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HE IS the self-confessed American ``do-gooder" who launched the Goodwill Games and who counts Fidel Castro among his friends. Yet this week's departure of Ted Turner from CNN, the television news network which he founded, concludes a chapter of reckless ambition of the so-called ``new economy".

Turner, 64, had been increasingly sidelined in the running of CNN, the company he built into one of the most powerful media enterprises of its time.

His departure comes as AOL disclosed a $US98.7 billion ($167.45 billion) loss for 2002, the largest in US history. It also follows the departure of Steven Case, the America Online executive who masterminded the $US165 billion purchase of Time Warner in early 2000.

It was the biggest merger of the dotcom boom, and the huge losses and senior staff departures mark the unravelling of the breathless audacity of the dream of the upstarts of the so-called ``new economy" in taking control of the old-line media company that was Time Warner.

``I have not come to this decision lightly," Turner said in a statement.

``As you know, this company has been a significant part of my life for over 50 years. I have devoted much of my life to philanthropic interests and, more recently, to several socially responsible business efforts. Over the last five years, it has become even clearer to me how much personal satisfaction I derive from these activities. Therefore, I would like to now devote even more time, effort and resources to them."

As AOL's head, Richard Parsons, put it: ``He's concluded now is the right time to make more space for his other activities."

The surprise decision culminates a period of ongoing personal difficulties for Turner that started in 2000. First there was the separation from his wife of eight years, actress Jane Fonda, followed by the death of one of his grandchildren from Hurler syndrome, an enzyme deficiency that can cause severe mental retardation, facial distortion and serious defects in internal organs and bones.

Another of his grandchildren has been diagnosed with the same disease.

As well, some of his ``do gooder" schemes, such as the Goodwill Games, are set to fade into obscurity, with the Brisbane games held in 2001 likely to have been the last.

Sidelined at CNN, with other plans such as the idea of entering the media industry in Russia coming to nought, the gadfly of the US media industry has turned increasingly to his not-for-profit activities.

Turner, long an enigma in US business circles, once likened himself to Zorba the Greek: ``I lose my self-restraint and just get up and dance sometimes."

On another occasion he famously declared: ``I want to be the Jiminy Cricket of America", and followed that up by pledging $1billion to the United Nations one third of his then wealth.

That pledge was a slap in the face for Washington, which for years refused to pay its UN dues in full, due to long-standing criticism of some of the ideological positions of some UN agencies.

Jiminy Cricket, as Pinocchio's sidekick, was the conscience that brought the character to life, and encompasses a role that Turner has sought to fulfil through both his business and philanthropic activities.

Along with his longstanding friendship with Castro, Turner was the first Western businessman to have a private audience with Russia's new President, Vladimir Putin.

``I learned the value of being nice to everyone," Turner said in one interview. Putin used to drive when Turner visited St Petersburg, where Putin was a deputy to the city's mayor.

Turner was proud of marching to a different beat, marrying Fonda, who is infamous in the US for visiting North Vietnam during the latter stages of the Vietnam War.

Their marriage fell apart when Fonda discovered religion, although she put it down to the need to spend more time with one of her children, Vanessa Vadim, who was at the time giving birth to her own child.

According to Ken Auletta, who has written about Turner several times for the New Yorker magazine, Turner suffers from insecurity, a manic restlessness and lust. He never got over beatings from his father, who later committed suicide when the two were running their advertising billboard company together.

``It scarred him for life," Fonda said once in an interview with Auletta. ``It colours everything his relationships and his anxieties. I say this with all the love in the world. He has been severely, hauntingly traumatised. He always thinks something is about to be pulled out from him. He has no belief in permanency and stability. It's one reason why I'm not with him."

The actress also depicts her former husband as an insecure man.

``He loves Gone With The Wind for lots of reasons, and one of them is that he identifies with Scarlett O'Hara."

And then there were the serial affairs that put his marriage to Fonda under such pressure.

Thanks in part to Fonda's influence, Turner became increasingly sympathetic towards environmental causes, eventually turning much of his huge 230,000-hectare farm in New Mexico over to the long-threatened bison.

Bison were also introduced to a number of Turner's other properties, and he is now ranked as the largest bison rancher in the US.

The work with bison was largely undertaken through his Turner Endangered Species Fund, which has sought to reintroduce endangered American native animals such as Mexican wolves and ferrets, along with the bison, to his extensive holdings.

