The United States-based network said the outspoken and often outrageous television pioneer died on Wednesday, citing a news release from Turner Enterprises.
Turner transformed an obscure Atlanta television station into the first satellite-based "superstation" and founded Cable News Network, the first 24-hour all-news TV network.
He owned professional sports teams in Atlanta, defended the America's Cup in yachting in 1977 and donated $US1 billion ($A1.4 billion) to United Nations charities.
He married three women - most famously actress Jane Fonda - and earned the nicknames "Captain Outrageous" and "The Mouth of the South".
Fonda, 88, paid tribute to her "dearest Ted" in an emotional post on Instagram.
"He had a big life, a brilliant mind and a soaring sense of humour.
"Ted Turner helped me believe in myself. He gave me confidence. I think I did the same for him, but that's what women are raised to do.
"Men like Ted aren't supposed to express need and vulnerability. That was Ted's greatest strength, I believe.
"Rest in Peace, dearest Ted. You are loved and you will be remembered."
Current CNN chief executive and chairman Mark Thompson also paid tribute to Turner, hailing him as "the giant on whose shoulders we stand, and we will all take a moment today to recognise him and his impact on our lives and the world".
Turner was slowed in later years by Lewy Body Dementia.
Long since out of the television business, he concentrated on philanthropy and his more than 800,000 hectares of property, including the country'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.
Turner's signature achievement was creating CNN in 1980.
Turner's own frustration with television news was the instigator.
He often worked past 8pm - after the US nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC had already gone off the air - and was in bed by the time his local stations did their own newscasts at 11pm.
He took a chance by starting the operation sometimes derided as the "chicken noodle network" in the early days of cable television, living in an apartment above its Atlanta office.
"I was going to have to hit hard and move incredibly fast and that's what we did - move so fast that the (broadcast) networks wouldn't have the time to respond, because they should have done this, not me," Turner recalled in a 2016 interview with the Academy of Achievement.
"But they didn't have the imagination."
CNN's breakthrough moment came during the Gulf War with Iraq in 1991.
Most television journalists had fled Baghdad, warned of an imminent US attack.
CNN stayed, capturing arresting images of a war's outbreak, with anti-aircraft tracers streaking across the sky and correspondents flinching from the concussion of bombs.
Turner was promised a continued role in CNN after his company's sale to Time Warner for $US7.3 billion in stock but was gradually pushed out, much to his regret.
"I made a mistake," he later said.
"The mistake I made was losing control of the company."
with AP and PA
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