Donald vs Martha! Go at it again!
From zap2it.com
Martha Stewart says that when she signed on to do a version of "The Apprentice" with NBC, she believed hers would be the only one on the air. There were even discussions that she would "fire" Donald Trump on the air to launch her show.
That, of course, didn't happen, and "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart" became one of the higher-profile non-starters of the 2005-06 TV season. The show averaged just 6.6 million viewers for NBC in the fall and won't return.
"I think having two 'Apprentices' was as unfair to him as it was unfair to me," Stewart says in an interview with Newsweek. "It should have been one 'Apprentice.'"
Although she says her relationship with Trump is "excellent," Stewart also notes that "Donald will be and say whatever the Donald wants to be and say." And sure enough, Trump, who has griped that Stewart's "Apprentice" dragged down ratings for his show in the fall, reacted with something short of sympathy to Stewart's comments.
"I wish she would be able to take responsibility for her failure," Trump tells New York's Daily News (Newsweek says he declined to be interviewed for the Stewart story).
Mark Burnett, who produces "The Apprentice" as well as Stewart's daytime show, "Martha," acknowledges that the idea of Stewart "firing" Trump was kicked around. "Thank God that didn't happen," he tells the magazine.
From the AP:
Sometimes there is too much of a good thing. Martha Stewart believes her version of NBC's popular reality show featuring Donald Trump flopped this past fall because of too much Apprentice. Her show was supposed to be the sole show, starting out by having her fire Trump on the air, she told Newsweek for its issue on newsstands Monday.
"Having two Apprentices was as unfair to him as it was unfair to me," she said. "But Donald really wanted to stay on."
Trump refuted the domestic diva would have given him a pink slip, citing the fact that he co-owned the show featuring him as a boardroom boss.
"I wish she would be able to take responsibility for her failure," Trump told The Associated Press on Sunday night in Dallas. He said her show didn't have the right tone or the right demeanour.
Stewart lost an appeal last month, ending her criminal case for lying about a stock sale that sent her to jail for five months and nearly six months of house arrest.
Her company's stock was down by more than half during the past year, but the company is doing better now, and "we're back in spirit and in business dealings," Stewart said
Advertisers and subscribers are returning to Martha Stewart Living, her magazine. And she has new projects planned, including a Sirius Satellite Radio show and a new magazine, Blueprint.
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