Reese Schonfeld, who helped found CNN and Food Network, dies at 88

The New York Times

In 1979, Ted Turner asked a skeptical Schonfeld to help him launch a 24-hour news channel. Schonfeld took programming risks when CNN launched in June 1980, including airing an edited version of the Jimmy Carter-Ronald Reagan presidential debate with independent candidate John Anderson's answers spliced in. "But even with CNN’s influence growing and its Nielsen ratings rising, Mr. Turner fired Mr. Schonfeld two years after the launch," Richard Sandomir writes in Schonfeld's New York Times obituary. “If I had been working for anyone else, given the Nielsen ratings, I would’ve expected a moment of congratulations, shared glory, but Ted Turner did not like to share glory,” Schonfeld, who isn't mentioned in CNN's Wikipedia entry, wrote in a memoir, Me and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN. In 1993, Schonfeld helped launch Food Network and became its first president even though he didn't even cook. But Allen Salkin, the author of From Scratch: The Uncensored History of the Food Network, said Schonfeld’s leadership was critical to the cable network’s start. “Some of his show ideas, like How to Boil Water, directed at newly divorced dads, were cockamamie,” Salkin said via email. “But the testament to his achievement is that the network he ran from the word go is now part of the global entertainment firmament.” Schonfeld left the Food Network in 1995 and sold his stake in the company in 1999. Schonfeld later became a critic of CNN in columns for The Huffington Post.