CNN founder Ted Turner 'spends one week each month with a different girlfriend'

Ted Turner, the 73-year-old billionaire founder of CNN, has revealed that he has four girlfriends each of whom he spends one week with a month.

Turner and his third wife Jane Fonda divorced in 2001, after 10 years of marriage, and the Oscar-winning actress has been replaced in his personal life by a complicated arrangement involving a quartet of other women.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter the media mogul and philanthropist, who owns 28 homes including 14 ranches, said a week per month for each girlfriend was "pretty much the general rule." He only named one of the women, the novelist Elizabeth Dewberry, who was with him at the time in New York. Until five years ago Miss Dewberry was married to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler.

When they separated Butler wrote an email to friends, which was leaked to the media, in which he said: "She will not be Ted's only girlfriend. Ted is permanently and avowedly non-monogamous. But though he has several girlfriends, it is a very small number, and he does not take them up lightly."

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter the media mogul and philanthropist, who owns 28 homes including 14 ranches, said a week per month for each girlfriend was "pretty much the general rule." Photo: AP

Asked if the other three unnamed women in his life were happy to share him, Turner replied: "Sort of." He still speaks to Fonda about once a month and, according to one friend, is "still in love with her."

Turner himself told the magazine: "Jane said 'I want two homes, a winter home and a summer home. I don't want 10.' And she couldn't take the travel.

Really, it's much harder for a woman than a man.

"What am I supposed to do, sit down and cry? I did for six months. And after that, you gotta go on." In a wide ranging interview with the magazine Turner also admitted he had considered suicide. He said: "I've thought about it and decided against it - in the past, not recently." He also revealed he has not been into a shop to buy anything for five years.

Turner said his longtime business rival Rupert Murdoch should "resign or step down" if News Corp was found to have broken the law. He added: "When I was a publisher of CNN, I took responsibility for the actions of the network."

Family members said he had considered running as a Democrat or Independent against George W Bush in the 2000 presidential election, but Fonda didn't want him to.

Turner, who donated $1 billion to the United Nations, has an estimated wealth of $2 billion and is America's second largest private landowner. He has spent much of his recent time on environmental causes and owns more than 50,000 bison.