TVSquad

NBC Universal, Donald Trump and Paula Shugart (president of the Miss Universe Organization) announced the celerbrity panel of judges today for the Miss Universe Pageant, which will be broadcast live from Vietnam this Sunday at 9:00 p.m. ET on NBC and Telemundo.. Donald Trump, Jr., Roberto Cavalli, Nadine Velazquez, Jennifer Hawkins, Louis Licari, John Nguyen will judge the competition.

So where are the celebrities? At least Nadine Velazquez is on My Name is Earl. I guess you could argue that Don, Jr. is on The Apprentice but I'd hardly classify him as a celebrity. I'm not saying that some of these judges aren't successful in their fields. Cavalli is an international designer. Licari is a colorist to the stars (I guess he'll be checking the girls for bad roots). John Nguyen is a successful entrepreneur. Jennifer Hawkins won the pageant in 2004. But, as far as Hawkins goes, it's like having Taylor Hicks be a guest mentor on Idol. Lame-O. At least they have real celebrities as hosts. Jerry Springer and Mel B. will led the ceremonies.

A couple of days ago I posted of the rumors that O.J. Simpson was being eyed as a possible participant in the next season of Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice. NBC and Trump's reps are now calling it complete hogwash, saying he was never being considered for a spot.

This whole thing seemed fishy from the get-go. On Howard Stern's radio show last year, Trump mentioned how he distanced himself from O.J. (scroll down to 'Donald Trump Calls In' at 9:25 AM) and made it pretty clear he had doubts about his innocence, even though O.J. attended his wedding. Now Trump is having meetings with the guy, even after that whole show-down in Vegas over memorabilia (trial still pending). So what's changed?

One has to wonder if the "leaked info" regarding O.J.'s interest in Celebrity Apprentice was merely a publicity stunt to drum up interest in the show, even just by making more people aware that it exists.

O.J. Simpson is interested in appearing on television again, though for a much different sort of reality show than the interior of a courtroom. Namely, The Donald's boardroom.

O.J. reportedly is interested in appearing in the next season of Celebrity Apprentice (there's going to be another season?) and has even asked Trump to allow him to participate. From the Page Six article: "Simpson really wants to do it. Trump and NBC are thinking about it, but are being very cautious," their source said. "There's a certain amount of heat associated with Simpson." Ya think?

I'm betting Simpson's appearance on the show will boost ratings in some circles, while others will cry for a boycott of the show. I'm not sure where O.J.'s going to have time to finish tasks for The Apprentice when he's so busy scouring golf courses all over America in search of his late wife's killer. Maybe that will be the final Apprentice task.

In the strangest case of offbeat casting I've ever written about, the Lifetime Channel has cast Donald Trump to executive produce and narrate a new series called Trump Towers. Unlike The Apprentice, this would be a scripted series.

The show would be a nighttime soap opera set within Trump Towers itself. Lifetime Entertainment President Susanne Daniels describes the series as "Desperate Housewives in Trump Tower with The Donald narrating." According to the article, Lifetime also has several other series in the works with a concentration on comedic appeal.

Given the fact that the Lifetime Network has historically been a women's network and Trump's behavioral history can hardly be called female-friendly, one wonders why this premise was proposed in the first place. The series might even make more sense for the network if the narrator was Ivana Trump or Marla Maples.

Obviously, this is an attempt by Lifetime to cash in on Trump's fame. This is another example of Jay Black's theory of channel drift.

The Donald is producing a new "My Fair Lady" style reality show involving party girls attending a private boarding school, and he wants Dupré to be one of the participants. Her history must make her an ideal candidate for this show.

The show is based on a British show called Ladette to Lady, which sounds a lot like Charm School from VH1. I guess Donald wants his hard-partying girls to have class.

The show has not heard back from Dupré. Perhaps she's holding off for more cash. Maybe she's putting this in the same category as her offers from Larry Flynt and Joe Francis.

After weeks of tasks, bickering between Piers and Omarosa, "You're fired!" and money raised for charity, Donald Trump finally said the words "You're hired!" (figuratively) to one of the two final contestants: America's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan and country singer Trace Adkins. Since I know some of you haven't watched the finale yet, I'll name who was crowned winner of the first edition of NBC's The Celebrity Apprentice after the jump. I can confirm though that it's a man!

This coming Thursday, NBC's The Celebrity Apprentice will come to an end. Either the arrogant Brit or the American Cowboy will hear the words "You're hired."

In an unsurprising move, Donald Trump decided in last week's episode to have Piers Morgan and Trace Adkins face off during the final task. This decision goes against that of CNBC's Erin Burnett and Jim Cramer, brought on to interview the Top 4 contestants, but The Donald knew better than to have Carol Alt and Trace as the final two contestants. Both are really good contestants and played a clean game but, let's admit it, a live finale with Carol and Trace is not as promising as a Piers and Trace one ratings-wise.

