ratings

New Season of The Apprentice Flops

We’d prefer not to get an angry phone call from the Donald, but there’s no other way of putting this: NBC’s reboot of the non-celebrity edition of The Apprentice totally tanked last night. In a big setback to the Peacock network’s hoped-for comeback, Thursday’s two-hour premiere drew just 4.7 million viewers. That’s far fewer viewers than MTV’s current season of Jersey Shore (over 6 million) or most of the reality shows that aired on the broadcast networks this summer. Worse, Apprentice is skewing old, earning its lowest ratings ever last night among adults under 50 and coming in 53 percent below what last spring’s celeb edition averaged when it premiered on a Sunday night. While there’s no silver lining here for Mr. Trump, his Apprentice producing partner, Mark Burnett, can take some comfort in the fact that Wednesday’s Survivor premiere actually went up versus last fall, despite switching nights from Thursday. As for NBC, it has to be hoping that viewers simply forgot about The Apprentice because they were too busy planning their big parties heralding Monday’s arrival of The Event, which, if preseason tracking is to be believe, will open huge next week.

New Season of The Apprentice Flops