November 1, 2023
Media tycoon William Tunney dead at 81
William Randolph Tunney, Sr., the Chairman of the Tunney Media Group and billionaire patriarch of the eponymous family, has been reported dead in New York. Mr. Tunney departed from a meeting in Washington, D.C. with representatives from the Department of Justice late last night and was due to arrive in New York City for an early morning meeting with executives from the National Broadcasting Service (NBS). His death comes in the middle of a complex negotiation to buy out Atlantis Cable News from its parent company, Atlantis World Media. The completion of the deal would have made Mr. Tunney, already one of the most powerful men in news media, an even greater presence in that industry, reaching new heights at a late stage in his career. However, his sudden death leaves the deal, currently subject to an antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice, and his properties in a state of flux. An official cause of death has not yet been provided.
William Tunney was the second-born son of Randolph Tunney II, himself the eldest son of legendary family founder Randolph William Tunney, and his first wife Gretchen Smith. Born ahead of William Tunney was a twin brother, Randolph III, whose tragic death in a skiing accident at age 26 led to their father becoming an infamous recluse and leaving their media empire rudderless. William was suddenly thrust into leadership, a life he had not been prepared for, and lost control of the empire after his father's death in 1984. The shocking hostile takeover by French industrialist Jean-Dominique Merten St. Clair was enabled by the purchase of shares in the conglomerate held by family members who were eager to sell what they had inherited from Randolph II's death at a high price.
Left as a minority holder in the company, William Tunney watched as Merten St. Clair took his family's legacy and rebranded it MertMedia, transforming the all-American behemoth into a global player. Though Tunney grew richer from the undertaking, he had made it his sole mission to take back control of the corporation and bring it back to the United States. To that end, he invested in the Cable News Division, becoming a massive player in the new 24-hour cable news industry. Combined with his acquistions of international cable networks, hundreds of local TV stations in the United States, tabloids, and pioneering work in satellite television, he soon turned his varied collection of properties into an agglomeration on par with Merten St. Clair's and successfully ousted the aging Frenchman in 2005, becoming the new Chairman of the Board of MertMedia, which he immediately renamed to the Tunney Media Group.
The return of the Tunney name marked a dramatic rightward shift in the tone of the conglomerate's properties, particularly in the cable news corner, which Tunney viewed as his personal fiefdom. A close associate of Republican president Owen Lassiter since his days as Governor of California, Tunney was a major donor to conservative Republican politicians beginning the 1980s. He was a vocal critic Lassiter's successor, Democrat Josiah Bartlet, and was incensed by Bartlet's landslide victory over Robert Ritchie. However, he pulled back on support for Republicans in 2006 due to the nomination of moderate California Senator Arnold Vinick, a long time personal enemy of Tunney due to their shared past in their home state. The lack of support from the Tunney machine is sometimes attributed as one of the causes behind Vinick's loss that year. In 2009, Tunney aggressively searched for his perfect candidate, correctly anticipating Republican victory in the following year's election. After vacillating between numerous choices, particularly Governor Marcus Blakemore, Tunney begrudgingly settled on the eventual winner, former Speaker and Acting President Glen Allen Walken, whom he would come to rely on for loosening of telecommunications laws and the appointment of friendly commissioners to the FCC and other regulatory bodies.
After his great triumph in 2005 and then the Walken victory in the 2010 election, Tunney seemed to be an upward spiral of domination. However, his success was rocked by numerous troubling incidents in 2013. The first was a divorce from his second wife Lisa Gumm, previously his personal secretary in the 2000s. The divorce was precipitated by his numerous affairs which were publicly exposed and covered in depth by his competitors in the tabloid news. The second was an IRS investigation into alleged tax fraud by NBS, which soured Tunney's relationship with the Walken administration. The third was a heart attack that left Tunney hospitalized for nearly three months. Tunney previously had a heart attack in 1999, which he recovered from quickly. However, the 2013 incident which left him incapacitated at a time of turmoil in his empire brought the specter of succession to the forefront.
