• by Paul Gough , June 24, 2004

Before "The Apprentice" began last January, Donald Trump had one fear: Failure.

Trump has had a long history of success in real estate, casino building, and even as his own brand. But as he told a standing-room-only crowd at the PROMAX&BDA conference in New York Thursday afternoon, he didn't necessarily know what he was getting into when he signed on to the Mark Burnett-produced reality show. His friends, more savvy to the ways of television than the real estate magnate, asked him if he realized that most television shows don't last the first season.

"Honestly, I didn't want to fail. I didn't want a loser," Trump said. "I hated hearing about the failure rate [of new shows], the loss rate."

He recalled how he attended the NBC upfront two years ago as new shows starring Whoopi Goldberg and Rob Lowe were introduced for the fall schedule.

"They're all gone now," Trump said. He didn't want to get a call from Jeff Zucker telling him that his show was canceled and, before an appearance on "Saturday Night Live," relayed that to SNL producer Lorne Michaels.

"Lorne said, 'No, Donald, they won't ever call'" when you're canceled, Trump said.

Not that it would have mattered, since "The Apprentice" was one of the top shows of last television season, and a key building block to NBC's future without "Friends." Trump, who also professed to know little about television, seemed to question several of the strategies that helped "The Apprentice" hit it big. Trump said many of his friends didn't catch "The Apprentice" when it was first run on Thursdays but on various reruns scheduled during the week, including multiple airings on CNBC over the weekend.

He also wondered about NBC's plans to broadcast a "director's cut" of next year's "The Apprentice" on Saturday night, including more of the boardroom scene that normally gets left on the cutting-room floor --and more, of course, of Trump.

"I'm not sure I agree with that, either," Trump said.

"The Apprentice" returns to NBC next season, with two runs beginning in the fall. The number of contestants has been increased from 16 to 18, and on Thursday afternoon he said the second run of the reality series is "far better" than the first earlier this year. He said the quality of the candidates is stronger this year and the tasks are more difficult, involving a number of unspecified but big corporations.

"In the first one, we sold lemonade and crap like that," Trump said to laughs from the crowd. "I'm not knocking lemonade. It did very well." But he said the show's success the first time around made it easier to make deals with companies for product integration, including a soft-drink maker.

"If we had called these companies for 'Apprentice I,' they would have laughed at us," Trump said.

Vince Manze, whose job at the NBC Agency involved promoting the show, said there were more product placements this time around.

"The product integrations in these types of shows are a natural," Manze said.

In a question from an audience member, Trump said that he was aware of other mogul-type shows on other networks, including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's show on ABC and Virgin founder Richard Branson's program planned for Fox. He said the politically correct thing to say would be that he wishes them well.

"But the truth is, I hope they bomb," he said. He later amended that to hoping the rival shows do well but not too well--"but I don't think they will."