(FORTUNE Magazine) – TED TURNER didn't go broke in 1986. Considering this cable TV titan's mania for outrageous business risks, survival may be the most impressive of his many recent accomplishments. Lean and cocky at 48, the wildman entrepreneur of TV still exhibits an overheated ego and ambitions to save the world. He also remains a shrewd asset builder. In 1986 his ambition and love of risk carried him to his most scarifying heights yet, and the trip is changing his famously flamboyant way of life. Many movie industry experts thought Turner was even wackier than usual to pay $1.6 billion -- all borrowed -- for the unprofitable Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in March. Four months later Turner staged the Goodwill Games, a televised Olympic-style contest in Moscow meant to foster world peace, one of his obsessions. The games lost $27 million for Turner; their effect on world peace hasn't been calculated. The price of Turner's indulgence: His overstretched company is losing money at the rate of $200 million a year, even though Cable News Network, the 24-hour-a-day news service that broadcasting veterans said couldn't succeed, is solidly in the black.

Turner Broadcasting Co. shares, which recently traded around $13, have lost half their value since August. At that price Turner's 80% stake was worth a still handsome $240 million. But to meet enormous debt payments, the Atlanta daredevil last fall sold virtually all the pieces of MGM, except its valuable library of films, back to their previous owner, financier Kirk Kerkorian, and to TV producer Lorimar-Telepictures. Even Turner has conceded he probably must sell more assets or a big chunk of Turner Broadcasting stock. The strain of Turner's life on the edge of insolvency suddenly seems apparent. Asked about his work schedule last summer, he gazed blankly into space, shook his head, and muttered, as if to himself, ''Impossible, impossible, impossible.'' A few months later Turner separated from his second wife, Jane, and passed day-to-day operating control of Turner Broadcasting to a five-member committee of trusted executives. For a passionately devoted manager who regularly slept on a sofa bed in his office after 18-hour workdays, the change seems dramatic, perhaps traumatic. ''I built this business almost from scratch,'' he says. People who know him well say he regards Turner Broadcasting as an extension of himself. Turner is also shrinking his once sizable public role. Since the Goodwill Games he has retreated from publicity and refuses to discuss his plans. Some observers speculate that as he staggered from the pressures of financing his precarious MGM deal to those of coping with the monstrous debt it created, the stresses of the last year finally exceeded even Turner's capacities. In the circumstances, his uncharacteristic withdrawal at Turner Broadcasting does seem symptomatic of exhaustion, and perhaps a man as given to dark brooding as Turner might choose such a moment to ponder again the meaning of life. In recent years he has increasingly applied himself to idealistic efforts to avert ecological disaster and nuclear war, both of which figure in this fervent propagandist's vision of a looming apocalypse. ''I'm not just living for myself,'' he says. ''I'm not doing this for the money. We've got to change the whole philosophy of the planet.'' None of this should suggest that Turner will soon set forth in white robes, having transcended Turner Broadcasting and the grasping trivialities of commerce. Most likely Turner, who regards himself as a visionary, is simply bored with the fussy job of cleaning up the financial mess he created in 1986. His efforts have already brought Turner Broadcasting back from the brink of disaster, and with fewer operating concerns, he will have time to focus on the big issues that interest him most. These surely include maintaining his proprietor's control over the company he built, and somehow expanding its reach. Whatever Turner's chances of changing the world, they would be a lot less without Turner Broadcasting alive and prosperous.