For decades, Tunney had groomed his eldest son, William Jr., as his successor, but a personal crisis stemming from his own divorce in 2008 led to the younger Tunney departing from the corporate world to embark on a second life of adventuring and extreme sports. The next-in-line was NBS Chairman Jack Rudolph, who became Tunney's son-in-law in 2010 by remarriage to Tunney's younger daughter Fiona. However, Rudolph was embroiled in the IRS investigation due to his role as Chairman. The other contender was Tunney's younger son, Michael, at time considered the black sheep or buffoon of the family. Michael Tunney was a fixture of the New York social scene in the 1990s and early 2000s and his drug- and alcohol-fueled escapades were documented by the tabloids. A then-unnamed source now understood to be Jack Rudolph himself called Michael Tunney "an idiot who can't tie his own shoelaces." Nevertheless, he presented an image of a reformed man after his brother's retirement and became a new right-hand man for his father. Despite a lack of formal business education (Michael received a BA in Psychology from NYU), William Tunney called his son a "man of vision" with "a sharp political instinct" and appointed him Director of the Cable News Division in 2012.
During William Tunney's hospitalization, the board of TMG named Jack Rudolph as interim CEO and acting Chairman. However, when he left the hospital, Tunney made it clear that he did not wish Rudolph to be viewed as a permanent successor and attempted to gain his position back. However, due to his weakness and extended recovery time, the board did not pursue his request. Instead, Rudolph was ousted by a team up between Michael Tunney and a returning William Jr., who developed a rivalry with Rudolph during their shared time together in the company. After Rudolph's ouster, the brothers split the chief roles, with Michael becoming acting Chairman and William Jr. interim CEO. Their father, pleased by the return of his prodigal son and collaboration between his once-feuding sons, was prepared to retire permanently and hand the kingdom off to the princes.
However, this pleasant arrangement was interrupted by William Jr.'s attempts to tilt news coverage back towards the center ahead of what he predicted would be a very close 2014 presidential election. He was furious at the IRS investigation and hoped to mend fences with potential Democratic candidates, sounding out Gabe Tillman and Sam Seaborn to see if they would be amenable to an arrangement. This was enough to spur his father out of his nascent retirement and back into the fray, dismissing both sons from their posts and assuming full control once again. The following decade saw William Tunney rule his empire with an iron first, closely directing cable news coverage and web media, while largely ignoring what he had come to believe was the most irrelevant part of the news world, broadcast television.
In the 2020s, Tunney was once again forced to ponder his mortality with the death of his first wife, Mallory Walter, with whom he remained close personally and professionally after their divorce. Taking stock of his family, his eldest son had remarried to his college girlfriend, Alexis Howard, who was the incumbent Secretary of Energy and a famously Republican member of the Democratic Howard political family of California. The couple embarked on a plan to restore the California Republican Party to a more moderate stance in the mold of Vinick, a clear rebuke of the elder Tunney's politics. Michael Tunney, though ascending to CEO, had seemingly lost his way again, back in the tabloids for his third divorce, embarrassing antics, and irregular statements. Jack Rudolph had retired permanently from the Tunney world. Although Tunney remarried in 2016 to former NBS executive Marcia Vernon with the stated intention of siring a new heir to succeed him, it seemed he no longer had the time to wait for newborn Jonathan to grow up. He divorced Marcia Vernon in late 2021 due to what he perceived as a callous reaction to the death of his first wife Mallory.
Looking ahead to the 2022 election, Tunney bemoaned the lack of credible candidates. Having already endured the loss of close friend Henry Shallick to bête noire Sam Seaborn, Tunney tried and failed to boost Barbara Layton, Art Scheider, or Ruth Norton-Stewart, instead watching Alan Duke barrel his way to the nomination. Although Tunney had once decried Duke during his Senate career for being a "hostage taking extremist," he could not deny the ratings explosion enjoyed by his empire and the cable news world at large from covering the hellraising candidate. Guiding his hand through this ratings resurgence was a new contender for the throne, eldest grandson Owen Tunney. The 30 year old Stanford graduate was named after Owen Lassiter and was a godson of Lassiter's son Richard, and grew up idolizing his namesake. Recently installed at the Cable News Division, Tunney, derisively called "Baby Hitler" by colleagues, presented the case for Duke to his grandfather. William hesitated, but the third party candidacy of Andrew Long, whom he regarded as a "nouveau riche charlatan", made him reconsider. Although nephew Waldorf Tunney attempted to reconcile Long with his uncle, he was not persuasive enough. Fox News was already onboard the Duke train from the beginning, and Tunney had now been bested for control of the party's direction by his nearest rival. The time had come to either jump in or jump out.