A few words to describe the celebrity version of NBC's The Apprentice: drama, tempers, egos, backstabbing, bitching, arguing, egos and... more egos! This week, the bruised egos are those of America's Got Talent's Piers Morgan and of The Apprentice (Season 1) Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth. Since the beginning of the season, both have been strong and opinionated players on their respective teams. Even if they didn't have to work together, Piers and Omarosa were pretty vocal about what they thought of each other. This week, hell broke lose when Trump decided to mix up the teams and the enemies ended up, you guessed it, on the same team!

Even if you don't watch The Celebrity Apprentice, it's pretty much a given that you watched this week's preview (after the jump) during which we see Stephen Baldwin tell Donald Trump that he can't continue working with Piers Morgan.

Let's face it, Baldwin and the America's Got Talent judge have not been seeing eye to eye from the very beginning of the show. Even if they somewhat worked well together on the tasks, their business relationship was pretty much a hate-hate one or at least a "I'm tolerating you because I have to." But in light of the Vincent Pastore fiasco from last week, Baldwin has had enough and may give The Donald his resignation... or will he?

If you watched The Celebrity Apprentice this week, you probably still are thinking and talking about that boardroom scene (and I use that latter word here to mean both "a subdivision of the episode" and "an exhibition of anger or indecorous behavior"). Even if it looked childish at times, we have to admit that this was one of the most entertaining boardroom ever!

In short, during the task America's Got Talent's Piers Morgan, who was project manager for the men's team, sent The Sopranos' Vincent Pastore over the women's team to spy on them. Of course, it backfired: Vinnie, who did it willingly (see the first video after the jump), eventually admitted to the ladies that he was sent there to spy but that he now wanted to be a double agent; and, later on the episode, Vinnie and Piers had a major argument about the "rat project". In the boardroom, Vinnie revealed to Trump what had happened. This was followed by more argument between Piers and Vinnie, and comments from the women, the other men, Trump and his children.

I didn't think he could do it, but the Donald did it. I've been a fan of The Apprentice since its first season, but I threw in the towel with last season's lackluster gimmicky Los Angeles version of this unreality show.

But I started watching again this season as the celebrity (although far from A List celebs) started playing the game donating winnings to their favorite charities. Although my favorite Gene Simmons (of KISS fame) committed Apprenticide before my very eyes, only Lost will keep me from watching it as it airs.

I'm not watching Celebrity Apprentice. I watched the first season of the show, and I actually liked the Martha Stewart version of the show, but there's no way I'm going to sit in front of my TV for weeks and watch Marilu Henner battle Stephen Baldwin.

And I also question the "celebirty" status of some of these people. Case in point, Omarosa. She's only famous for being on, well, The Apprentice, so I think that sort of makes the whole premise of the show bogus. Fellow castmate Piers Morgan, who is also a judge on America's Got Talent, tells The New York Post that Omarosa actually approached him when the show started and asked him if he wanted to have a "showmance." Morgan had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but she explained that it's a romance between two people on a reality show. Morgan just told her she was "pathetic" and "deluded."

"They hit us with everything they had, and now they're out of bullets." - Donald Trump

Trump is talking about CSI and Grey's Anatomy, his competition on Thursday nights. The newest version of Trump's show, Celebrity Apprentice, is actually doing well in the ratings. Other reality shows are doing well too, including American Gladiators, The Biggest Loser, and even (God help us) Supernanny. Which begs the question: do most viewers even give a s**t about scripted shows?

And there you were, thinking that the Emmys were the biggest and best awards any television starlet could hope for. Think again, because all those moments that should get awards are being honored at AOL TV. Some are actually important moments in television history (i.e. The Soprano's finale) but others are just mishaps or fights that the nominees hope audiences will soon forget.

AOL TV is calling it their Top 5 Awards. They provide five nominations but you decide who the winner will be. You can watch the video clips and vote for your favorites. AOL TV will release the winners on December 13th.

Check out the nominations and my predictions after the jump.

I didn't expect Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts or even Teri Hatcher to sign up for this, but since when is Omarosa a "celebrity?" She's known for...um...The Apprentice!

And now she's going to compete on NBC's Celebrity Apprentice along with Marilu Henner, Carol Alt, softball player Jennie Finch, and America's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan. I think they were either going to do Celebrity Apprentice on a late night informercial or a cable reality show.

To be fair, there are some good names here, including Vincent Pastore and Gene Simmons, but overall the cast really leaves me cold. Not that I'm a regular viewer of The Apprentice (the first season interesting, and I watched the Martha Stewart version, and then...), but I would have definitely tuned in to this if they had gotten some more interesting celebs. But what do I know. This will probably be a massive hit.