NBC 'fires' apprentice Martha Stewart

0 Comments | AFP, November, 2005

NEW YORK (AFP) — US lifestyle guru and former prison inmate Martha Stewart has failed to make the grade in the competitive world of reality television.

The Hollywood Reporter said that the NBC network had passed on another series of the Stewart-hosted version of "The Apprentice," in which the homemaking maven had sought to replicate the success of the original series helmed by New York property tycoon Donald Trump.

While NBC sources told the Hollywood Reporter that a second series had been canned, a network spokesman insisted that the show always had been scheduled to run for only one cycle.

Like its Trump-hosted namesake, the show set up a competition among 16 would-be executives to win a 250,000-dollar prize and a year-long "apprenticeship" job at...