Ned Turner

February 19, 1950 (age 71)
**Edward Robert "Ned" Turner IV**(born February 19, 1950) is an American media mogul, businessman, philanthropist and professional wrestling promoter. Turner is best known as the founder of NBS Television and later NBS Telecommunications. As of January 2023, Turner is estimated to be the 27th richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $45.3 billion.

Turner is often seen as an important innovator for his work with NBS Telecommunications, particularly the internet.

## Business Career

For Turner's 21st birthday in 1971, he was gifted a lottery ticket by his grandmother. The ticket turned out to be a winner, and Turner won approximately $2.4 million (approximately $14.6 million in 2017 dollars), which he then used to found NBS Television locally in Seattle. The station became particularly popular with the 18-30 age demographic of Seattle. Due to this, Turner would often buy the rights to popular television shows so that they would only be permitted to air on NBS Television in the Seattle region. This only bolstered the popularity of the station.

Turner would eventually expand to other areas of Washington and later certain parts of Oregon.

Entering the 1980s, Turner founded NBS Telecommunications, a cable and telephone provider. Once again focused in Washington, NBS Telecommunications offered high quality services at lower prices than their compeitors. At this time, NBS Television shifted from a regional focused station to a national television station, offering a variety of different programming for all demographics. NBS Telecommunications also began operating nationwide in 1989.

Entering the 2000s, NBS Television and NBS Telecommunications were both doing well financially, but Turner wanted to specifically invest in the internet. And so, NBS Telecommunications began offering Internet to customers, promising high speeds at low costs.

The success of NBS Telecommunications and NBS Television nationwide caused Turner's net worth to skyrocket in the mid-to-late 2000s, where it now sits at approximately $45.3 billion, making Turner the 27th richest person in the world.

### Professional wrestling & NNJ Wrestling

*See also: Lore*

Throughout all of this, Turner had a stark interest in entering the business of professional wrestling. Turner's father was a professional wrestler and, by extention, Turner became a lifelong fan. Turner attempted to purchase World Championship Wrestling in 2001, but was ultimately outbid by the company he would eventually own.

One of NBS' main competitors throughout its history was NNJ Telecommunications. When describing the company following NBS' purchase of it, Turner commented that "NBS was an elephant but NNJ was a mouse. Even though the elephant could crush the mouse with no effort whatsoever, the elephant was frightened and could only nervously stomp its feet until the mouse was finally dead."

One of the motivating factors of NBS' slow but aggressive destruction of their competitors was NNJ's purchase of World Wrestling Entertainment for approximately $10.3 billion. Turner specifically wanted to shrink the value of NNJ Telecommunications before NBS purchased the company. NBS began offering deals to customers who would switch over from NNJ to NBS, giving some customers as much as 60% off of their total bill, for life, just to switch over. This move crippled NNJ, driving the company to take drastic cost-cutting measures, one of which was cancelling WWE programming.

Turner and NBS bought NNJ Telecommunications in early August of 2017 for a measly $1 million after the company had been de-listed from the stock exchange in May 2017.

In early September of 2017, Turner announced that professional wrestling would return to nationwide, and by extention, worldwide television. Turner kickstarted the "Reboot Era" of NNJ Wrestling with the Reboot Draft. Turner then rebooted his company once more in 2020. When asked why the company was keeping the name NNJ Wrestling, Turner stated that it was "in respect to the company that almost drove me insane". Turner made his professional wrestling debut in a losing effort against Shawn Michaels on an episode of Raw in 2020.