What Fall Canning Season Might Mean for Stewart

Sometime around midseason -- the show's publicist says the timing hasn't been decided -- Stewart will select her winning apprentice and put him or her to work doing whatever an apprentice to Martha does, bringing the first edition of her prime-time experience to an end.

"We've only contemplated one edition of the show," says Reilly.

Which brings back the question of what NBC was expecting when it scheduled the show. Stewart's name is among the more instantly recognizable in American culture, to be sure. Her eponymous magazine, Martha Stewart Living, sells around 2 million copies a month, which is a lot of magazines. Her books (the latest, "The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Grow, or Manage a Business," has just been released) find a solid readership. But a format that fosters dog-eat-dog competition, major backbiting and a weekly opportunity for the star to kill off the loser may not be the ideal venue for a woman who's made her career dispensing comforts to her admirers.

Was there ever a point when she could bring an audience of, say, 15 million to any one venture?

"I don't think so," says Quan, "because Martha's appeal was never with men. And that was the appeal of Donald's version of 'The Apprentice,' that it drew men and women. Martha's appeal is with women -- and not younger women."

For now, though, Stewart isn't going anywhere. She's promoting the new book, her magazines -- there are several others, among them Martha Stewart Weddings and Everyday Food -- retain their place on the newsstand, and her new syndicated daytime show, "Martha," continues to draw solid though unspectacular early ratings. And tonight the fourth installment of "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart" will air at 9 o'clock. Which, to hear NBC tell it, is at least a pretty good thing.

"We're definitely not disappointed in the quality of the show," says Reilly. "We've seen most of the episodes at this point, and we feel we're delivering the goods, or Mark Burnett's delivering the goods. . . . I already am encouraged by the tick-up we saw in the ratings last week. And although this 'Apprentice' is not going to be a phenomenon, I think in the end it will be a success."