The Apprentice: Trump Wants To Get Martha Fired

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October 21st, 2005 at 15:00 by Stuart Heritage

Donald_trump_martha_stewart_apprenticeOver here in the UK, The Apprentice isn’t on TV at all at the moment. No Alan Sugar donating everything he owns to Great Ormond Street Hospital, no Donald Trump shouting pre-prepared lines while he jabs his fingers around willy-nilly, and no Martha Stewart writing sappy letters to people she’s just fired.

But the Americans are far luckier - they have two different versions of The Apprentice running at the same time - a Trump series and a Martha series. Thing is, though, they’ve stopped watching both. And Donald’s blaming it all on Martha.

Since she got out of prison for apparently lying about stock sales,
Martha Stewart (Books) has been busy reinventing herself. There’s the daytime
talk show, which is meant to show the cuddly Martha as she looks at
famous pigs and makes jeans into flowers. And then there’s The
Apprentice: Martha Stewart, which shows the steely, savvy Martha.

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart is running concurrently with the
original Donald Trump (Books) fronted The Apprentice. But it looks like two
different versions of The Apprentice is proving too much for viewers to cope with.
Last season, the Trump Apprentice was drawing 14 million views - this
season is averaging 10 million. Trump, like the business professional
he is, knows exactly what the problem is. During a radio interview
yesterday, he said:

"I think there was confusion between Martha’s ‘Apprentice’
and mine, and mine continues to do well and… the other one
has struggled very severely. I
think it probably hurt mine and I sort of predicted that it
would."

Seeing
as how it was a radio interview, it’s unclear whether or not Donald was
jabbing his finger around as he made this remark. But he probably was.
When asked if The Apprentice: Martha Stewart - which is only getting
around 6.6 million viewers - would make it to a second series, Donald
said:

"That’s up to Mark Burnett and myself
and NBC as to whether or not the Martha show continues but it
certainly has struggled mightily."

Martha, you’re fired. Now get back to the day job. Those Halloween Boo-Fests aren’t going to craft themselves.

Read more:

Trump Blames Martha Stewart For His Ratings Slide - ABC

[story by Stuart Heritage]

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One Response to “The Apprentice: Trump Wants To Get Martha Fired”

  1. Beth Says:
    October 21st, 2005 at 7:16 pm

    I actually would speculate the opposite has happened. Trump ran into a lot of rating problems last season, The Apprentice was running out of steam. Back to back nights of the show are too much for viewers, and beyond that NBC put the show in a time slot destined for failure.

    Martha’s daytime show has a 42% rating increase over the last holder of its time slot, while The Apprentice: Martha Stewart has to compete against Lost, one of the most popular shows on American television.

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