Tunney jumped in. The disaster which followed became a huge personal embarrassment, the likes of which he had not endured since losing control of the family empire nearly 40 years ago. Furious, he began searching for something "big" and "exciting" which would revolutionize the news industry "forever." Obsessed with the idea of legacy and concerned about the decline of the traditional news media at the expense of the internet and social media, Tunney mulled acquiring or starting a social media network or streaming service. The disastrous launch of Atlantis GO by AWM disavowed him of the latter idea. However, it introduced the seed of a new idea, which would soon come to fruition. Correctly anticipating that the failure of AGO would to a decline AWM stock and potential ouster of CEO Reese Lansing, William Tunney began leveraging TMG assets to prepare a bid to takeover or acquire a large portion of AWM. His suspicions were exceeded when Lansing announced that the entirety of AWM would be put up for sale. Tunney quickly devised a new plan, making a massive $32.7 billion bid Atlantis Cable News alone.
With his overpayment certain to be expected, Tunney revealed his hand. With AWM and NBS in hand, he would create a news empire largely than any other in the world. Sloughing off other divisions from both companies, he alone would have direct control over two of the biggest players in the news world, granting him the ability to play to both sides, guaranteeing profitability no matter the circumstances, or so he argued. His bold pitch was controversial to many parties, including his son and CEO Michael, members of the TMG board, and perhaps most importantly, the Seaborn administration. Though he was able to bring his board onside with his typical business savvy, the Department of Justice and FCC would be harder to manipulate. The FCC declined to review the deal due a deadlock in the Commission prior to the confirmation of Commissioner Rebecca Cox-Roden. Subsequently, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit to block the deal in September. Facing this new complication, Tunney spent the last month shuttling between San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. simultaneously attempting to assuage spooked shareholders and board members while lining up his lawyers to defeat the suit in court. It was in these circumstances that he suddenly died last night.
The circumstances of his death have not been revealed yet. The death was reported by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City at 6:00 AM on November 1, 2023. The cause of death has not been announced pending an autopsy. No statement has been provided by the Tunney family or Tunney Media Group yet. Tunney is survived by two of his ex-wives, sons William Jr., Michael, and Jonathan, daughters Frances and Fiona, and 12 grandchildren.
Media tycoon William Tunney dead at 81
William Randolph Tunney, Sr., the Chairman of the Tunney Media Group and billionaire patriarch of the eponymous family, has been reported dead in New York. Mr. Tunney departed from a meeting in Washington, D.C. with representatives from the Department of Justice late last night and was due to arrive in New York City for an early morning meeting with executives from the National Broadcasting Service (NBS). His death comes in the middle of a complex negotiation to buy out Atlantis Cable News from its parent company, Atlantis World Media. The completion of the deal would have made Mr. Tunney, already one of the most powerful men in news media, an even greater presence in that industry, reaching new heights at a late stage in his career. However, his sudden death leaves the deal, currently subject to an antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice, and his properties in a state of flux. An official cause of death has not yet been provided.
William Tunney was the second-born son of Randolph Tunney II, himself the eldest son of legendary family founder Randolph William Tunney, and his first wife Gretchen Smith. Born ahead of William Tunney was a twin brother, Randolph III, whose tragic death in a skiing accident at age 26 led to their father becoming an infamous recluse and leaving their media empire rudderless. William was suddenly thrust into leadership, a life he had not been prepared for, and lost control of the empire after his father's death in 1984. The shocking hostile takeover by French industrialist Jean-Dominique Merten St. Clair was enabled by the purchase of shares in the conglomerate held by family members who were eager to sell what they had inherited from Randolph II's death at a high price.
Left as a minority holder in the company, William Tunney watched as Merten St. Clair took his family's legacy and rebranded it MertMedia, transforming the all-American behemoth into a global player. Though Tunney grew richer from the undertaking, he had made it his sole mission to take back control of the corporation and bring it back to the United States. To that end, he invested in the Cable News Division, becoming a massive player in the new 24-hour cable news industry. Combined with his acquistions of international cable networks, hundreds of local TV stations in the United States, tabloids, and pioneering work in satellite television, he soon turned his varied collection of properties into an agglomeration on par with Merten St. Clair's and successfully ousted the aging Frenchman in 2005, becoming the new Chairman of the Board of MertMedia, which he immediately renamed to the Tunney Media Group.
