Ted Turner made sure CNN would never go quietly.
The late media mogul — who died Wednesday at 87 — secretly commissioned a chilling “doomsday video” decades ago that was meant to air only when the world came to an end, according to resurfaced footage and archived reports.
The eerie clip, long treated as a legend inside CNN, featured military bands from the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines solemnly performing the Christian hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee” outside the network’s original Atlanta headquarters.
Turner ordered the recording shortly after CNN’s launch in 1980, insisting his fledgling cable network would remain on the air until civilization itself collapsed.
“Barring satellite problems, we won’t be signing off until the world ends,” Turner declared at the time.
“We’ll be on, and we will cover it [the end of the world] live, and that will be our last, last event.”
He added: “We’ll play the national anthem only one time, on the 1st of June [1980], and when the end of the world comes, we’ll play ‘Nearer, My God, To Thee’ before we sign off.”
The bizarre tape remained buried for decades in CNN’s archives under the all-caps label “TURNER DOOMSDAY VIDEO” with instructions reading: “HFR [hold for release] till end of world confirmed.”
It only became public in 2015 after former CNN intern Michael Ballaban leaked a copy he had stumbled across during a 2009 internship at the network.
The haunting footage quickly developed cult status online, with YouTube commenters describing it as “chilling” and “terrifyingly sad.”
One commenter wrote: “It actually sent chills through my body knowing what this video means.”
Another pointed out the hymn’s grim historical connection to the Titanic disaster, writing: “The chilling thing is that what’s being played is ‘Nearer My God To Thee,’ which is also supposedly the same song that was played whilst the RMS Titanic went down.”
The resurfaced tape emerged just as tributes poured in following Turner’s death Wednesday.
Turner, the hard-driving founder of CNN and Turner Broadcasting, revolutionized television news by creating the first 24-hour cable news network in 1980.
Known as “The Mouth of the South” and “Captain Outrageous,” Turner built a sprawling media empire that eventually included CNN, TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies.
He also owned the Atlanta Braves and famously skippered the yacht Courageous to an America’s Cup victory in 1977.
Mark Thompson, chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, called Turner “the presiding spirit of CNN” in a statement Wednesday.
“Ted was an intensely involved and committed leader, intrepid, fearless and always willing to back a hunch and trust his own judgment,” Thompson said.
Turner had revealed shortly before his 80th birthday that he suffered from Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurological disorder. He was reportedly hospitalized in early 2025 after a bout of pneumonia.
President Trump also weighed in on Turner’s death, calling him “one of the Greats of All Time” and lamenting what CNN became after Turner sold the network.
