Andy DehnartWhen The Celebrity Apprentice 2 debuts in February, the show will be expanded from one-hour episodes to two-hour episodes, and its producer and star are happy about the change.
Executive producer Mark Burnett told TV Week, “It’s great. It wasn’t a sudden call at all. During production, the people at NBC were saying the show was so great and should really be two hours. … It really came from how strongly everyone felt about the show when we were shooting.”
The practice of super-sizing episodes because NBC has nothing else to air has practically ruined The Biggest Loser, which now drags more than a car towing the show’s entire cast, and has too much time for those egregious product-whoring segments. For me, the series is only watchable now with a finger on the fast-forward button, particularly during the weigh-ins, because it’s not like they’ve actually added any content.
It may be different for The Apprentice because the boardroom segments are already edited down so significantly, and Burnett suggests that the boardroom scenes will be impacted the most.
“Donald has always felt the boardrooms were too short, and I think he’s right. Right now, there’s really only about nine minutes of footage that we use and the boardroom (scenes) go on for hours sometimes. The problem has been trying to squeeze it all in. Every season we go through the struggle of cutting the show down,” he said.
TV Week reports that the earliest the show can debut “is Feb. 8, with 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. as the most likely timeslots.” NBC is expected to announce its winter and spring schedule this week.
Update: NBC announced today that the show will debut March 1 and air from 9 to 11 every Sunday.