Dawna Stone

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 on 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 simply saying goodbye, 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 (candidates were reshuffled after Matchstick lost several times in a row) 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- to 49-year-old viewers. However, this program aired against very tough competition, including ABC's massive