Trump and Martha: Not a Good Thing

If you ask me, and as usual you haven't, darn you, I think both Trump and Stewart are behaving badly in their little "Apprentice" spat. Martha continues to stick to her story that creator Burnett and NBC planned for her to fire Trump and have just one show. Trump continues to claim her show was terrible and she needs to take responsibility for that.

To Trump I'd ask "Why are Burnett and NBC staying quiet in this? Neither has, to my knowledge, confirmed or denied Martha's claim. And for my money, I preferred Martha.

To Martha I'd say "You've got nothing to gain from this. Take the high ground. Either get someone to confirm your story or drop it."

But one point that has come out in this whole mess is hard to refute. Stewart claims that brand dilution hurt her show. Trump made a similar claim back in November, 2005.

In an ABC News Radio interview airing Thursday, Trump said the fourth edition of his corporate-themed NBC reality show “The Apprentice” was being dragged down in the ratings by Stewart’s faltering spinoff series.

“I think there was confusion between Martha’s ‘Apprentice’ and mine, and mine continues to do well and ... the other one has struggled very severely,” the real estate tycoon said. “I think it probably hurt mine, and I sort of predicted that it would.”

I can think of two other cases that support that assessment. "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette" are essentially the same show, but they never show at the same time. If I'm not mistaken, one shows in the Fall Season, and the other in the Summer Season. At the very least I've never seen them back to back.

Another successful show, "The Biggest Loser," launched several follow-on editions this year, but their main show took center stage. The other editions (families, couples, etc) came after the main show brought down the curtain.

The "Bachelor/ette" franchise is on ABC, but "The Biggest Loser" is an NBC creation, so I'm surprised that NBC didn't take a similar approach. I'm not sure why Donald and Martha didn't insist on it. Such a bizarre scheduling only support's Martha's claims about firing Donald, but ultimately both Trump and Stewart supposedly saw the main problem--at least after the fact.

At any rate, Martha's claims are not new. Donald's had plenty of time to respond before now. It's interesting to note that Donald is the only one who has anything to gain from this debacle, and it just happens to be going on right as his latest show (which still had ratings problems) is about to launch. I'm probably not the only one suffering from television burnout after the Olympics.

By the way, it's probably just a coincidence that Trump chose to call attention to Martha's daytime show by ripping on it. Yeah, Uh huh. This feud is much better scripted than their hideous commercials they did together plugging both their shows.

Prediction: Watch for the spat to cool after tonight, and for the two to reconcile at the first sign of ratings drop for this season's "Apprentice."

Me? Cynical? Nah. I'm too jaded to be cynical.