Donald Blames Martha for Lower Apprentice Ratings

Donald Trump has acknowledged that the decision by NBC to produce a second The Apprentice program with Martha Stewart as its star was a mistake and that his original show has suffered for it. "I think there was confusion between Martha's Apprentice and mine," he told ABC radio.

"Mine continues to do well, and as you know, the other one has struggled severely." (Trump's Apprentice audience is down almost 40 percent from last year.) Stewart's show, he said, "probably hurt mine and I sort of predicted that it would."

Martha Stewart has also disclosed that the producers of The Apprentice had considered dropping Donald Trump from the show and replacing him with her. When she originally agreed to do the NBC reality series, "I thought I was replacing The Donald," Stewart remarks in an interview that will appear in Fortune magazine's Nov. 14 edition. Trump himself was not informed of such plans. "I don't think he ever knew," Stewart told the magazine. As things turned out, Stewart's Apprentice has fared poorly in the ratings, while Trump's version performs decently, but no where near the ratings level it had reached in recent years.