Why the four "firings" in the Sporting Goods task

[Wallyhorse]

Here's why in my opinion the season was shortened:

It has to be remembered that planning for Apprentice 4 in a lot of cases probably took place even before the finale of Apprentice 2 took place last December. At the time Apprentice 4 was in the planning stages, it was quite possible that NBC and/or Mark Burnett was planning to do one of two things, knowing NBC had the Olympics on the horizion this coming February:

1. Run it as late as possible, even right up to the start of the Olympics by stretching "A4" as late as February 2 or 9 (the Olympics start on February 10), with Apprentice 5 then premiering the Thursday after the Olympics on March 2, with that version possibly running twice a week for most of that run in the spring.

2. As what might have been the original plan for this season, with a premiere on September 1, which would have allowed for a double "firing" or someone quitting during the season and still having the same setup as "A2", with the final four doing interviews and two "fired" at that point.

I'm speculating here that one of these two scenarios was the original plan, but in the first case, NBC was probably told by ad buyers they would not pay sufficient ad rates for "A4" episodes that air on December 22 & 29 (Thursdays before Christmas and New Years, respectively), especially since aside from the fact many people are away for the holidays at that point, there are bowl games both nights on ESPN/ESPN2.

In the second case, a September 1 premiere might very well have been planned to get a jump-start on the season until one of three things happened:

1. The drop in ratings during Apprentice 3 came early enough for some sponsors to pull out of Apprentice 4, and Burnett could not come up with a sufficient number of substitute tasks to replace them.

2. The original final tasks were planned for later than when the actual final tasks wound up being filmed. It's possible that either because of the drop in ratings for "A3" or other reasons we'll never know, what were originally planned to be the events where the final tasks were to take place pulled out and the events that were brought in to replace them were earlier than the originally planned final tasks.

3. NBC realized that many of its affiliates in key markets (including stations NBC owns itself in New York and Chicago along with its affiliate in Houston) had to pre-empt network programming on September 1 for local coverage of NFL pre-season football. Since the following Thursday (September 8) had the regular-season NFL opener on ABC (which killed the "A2" opener last September on NBC), NBC probably decided to delay the "A4" premiere until September 22, and since doing that and keeping the same schedule that was based on a premiere date of September 1 would have caused two episodes to air the Thursdays before Christmas and New Years in all likelyhood, NBC probably ordered the season be cut so the finale could be on December 8 or 15.

Those to me are the most likely scenarios as to why this season was shortened.