Billionaire Ted is a series of comedic sketches that ran on World Wrestling Federation (WWF) programming in 1996. They were created to parody media mogul Ted Turner, who owned rival World Championship Wrestling (WCW), and several WCW wrestlers. The skits consisted of mocking Turner and WCW by referencing the age of their wrestlers as well as bringing up concerns about steroids. The skits were viewed as gradually becoming more malicious rather than parody, as they were broadcast in addition to the WWF chairman Vince McMahon complementing them with anti-Turner press advertisements outside of WWF programming. The skits were ended by USA Network president Kay Koplovitz, who felt they had moved away from parody and towards mirroring McMahon's personal opinions of Turner and WCW. Background During the 1980s, the WWF had been the top professional wrestling organization in the United States, although it had a solid challenger in Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP), which Turner purchased in 1988 and renamed World Championship Wrestling (WCW). By the mid-1990s, WCW began recruiting high-profile former WWF superstars from the 1980s, such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. In 1995 it directly targeted the WWF by creating its own flagship television show, WCW Monday Nitro. They scheduled it on TNT in the same time slot as the WWF's flagship show WWF Monday Night Raw, which aired on the USA Network. In response to these and other tactics, WWF chairman Vince McMahon decided to create a series of sketches lampooning Turner and WCW. Despite going against his long-time policy of not acknowledging his competition, McMahon decreed to his aides: "It's going to be the funniest thing we've ever done". The skits parodied Turner, who was referred to as "Billionaire Ted" and portrayed as a bumbling, out-of-touch hillbilly initially trying to improve his WCW product compared with the perceived superiority of WWF programming. Also parodied alongside him in the skits were former 1980s WWF talents who had defected to WCW, namely Hulk Hogan (who became "The Huckster"), "Macho Man" Randy Savage (who became known as the "Nacho Man"), and WCW interviewer "Mean" Gene Okerlund (who was parodied as "Scheme Gene"). Hogan and Savage were portrayed as elderly and incapable wrestlers, while Okerlund was depicted as a con man who wanted to scam money from fans via premium phone lines. Original sketches The first few sketches (originally promoted as "Billionaire Ted's Rasslin' Warroom") feature Billionaire Ted in his boardroom