The return of the Tunney name marked a dramatic rightward shift in the tone of the conglomerate's properties, particularly in the cable news corner, which Tunney viewed as his personal fiefdom. A close associate of Republican president Owen Lassiter since his days as Governor of California, Tunney was a major donor to conservative Republican politicians beginning the 1980s. He was a vocal critic Lassiter's successor, Democrat Josiah Bartlet, and was incensed by Bartlet's landslide victory over Robert Ritchie. However, he pulled back on support for Republicans in 2006 due to the nomination of moderate California Senator Arnold Vinick, a long time personal enemy of Tunney due to their shared past in their home state. The lack of support from the Tunney machine is sometimes attributed as one of the causes behind Vinick's loss that year. In 2009, Tunney aggressively searched for his perfect candidate, correctly anticipating Republican victory in the following year's election. After vacillating between numerous choices, particularly Governor Marcus Blakemore, Tunney begrudgingly settled on the eventual winner, former Speaker and Acting President Glen Allen Walken, whom he would come to rely on for loosening of telecommunications laws and the appointment of friendly commissioners to the FCC and other regulatory bodies.
After his great triumph in 2005 and then the Walken victory in the 2010 election, Tunney seemed to be an upward spiral of domination. However, his success was rocked by numerous troubling incidents in 2013. The first was a divorce from his second wife Lisa Gumm, previously his personal secretary in the 2000s. The divorce was precipitated by his numerous affairs which were publicly exposed and covered in depth by his competitors in the tabloid news. The second was an IRS investigation into alleged tax fraud by NBS, which soured Tunney's relationship with the Walken administration. The third was a heart attack that left Tunney hospitalized for nearly three months. Tunney previously had a heart attack in 1999, which he recovered from quickly. However, the 2013 incident which left him incapacitated at a time of turmoil in his empire brought the specter of succession to the forefront.
For decades, Tunney had groomed his eldest son, William Jr., as his successor, but a personal crisis stemming from his own divorce in 2008 led to the younger Tunney departing from the corporate world to embark on a second life of adventuring and extreme sports. The next-in-line was NBS Chairman Jack Rudolph, who became Tunney's son-in-law in 2010 by remarriage to Tunney's younger daughter Fiona. However, Rudolph was embroiled in the IRS investigation due to his role as Chairman. The other contender was Tunney's younger son, Michael, at time considered the black sheep or buffoon of the family. Michael Tunney was a fixture of the New York social scene in the 1990s and early 2000s and his drug- and alcohol-fueled escapades were documented by the tabloids. A then-unnamed source now understood to be Jack Rudolph himself called Michael Tunney "an idiot who can't tie his own shoelaces." Nevertheless, he presented an image of a reformed man after his brother's retirement and became a new right-hand man for his father. Despite a lack of formal business education (Michael received a BA in Psychology from NYU), William Tunney called his son a "man of vision" with "a sharp political instinct" and appointed him Director of the Cable News Division in 2012.
During William Tunney's hospitalization, the board of TMG named Jack Rudolph as interim CEO and acting Chairman. However, when he left the hospital, Tunney made it clear that he did not wish Rudolph to be viewed as a permanent successor and attempted to gain his position back. However, due to his weakness and extended recovery time, the board did not pursue his request. Instead, Rudolph was ousted by a team up between Michael Tunney and a returning William Jr., who developed a rivalry with Rudolph during their shared time together in the company. After Rudolph's ouster, the brothers split the chief roles, with Michael becoming acting Chairman and William Jr. interim CEO. Their father, pleased by the return of his prodigal son and collaboration between his once-feuding sons, was prepared to retire permanently and hand the kingdom off to the princes.
However, this pleasant arrangement was interrupted by William Jr.'s attempts to tilt news coverage back towards the center ahead of what he predicted would be a very close 2014 presidential election. He was furious at the IRS investigation and hoped to mend fences with potential Democratic candidates, sounding out Gabe Tillman and Sam Seaborn to see if they would be amenable to an arrangement. This was enough to spur his father out of his nascent retirement and back into the fray, dismissing both sons from their posts and assuming full control once again. The following decade saw William Tunney rule his empire with an iron first, closely directing cable news coverage and web media, while largely ignoring what he had come to believe was the most irrelevant part of the news world, broadcast television.
