vast businesses and investments. A cause was not released. He was diagnosed in 2018 with Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurological disorder.

A Southerner with outspoken wit, he earned the nicknames “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South” during his youthful years.

“If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect,” he once bragged.

Turner was a celebrity in his own right when he married actor Jane Fonda in 1991, just before being named Time magazine’s Man of the Year.

“He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I’ve never been the same,” Fonda wrote Wednesday on Instagram.

Slowed late in life by his illness and long out of the television business, Turner concentrated on philanthropy — donating a stunning $1 billion to United Nations charities — and his more than 2 million acres of property, including the nation’s largest bison herd.

His garrulous personality sometimes overshadowed a driven, risk-taking business acumen. By the time he sold his Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner Inc. in a 1996 media megadeal, Turner had turned his late father’s billboard company into a global conglomerate that included seven major cable networks, three professional sports teams and a pair of hit movie studios.