Inside Atlanta’s High-Profile Security Control Rooms

Cable television might not be what it is today without Ted Turner, whose broadcasting empire beams from Atlanta and makes the CNN Center one of downtown’s popular places for visitors to tour and perhaps glimpse some on-air hosts and famous guests. The news network’s world headquarters offers studio tours within an impressive building layout that features a huge atrium with restaurants, retail and an eight-story escalator, the world’s largest freestanding one. But as a building that’s open to the public with free entrance and a home to television personnel, CNN Center also offers its share of daily security risks. As such, Turner Broadcasting System Vice President Corporate Security Bart Szafnicki heads an impressive team that is also responsible for the adjacent Omni Hotel and includes roughly 180 security officers in Atlanta alone.

“We face the same risks that other corporations face, but working for a media is quite an interesting venture in security,” says Szafnicki, who notes that CNN, of course, also faces worldwide life-safety risks with correspondents reporting from regions of conflict, “not to mention we have talent here on regular basis that have either attention from intimacy seekers or worse, serial stalkers, so in addition to normal risks we face as a security operation we have other risks we face because of the nature of our business.”