In the 2020s, Tunney was once again forced to ponder his mortality with the death of his first wife, Mallory Walter, with whom he remained close personally and professionally after their divorce. Taking stock of his family, his eldest son had remarried to his college girlfriend, Alexis Howard, who was the incumbent Secretary of Energy and a famously Republican member of the Democratic Howard political family of California. The couple embarked on a plan to restore the California Republican Party to a more moderate stance in the mold of Vinick, a clear rebuke of the elder Tunney's politics. Michael Tunney, though ascending to CEO, had seemingly lost his way again, back in the tabloids for his third divorce, embarrassing antics, and irregular statements. Jack Rudolph had retired permanently from the Tunney world. Although Tunney remarried in 2016 to former NBS executive Marcia Vernon with the stated intention of siring a new heir to succeed him, it seemed he no longer had the time to wait for newborn Jonathan to grow up. He divorced Marcia Vernon in late 2021 due to what he perceived as a callous reaction to the death of his first wife Mallory.
Looking ahead to the 2022 election, Tunney bemoaned the lack of credible candidates. Having already endured the loss of close friend Henry Shallick to bête noire Sam Seaborn, Tunney tried and failed to boost Barbara Layton, Art Scheider, or Ruth Norton-Stewart, instead watching Alan Duke barrel his way to the nomination. Although Tunney had once decried Duke during his Senate career for being a "hostage taking extremist," he could not deny the ratings explosion enjoyed by his empire and the cable news world at large from covering the hellraising candidate. Guiding his hand through this ratings resurgence was a new contender for the throne, eldest grandson Owen Tunney. The 30 year old Stanford graduate was named after Owen Lassiter and was a godson of Lassiter's son Richard, and grew up idolizing his namesake. Recently installed at the Cable News Division, Tunney, derisively called "Baby Hitler" by colleagues, presented the case for Duke to his grandfather. William hesitated, but the third party candidacy of Andrew Long, whom he regarded as a "nouveau riche charlatan", made him reconsider. Although nephew Waldorf Tunney attempted to reconcile Long with his uncle, he was not persuasive enough. Fox News was already onboard the Duke train from the beginning, and Tunney had now been bested for control of the party's direction by his nearest rival. The time had come to either jump in or jump out.
Tunney jumped in. The disaster which followed became a huge personal embarrassment, the likes of which he had not endured since losing control of the family empire nearly 40 years ago. Furious, he began searching for something "big" and "exciting" which would revolutionize the news industry "forever." Obsessed with the idea of legacy and concerned about the decline of the traditional news media at the expense of the internet and social media, Tunney mulled acquiring or starting a social media network or streaming service. The disastrous launch of Atlantis GO by AWM disavowed him of the latter idea. However, it introduced the seed of a new idea, which would soon come to fruition. Correctly anticipating that the failure of AGO would to a decline AWM stock and potential ouster of CEO Reese Lansing, William Tunney began leveraging TMG assets to prepare a bid to takeover or acquire a large portion of AWM. His suspicions were exceeded when Lansing announced that the entirety of AWM would be put up for sale. Tunney quickly devised a new plan, making a massive $32.7 billion bid Atlantis Cable News alone.
With his overpayment certain to be expected, Tunney revealed his hand. With AWM and NBS in hand, he would create a news empire largely than any other in the world. Sloughing off other divisions from both companies, he alone would have direct control over two of the biggest players in the news world, granting him the ability to play to both sides, guaranteeing profitability no matter the circumstances, or so he argued. His bold pitch was controversial to many parties, including his son and CEO Michael, members of the TMG board, and perhaps most importantly, the Seaborn administration. Though he was able to bring his board onside with his typical business savvy, the Department of Justice and FCC would be harder to manipulate. The FCC declined to review the deal due a deadlock in the Commission prior to the confirmation of Commissioner Rebecca Cox-Roden. Subsequently, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit to block the deal in September. Facing this new complication, Tunney spent the last month shuttling between San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. simultaneously attempting to assuage spooked shareholders and board members while lining up his lawyers to defeat the suit in court. It was in these circumstances that he suddenly died last night.
The circumstances of his death have not been revealed yet. The death was reported by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City at 6:00 AM on November 1, 2023. The cause of death has not been announced pending an autopsy. No statement has been provided by the Tunney family or Tunney Media Group yet. Tunney is survived by two of his ex-wives, sons William Jr., Michael, and Jonathan, daughters Frances and Fiona, and 12 grandchildren.
