'Apprentice' celeb-rates 12.1M finale

By RICHARD HUFF
DAILY NEWS TV EDITOR

Saturday, March 29th 2008, 4:00 AM

Goldstein/AP

(l.-r.) Donald Trump Jr., Piers Morgan, Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump. Click pic to see red carpet photos from after the show

Don't expect to see regular people playing "The Apprentice" anytime soon.

That's because the audience for Thursday's two-hour live finale to "The Celebrity Apprentice" was 12.1 million viewers, the largest for the franchise since Dec. 15, 2005.

"People like 'The Celebrity Apprentice,'" star and producer Donald Trump said Friday. "The next one is definitely celebrities. This is more interesting than a kid that just graduated from Harvard and is 21. The public likes people they know."

NBC has ordered two cycles of the show to run once a year. Production on the next cycle will start in September and air in January.

Trump wouldn't rule out a return to having unknowns play the game in the future.

But it's clear that celebrity casting breathed new life into a show that not so long ago might have gone toes up.

For NBC, Thursday's finale, which had Trump picking Piers Morgan as the winner over Trace Adkins, gave NBC its highest rating with the 18-to-49 crowd in the time period in six months. And it was the network's biggest audience for a non-sports telecast in the time slot in more than 16 months.

"The performances were all really good and the show itself was really good," Trump said, "but nobody expects numbers like this."

Another good sign for the show is that the audience actually built for the finale, starting at 10.96 million in the first half-hour and climbing to 13.1 million in the last-half hour, with Trump waiting until the final minute to reveal the winner.

But Trump wouldn't reveal any of the names for the upcoming edition.

"The thing that's happened," he said, "is this has been so good, everyone wants to be on top of me for anal sex."