The Apprentice: Martha Stewart

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart is a reality game show and a spin-off from the series, The Apprentice, that ran in the fall of 2005. Broadcast on NBC, the show featured business tycoon Martha Stewart. Tasks were centered around Stewart's areas of expertise: media, culinary arts, entertaining, decorating, crafts, design, merchandising, and style. The tone of the show was somewhat muted compared to the original, as Stewart brought her own sensibilities to the elimination process, often using her catchphrase: "You just don't fit in" in contrast to original series host Donald Trump's catchphrase: "You're fired." She also wrote a cordial letter to the candidate who was fired; many times she took subtle jabs at the fired candidate and gave frank reasons for why the candidate did not succeed on the show. Several segments featuring Stewart were filmed at her home in Bedford, New York because at the time, she was serving the five-month house arrest portion of her ImClone scandal conviction.

Donald Trump, Mark Burnett and Jay Bienstock executive produced the show. Businessman Charles Koppelman and Stewart's daughter, Alexis Stewart accompanied the two teams during tasks and reported their observations to Stewart in the boardroom.

The two teams, Matchstick and Primarius, competed in 11 challenges. Overall, Primarius won eight, while Matchstick (completely jettisoned by Martha in week 11) won only three.

The show's theme song is "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" by Eurythmics. The logo is a businesswoman in a dress running with a bag instead of a businessman running with a briefcase. The background music is written by David Vanacore, Mark T, Williams, and Jeff Lippencott.

Despite the fairly big initial hype, ratings for this spin-off were relatively weak. This show averaged only 7 million viewers, and garnered a mediocre 2.5 average in the very important demographic of 18-49 year old viewers. However, this program aired against very tough competition, including ABC's massive hit Lost. After the second episode, the show was moved from the 8 p.m. time slot to the 9 p.m. slot, and in spite of facing Lost, saw a slight increase in ratings.

There have been numerous rumors thrown out as to why the show failed, including: "too much" Martha Stewart (her Martha daytime program and this prime time program), confusion between this version and Trump's version which airs the day after (on Thursday nights), apathy over reality shows in general, NBC's declining fortunes, fatigue with the Apprentice franchise itself, and weak casting, although some felt the cast was superior to Apprentice 4, which ran concurrently. Trump blamed the Martha series for the declining ratings of his own version, even though the ratings for his show began to fall over a year before Martha's version premiered. Stewart responded in turn that she was supposed to have "fired" Trump in the premiere episode, making her a successor to Trump rather than the host of a spinoff. In mid-November 2005, NBC announced that it would not bring back the show for a second season, although the network and Stewart claimed that the show was initially planned as a one-season endeavor.

Within a few years of the end of the series, three of the top runners-up (Bethenny, Marcela, and Leslie) were participating in other television ventures, with 2nd place finisher Bethenny Frankel parleying her fame from the inaugural cast The Real Housewives of New York City into further reality shows, television hosting, books, and a successful business - Skinnygirl Cocktails. Fourth-place finisher Ryan Danz appeared on the 21st season of The Amazing Race alongside his girlfriend Abbie Ginsberg.