NBC announced this morning that the premiere of  The Apprentice: Celebrity Edition will be delayed one week, from Thursday, January 3 to Thursday, January 10.  The series will still inhabit the 9pm Thursday time slot and keep its pre-determined long-term schedule.  The only real ramification is that Celebrity Apprentice will continue on one week longer than originally planned into the Spring.  The reason for the delay is likely to avoid college football on Thursday the 3rd, when the Orange Bowl is scheduled to air on FOX.  All in all, it's probably a sound decision by NBC. 

The Celebrity Apprentice is something I've written about extensively in the past few weeks and I'm still intrigued by its potential.  I don't think it will be a top twenty hit, or likely even close, but it should do better than the last few seasons, on account of the lack of quality programming available to viewers during the strike and the celebrity aspect (though most of the “celebrities” aren't particularly famous).  Celebrity Apprentice's competition got a lot hairier last week when ABC decided to place Lost in the same Thursday at 9pm time slot.  NBC could not have liked that news.  However, today's announcement shows that NBC is more afraid of college football than Lost, since the delay eliminates one non-Lost Thursday from The Apprentice's schedule.

This makes sense, though.  It would seem reasonable that the Lost audience and The Celebrity Apprentice audience wouldn't be very similar.  I don't see a lot of viewers watching one and DVRing the other.  NBC should at least hope this is the case.  Celebrity Apprentice will definitely be the last Apprentice if it brings similar numbers to the ratings nightmare that was The Apprentice: LA.  Even with all the product placement and on-air promotions Apprentice is famous for, I can't see a hyped-up reality series that only receives 6 million viewers an episode continuing on forever.


-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer
Source: Zap2It
(Image Courtesy of NBC)