With the Bar Set Low, Trump Limps Over

In its move to Monday night this week, "The Apprentice" did exactly what NBC predicted, and the debut totally met NBC's expectations, we're told.

That is, a fourth-place finish in its time slot among total viewers and among the 18-to-49-year-olds the network targets.

NBC sets the bar pretty low for its prime-time schedule, apparently.

Neither gobs of free publicity in the form of a deliciously catty spat with Martha Stewart nor the move out of the rarefied atmosphere of Thursday night could save Donald Trump's reality series from a saggy return to NBC's lineup.

Monday's audience of 9.7 million viewers makes it the lowest-rated regularly scheduled Trump episode in "Apprentice" history.

In the fall, when "The Apprentice" opened with only 9.8 million viewers, it set The Donald to complaining that NBC's Martha Stewart edition of the show was killing his mojo. It's true Stewart's version failed to attract viewers.

The homemaking diva responded to Trump's comments by agreeing that two versions of "The Apprentice" were one too many. More specifically, she told Fortune magazine that she had been assured hers would be the only version on the air in the fall and that the two simultaneous versions were confusing viewers.

"It was even discussed that I would be firing The Donald on the first show," she said in the article.

NBC moved Martha's show from 8 to 9 p.m. Wednesday in an effort to salvage it, to no avail. By November, the network's official position was that it had planned all along to air just one round of the Stewart-hosted "Apprentice" and that she would not be back on prime time because she was far too busy doing her syndicated daytime show for NBC Universal.

Meanwhile, Trump's version had dropped to 10 million from an average of 14 million weekly viewers in its previous edition.

Last month Martha gave an interview to Newsweek in which -- it having played so well in Fortune -- she repeated her Coulda Fired The Donald routine.

The Donald, who knows a publicity opportunity when he sees one, fired off a letter to Stewart -- sending it to her only after sending it to the media, Martha whined -- in which he called her version of "The Apprentice" "a mistake for everybody especially NBC." He added: "Essentially, you made this firing up just as you made up your sell order of ImClone," referring to the stock sale scandal that landed Stewart in the slammer.

Trump does have a way with the zinger.

Martha then went all girly, saying she was stunned by his "mean-spirited" and "reckless" letter. The celebrity suck-up shows and gossip columns gobbled it up with a spoon. Trump was ready to make his comeback, newly moved to Monday, where, he pointed out to the New York Times in an article that ran Monday, he would have a better lead-in in Howie Mandel-hosted reality hit "Deal or No Deal" (instead of that "disaster" sitcom "Joey"), and he would not have to compete in a time slot with CBS ratings giant "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

Only his show didn't really open.

Even though it had been heavily promoted during NBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics from Turin. Which puts a little chink in NBC Universal TV Group President Randy Falco's claim in the Los Angeles Times that the Games are so valuable because of their amazingly powerful promotional platform.

Despite a "Deal or No Deal" lead-in of more than 13 million viewers (and an appearance by Trump), "The Apprentice" finished behind CBS's "Two and a Half Men" and "Courting Alex," behind Fox's "24," behind ABC's finale of "The Bachelor."

Exactly what NBC predicted, and totally meeting NBC's expectations.