Turner: Unfinished deals NEW YORK - For Ted Turner, the television and sports entrepreneur, 1985 has been marked mainly by unfinished deals.

Last April, Turner, the 47-year-old chairman of the Turner Broadcasting System, began a hostile takeover bid for CBS Inc. He offered a package of high-yield, high-risk securities, known on Wall Street as junk bonds, in exchange for 67 percent of the national television network. Turner valued the purchase at $5.4 billion, but industry analysts set the figure closer to $3 billion.

CBS went on the defensive, thwarting the bid by buying back 20 percent of its stock, worth nearly $1 billion.

Although Turner's CBS effort failed, the nation's other two television networks were acquired this year. Capital Cities Communications Inc. is buying the larger American Broadcasting Cos., and the General Electric Co. is acquiring the RCA Corp., which owns the National Broadcasting Co.

Turner then agreed in August to buy MGM-UA Entertainment Co. for $1.5 billion in cash. A key part of the acquisition was MGM's film library, which includes such classics as "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz." The library represents a valuable source of programming for WTBS-TV, Turner's Atlanta-based superstation that has 33 million cable subscribers.

When Turner looked for financing help, NBC offered to buy half of his 24-hour news service, the Cable News Network. But he rejected NBC's demands for editorial control.

Then last week, talks broke off with Viacom International Inc., which had offered to buy half of MGM's assets, excluding the film library. Turner is still looking for financing.

A champion yachtsman and owner of baseball's Atlanta Braves and basketball's Atlanta Hawks, Turner's forays in the sports world this year have proved more successful.

Hartley: Victorious Fred L. Hartley, tough as a prairie wildcatter, was the force that deflected T. Boone Pickens in 1985. When Pickens, the canny Texas oilman, attempted a takeover of the Unocal Corp., which Hartley has headed since 1964, the fight came to symbolize the frenzied pyrotechnics of modern takeover battles.

The blunt and spicy Hartley, who is 68, stood his ground against Pickens, even refusing to shake his hand at an encounter on Capitol Hill. Unocal countered Pickens' $54-a-share offer with its own plan to buy back 29 percent of its stock at $72 a share.

A key victory for the Los Angeles-based Unocal came when a Delaware Supreme Court panel permitted the company's buyback to exclude Pickens.

Goizueta: A gamble Roberto C. Goizueta is the man who tried in 1985 to take away the world's favorite soft drink - a symbol of America in 155 countries - but was forced by a surge of protests to give it back.

In late April, Goizueta, the 53-year-old chairman and chief executive of Coca-Cola, announced he was going to scrap the original 99-year-old, secret formula for Coca-Cola. Amid great fanfare, he tried to convince consumers that the sweeter, fizzier taste of the new product was "a more harmonious flavor."

After all, in 1982, less than a year after the Cuban-born, Yale-educated executive took the helm of the Atlanta-based soft-drink giant, his instincts had been right about Diet Coke. That drink was rushed onto the store shelves of America without any test-marketing and became the country's third best-selling soda.

The new Coke was introduced after $4 million in research and an advertising campaign estimated to cost at least $10 million.

The public did not buy it. In early July, a mere three months after the debut of new Coke, Goizueta yielded to a groundswell of consumer protests and announced the old Coke would be revived - as "Classic Coke."

The company now continues to market the new product alongside its venerable predecessor, as the core of what the company calls its Coke "megabrand." Indeed, in a remarkable turnabout after the year's most prominent marketing gaffe, the company's total soft-drink line has continued to gain market share.

Anderson: Trying times In 1985, Warren M. Anderson faced a year of virtually unending turmoil.

As chairman and chief executive of the Union Carbide Corp., he has had to cope with the aftermath of the chemical leak that killed 2,000 and injured 200,000 in December 1984 at the company's Bhopal , India, plant. On Dec. 2, he was burned in effigy by 3 ,000 protesters who converged on the plant on the first anniversary of history's worst industrial accident.

Less than a week later, Anderson faced a new assault, when the GAF Corp. made a hostile $68-a-share cash bid for Carbide.

Anderson, 64, a 40-year veteran of the company and a chemist by training - and the Union Carbide board authorized an $85-a-share counteroffer of cash and securities.

The nation's third-largest chemical producer is also still recovering from write-offs and charges that left it with a $371 million loss for 1985's first nine months, compared with earnings of $310 million for the 1984 period.

Over the last year, Carbide's stock price has struggled back from 32 3 /4 a share, where it traded after Bhopal , to 72 1/8, its Friday close on the New York Stock Exchange.