On a conference call with reporters in May 2003, NBC executive Jeff Zucker was describing the concept of Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice” seven months before the show’s debut when someone interrupted with the question everyone had in mind: “How much of a prize is a job with Donald Trump?” Well, Zucker said, there was a six-figure salary too.
For a few hot moments, “The Apprentice” was a big deal, and renowned New York developer Trump became an even bolder bold-faced name. His was a different kind of
reality show, a program on which smart, accomplished viewers who wouldn’t go near the cutthroat islands of “Survivor” or the virtual Skinner box of “Big Brother” actually could imagine themselves as fired-up competitors.
With its latest cycle set to begin next month, the program, no longer shiny and new, has the earmarks of having become a fixer-upper.
The first go-round averaged more than 20 million viewers. The one that ended in June averaged less than 11 million.
NBC already has OK’d a seventh run, but that doesn’t mean Trump and executive producer Mark Burnett, the man behind the resilient platinum standard for reality shows, “Survivor,” are wrong to worry their golden goose is laying ordinary eggs.
Their response, however, has not been that of business people confident in the quality of what they’re peddling. Rather, they’re acting as though the bottom has dropped out.
TV critics I know and respect tell me that from what they’ve seen of the latest version – relocated to sunny Southern California, the better to get beauties and beefcakes in their swimsuits – the show has been cheapened.
The humiliation of the worst reality shows has been embraced, with challenge losers not just at risk of going home but forced to camp outside the mansion where winners luxuriate.
Whatever patina of legitimacy this supposedly long-form job interview once had seems gone, and one can’t help but detect a whiff of desperation.
Maybe that’s why we’ve been getting so much of Trump lately in full-throated sales mode. You would think a billionaire – he’s suing the author of a book that called him merely a millionaire for defamation – would be less concerned with what people say or how a TV show that should be a hobby fares.
But when your name is your brand, you tend to come out swinging.
Rosie O’Donnell of ABC’s “The View” last week was bluntly critical of him opportunistically injecting himself into a controversy at the Miss USA Pageant, though he owns the pageant, so it’s his business. Suddenly, Trump was everywhere, giving those of us who don’t work for him a hint of how much fun he is when he’s ticked off.
“I’m worth billions of dollars, and I have to listen to this fat slob?” Trump said in one or more of the umpteen interviews he did to vent against O’Donnell, and, not coincidentally, tout “The Apprentice.”
The old “You’re fired!” Trump often seemed a caricature, but he was a fun caricature. Now, not so much.
