Welcome to Rock Genius, where people just like you break down lyrics by your favorite rockers past and present. Wondering about whether all that glitters is gold? Donald Trump is many things, but “reality star genius” is not one of them. One of the oft-spoken assumptions of this oddball campaign season -- the one that got its first real test with Monday's Iowa caucuses.
Donald Trump a 'reality star genius'? TV ratings tell different story. Donald Trump is many things, but “reality star genius” is not one of them. One of the oft- spoken assumptions of this oddball campaign season - - the one that got its first real test with Monday's Iowa caucuses - - has been that Trump was a TV reality star and therefore canny about manipulating media. This, supposedly, has given him an edge over the rest of the candidates in the Republican presidential field, who are merely politicians and a brain surgeon. The Iowa results, with Trump placing second to Sen. Ted Cruz despite pre- voting polls showing him with a lead, suggest that maybe there is not a direct correlation between media attention and votes. And, more to my point here, the ratings history over the 1. Trump's two reality shows, “The Apprentice” and “The Celebrity Apprentice,” tells a decidedly different story. Reality participant, perhaps. Reality middle- of- the- packer. Person on TV. Yet there on CNN last week was Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker magazine’s usually astute Washington correspondent, giving voice to the trope about the unlikely GOP frontrunner. Trump skipping Thursday night’s Republican debate, ostensibly in protest of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly hosting, was an act performed “like the reality star genius he is,” Lizza said. Nobody on the panel, whose job it was to either enlighten us about politics or fill the gaps between prescription medication commercials, dissented. So I will. First, if anybody associated with “The Apprentice” or its celebrity spinoff is in any way a genius, it is the executive producer, Mark Burnett. Burnett kick- started reality TV in the U. S. Its 3. 2nd season begins later this month. That is not a typo: 3. Among other successful reality enterprises, Burnett is behind “The Voice,” “Shark Tank” and “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” (He’s also responsible for “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” which I like to think of not so much as a failed reality show but as an effort to provide Tina Fey with more material.)Here’s an excerpt from a review I wrote about the first season of “The Apprentice,” back in April, 2. Give him 1. 5 minutes early on, and he'll probably get you for the whole hour and the whole series.”And we probably do have Burnett to thank, in a sense, for the Trump candidacy. Just as “Will & Grace” helped make some people comfortable with the idea of gay marriage, all those seasons of “The Apprentice” probably helped persuade a certain segment of the potential Republican electorate that, yeah, this Trump guy might have something the country needs. But not very large a chunk of America has been watching “The Apprentice.”A series of trumped- up fiscal competitions that allegedly demonstrated contestants’ suitability for the modern business world, with Trump as a sort of godfather presence, “The Apprentice” was a genuine hit in that first season, ending as the seventh- most- watched TV show of the year, averaging almost 2. But NBC put it into its Thursday night prime time lineup, once revered as “must- see TV,” and the long slow decline for that network was underway. When, after its sixth season in 2. NBC decided to scrap real people as contestants and bring on celebrities close enough to rock bottom to appear on a reality show where success depended on ingratiating themselves to Trump. The celebrity show did better, but it has been middle of the pack all the way, with finishes ranking from 4. Trump announced his candidacy and NBC replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger. This ratings history hasn’t stopped the notoriously boastful Trump from bragging about the show’s success, of course. Appearing before TV critics last January, he called “Celebrity Apprentice” the No. Nobody spins like Trump. It’s just bloviation,” tweeted one of them, San Francisco critic Tim Goodman. Given Trump’s knack for self- promotion and his admittedly long - - if only moderately successful - - run on TV, it’s not surprising that somebody like Lizza would call him a “reality star genius.” Some of his campaign maneuvers may even back up that assessment. But his television history does not.
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