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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
From 1997, Mark Singer profiles Donald Trump
"The Apprentice," the NBC reality show starring Donald Trump as God, is the greatest show in the country, and maybe in the entire world, and, as I sit watching it in my spectacular apartment, just steps from legendary Amsterdam Avenue, the most desirable address in Manhattan, I feel that I am living out the American dream, and that writing about the show is the job of a lifetime, and will, if I work at it hard enough, make me a billionaire someday.
Well, maybe not. But this is the line of goods that Trump sells, and it seems that the sixteen contestants on the show, who are vying to win a job as the president of one of his companies, can't buy enough of it. The format of "The Apprentice" parallels that of CBS's "Survivor," and it's no accident: both shows were created by the reality-TV mastermind Mark Burnett, though in this case Burnett shares executive-producer billing with Trump, who, according to the closing credits, is solely responsible for the weekly decision as to who stays and who goes--who ends up, as he puts it, in "the suite or the street." Financially, the stakes on "The Apprentice" are lower than they are on "Survivor": the final contestants on that show win a million dollars and then get to go home (though most of them seem...
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