The Cold War on TV
Taylor Downing introduces one of the most ambitious television history series of recent years, financed by Turner Broadcasting.
The vision for a television series on the Cold War is supposed to have come to the maverick American TV mogul Ted Turner at the closing ceremony of the Goodwill Games held in St Petersburg in 1994. Turner, who had founded CNN and made 24-hour television news one of the great success stories of broadcasting, had set up this international sports festival when the Olympic Games were undermined by the rivalries and boycotts of Cold War politics. Goodwill Games were held through the 1980s and early ’90s. Like all great ideas, Turner’s concept for the series was basically simple –now that the Cold War was over, there was an opportunity to take a considered, international look at what it had all been about and at how and why nearly half a century of world history panned out as it did.
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