Early renewals have been thrown at audiences by the networks over the last several weeks. Last night, during the Celebrity Apprentice finale, Donald Trump told audiences that NBC has renewed Apprentice for Season 15. As the show has been more keen about using the celebrity format over the average joe format in recent years, I’m guessing it will also be the eighth season of Celebrity Apprentice.
The renewal came during this week’s season finale, when Entertainment Tonight co-host Leeza Gibbons claimed the apprentice title, beating out journalist Geraldo Rivera in the process. The episode brought in nearly 6 million viewers and a 1.6 rating—better than the State of Affairs finale that also aired on Monday night. While a 1.6 rating is not usually a number to jump for joy over, it’s certainly fine enough compared to a lot of the numbers that NBC shows have been doing during the 2014-2015 TV season. Last night’s State of Affairs finale, for instance, only pulled in a 1.0 rating.
The Celebrity Apprentice renewal wasn’t always so clear-cut. Celebrity Apprentice disappeared from the spring schedule in 2014, although NBC at the time did not say the series was canceled. Then, we earned a bit of a shock in November when Donald Trump announced that the new season of Celebrity Apprentice had already been shot and would hit the schedule this January. There was little fanfare surrounding the release, and the shortened Season 14 sped through its 8-episode series in January and early February, with the finale airing on February 16.
Currently, NBC has been pretty mum regarding Season 15 details. We have no idea if it will be a Celebrity Apprentice season; although, as noted prior, that has been the trend. We have no idea if the show will hit the schedule next TV season and if the new season will be yet another shortened season of the series. The one thing I can say for certain is that Joan Rivers won’t appear, even though she did pop up this season, thanks to filming Season 14 prior to her death in September. Plenty of drama should be expected, as well.
NBC has had a pretty tough fall. Many of the network’s latest programs have already been canceled, including A to Z and Bad Judge, and to make matter worse, a lot of the network’s other freshman programs are not doing so hot in the ratings. This includes fall shows like State of Affairs and Constantine (which actually had production shut down), but also brand new programs like The Slap and Allegiance. It’s a huge tire fire. And with a ton of cancelations on NBC’s horizon, it’s easy to see why the network would want to keep a modestly rated, cheap-to-produce reality series around.
Photo Credit @ NBC
