Donald Trump likes to describe his success in extremes, but is he capable of describing his failures in extremes as well?

"The Apprentice," which last aired without celebrities in Spring 2007 tried a different approach -- pull in people who were once successful, but were victims of the recession, and force them to partake in silly competitive projects.

The problem is no one was watching.

"The Apprentice" averaged a 3.1 rating/6 share in Fast National overnight ratings from The Nielsen Co. Thursday, getting the show's worst outing in history. The second hour did better than the first, however, starting the night with a 2.9/5 against new programming like "Nikita" on The CW, and improving to a 3.2/6 against nothing but reruns on the other channels.

While The Donald has described his program (and really anything he has done) as the "greatest in the world," that doesn't seem to be the case for the original version of "The Apprentice," which was pulled off the air at the end of 2007 for a reason (you now, lack of viewers). However, a successful three-year run of "Celebrity Apprentice" seems to have created some amnesia at NBC.

Speaking of "Celebrity Apprentice," which returns in the spring, the regular "Apprentice" finished more than 33 percent behind the average of "Celebrity Apprentice" last season. In fact, not a single episode of "Celebrity Apprentice" last season finished below a 3.8 household rating, which did come toward the beginning of the season, so maybe "The Apprentice" is something that audiences simply have to warm up to?

NBC averaged a 4.1/7 in the 9 p.m. timeslot on Thursdays between "The Office" and "30 Rock" -- 41 percent ahead of "The Apprentice" -- while "The Marriage Ref" and "The Jay Leno Show" averaged a 3.4/6 in the 10 p.m. slot last year, a much closer comparison to "The Apprentice," but still ahead by 6 percent.

The goal of NBC, by the way, was not just to try and match last year's numbers, but far exceed them. Even "Jay Leno" averaged a 3.3/6, ahead of "The Apprentice."

Things are a little dicey on The CW where "Vampire Diaries" and "Nikita" are currently take over Thursday nights. "Vampire Diaries" lost 5 percent of its audience from the previous week, getting close to a series low. The new series "Nikita," however, retained more than 95 percent of its audience to stay the network's most-watched program so far this year.

Fast Nationals usually provide a snapshot of what Americans are watching by pulling numbers from the top urban markets that include both live viewing and same-day timeshifted viewing. A rating point generally represents more than 1.1 million households while the share indicates the percentage of televisions turned on that was tuned to the specific program. These numbers typically shift when final ratings are issued.

Data collected from The Nielsen Co., as distributed by Zap2it. BlipNetwork tracks non-news, non-event programming, and figures for this story reflect airing of new episodes only. For more information on the Audience Loyalty Index, click here.