This fund receives most of its cash through the Turner Foundation, which doles out about $US50 million a year.

But as usual, there is also a private motive. With over 30,000 head of bison, Turner uses some of the stock in his small restaurant chain, Ted's Montana Grill, where bison burgers are on the menu.

His endangered species fund has also spent a lot of time studying quail, largely because Ted likes to hunt them.

In 2000, he launched the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a new foundation with the aim of reducing the global threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Speaking at the launch of this initiative, Turner said: ``I personally advocate the complete elimination of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, as quickly as possible.

``If fewer is better, then zero is best."

At the time, Turner was active in pushing CNN to produce long features on the ongoing threat of weapons of mass destruction to world peace, although under AOL Time Warner's management, he ended up trying to shop the idea to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

His departure from AOL Time Warner comes as CNN, his brainchild, is under siege like never before.

A decade ago, CNN established itself as the linchpin of the global news industry with its exhaustive coverage of the Gulf War and attacks on Iraq. That model has been mimicked the world over, from the BBC to the Arab network Al Jazeera, which has boomed in popularity over the past few years.

This is true not only internationally, but increasingly at home, most notably from Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. Murdoch, whom Turner once famously compared to Adolf Hitler, has managed to gain the upper hand, with ratings of Fox News frequently topping those of CNN, which some in America used to dub Clinton News Network when Bill Clinton was in the White House.

CNN, or Cable News Network to give it its full name, was the culmination of a career for Turner that started out running his father's billboard advertising business, which he eventually parlayed into ownership of some small television stations before pushing for regulation changes that opened the way for him to move into cable television.

Restyling it as a 24-hour news and current affairs program, Turner used CNN to challenge the news industry in the US before selling out to Time Warner, which later merged with AOL at the height of the dotcom boom of the last decade.

With that final merger, Turner was increasingly sidelined, and was relegated to the post of vice-chairman before opting this week to quit.

His was a business model that was famously aped by Murdoch, not just with Fox News, but Turner's decision to buy the Atlanta Braves, a baseball team that he used to get access to cheap sports programming in the era before other networks realised the goldmine that this low-cost programming could be.

Murdoch used a gridlock on sports programming to underwrite his success with BSkyB in Britain.

Yet Turner's decision to quit comes as his parcel of shares in AOL Time Warner he is the largest individual shareholder with 3 to 4 per cent of the capital has taken a pounding following the collapse in the value of high-technology shares. This may hamper his philanthropic ambitions.

``For some reason he has a guilty conscience," Fonda said in the New Yorker interview in 2000. ``He went much further than his father thought he would. So what's left? To be a good guy. He knows he will go down in history. He won't go down as a greedy corporate mogul. Although he claims to be an atheist, at the end of every speech he says `God bless you'."

Ted's times: from taxidermist to media baron

1938: Born Robert Edward Turner III in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Went to a military-oriented school in Tennessee; best remembered for odd habits including amateur taxidermy and growing lawn grass in his room. Attended Brown University; expelled for entertaining a female companion in his room. His father, Ed, committed suicide when Turner was 24. Turner took over the family business, expanding into television, and purchased an Atlanta station in 1970.

1976: Acquired the Atlanta Braves baseball team and the following year a holding in the basketball team the Atlanta Hawks.

1977: Won the America's Cup with his yacht Courageous.

1980: Used the profits from his Atlanta enterprise, now expanded into the Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), to launch CNN.

1986: Launched the now defunct Goodwill Games in Moscow. Failed in bid for the CBS network; bought the MGM/UA Entertainment Company.

1990: Founded the Turner Foundation, which gives millions to environmental causes.

1991: Married actress Jane Fonda.

1996: TBS merged with Time Warner Inc. Turner designated vice-chairman of Time Warner in charge of the TBS subsidiary.

1997: Pledged $US1 billion to the United Nations over 10 years the largest single donation by a private individual.

1997: Challenged his arch-enemy, Rupert Murdoch, to a televised boxing match in Las Vegas.

2000: Divorced Jane Fonda. Turner's job effectively dissolved in the AOL-Time Warner mega-merger.

2003: AOL-Time Warner reports nearly $US100 billion loss for 2002; Turner to step down as vice-chairman.