[Stooky Bill]

The beauty of the home shopping task is that Alan Sugar can watch it live, a couple of them have been very good and I would t be surprised if they made them an offer

[bilky asko]

They last did it in 2022 on TJC. Don't they normally do this challenge every other year for some reason so presumably it will return this year.

If you were watching TJC on 3rd June 2023, you will have seen some Apprentice candidates selling items. I remembered one of the candidates straight away when watching the new series, so I know they'll survive at least until that episode.

See if the phrase "make sure you're smashing those hashtags" makes it to the final programme too.

[thegeek]

Long-time viewer here - I think one thing that's notable about The Apprentice is how unchanging it is between series.

Most unscripted reality gets a format tweak from series to series, but it feels jarring how much has stayed the same for over a decade. I think the boardroom set has only had one refurb since series 1 - though the stock photos in the waiting room got a bit of an update a year or two ago, and the receptionist (is she still called Frances?) lost her Amstrad Emailer quite some time ago. We still see the contestants leaving the former Viglen HQ, which is nowhere near Canary Wharf (where we're led to believe the boardroom is) or the actual studio location. And the participants all dress as if they were working in the City in the early 2000s, whereas power suits were well on their way out before Covid and it's really just estate agents who go to work like that these days.

I think it's just all quite jarring because the likes of Masterchef has shown that you can have a long-running format and subtly bring the look and feel up to date, whereas The Apprentice is going to be pretending smartphones don't exist until it's eventually decommissioned.

[Neil Jones]

The emailer was dead in 2011 about a year of so after Sky bought Amstrad and it wasn't that popular when it was a thing; it apparently only just broke even by the time Sky put it out of its misery.

As for the smartphone don't exist thing - I wouldn't be surprised if they are using smartphones to call each other... You just can't use it to find out details of where to go to flog some tat - you have to go old school and use an A-Z or Yellow Pages.

[steve]

I suppose the thing there is that if they’re wanting it to be a reflection of how business is done today, that simply doesn’t happen without phones/email/slack, etc. In that sense it really hasn’t evolved as the world of business has. But then has it ever reflected the reality of business!

[WillPS]

The emailer was dead in 2011 about a year of so after Sky bought Amstrad and it wasn't that popular when it was a thing; it apparently only just broke even by the time Sky put it out of its misery.

As for the smartphone don't exist thing - I wouldn't be surprised if they are using smartphones to call each other... You just can't use it to find out details of where to go to flog some tat - you have to go old school and use an A-Z or Yellow Pages.

They clearly have some deal with Samsung, because they've been given Samsung Fold series phones to use for the last few years. I think before that it was Note series phones.

Curious really because there's no business advantage at all to having a big screen on a phone if you're not allowed to use the internet. They always seem to have it opened out which is weird in the circumstances too.

[Brekkie]

You'd think they'd be able to videocall each other or send images of their designs for example rather than have to describe a logo.

[Neil Jones]

You'd think they'd be able to videocall each other or send images of their designs for example rather than have to describe a logo.

You'd have thought so but this is what causes the friction.
"It's a circle with a red bit on the top and some green bits sticking out either side, sort of looks like a fat stick man".
<24 hrs later after this has been slapped on the most inappropriate product going>
"Um, okay that's not quite what I had in mind for the end product..." (translation: what the bloody hell?)

[Andrew]

You'd have thought so but this is what causes the friction.
"It's a circle with a red bit on the top and some green bits sticking out either side, sort of looks like a fat stick man".
<24 hrs later after this has been slapped on the most inappropriate product going>
"Um, okay that's not quite what I had in mind for the end product..." (translation: what the bloody hell?)

The misalignment between the main team and the sub team is one of the main format points

I’m bringing in such and such who was the leader of the sub team, as hey were in charge of design etc

[VMPhil]

I think stability in the format is one of the reasons it has lasted so long. Endless tweaking tends to kill off a show prematurely - see X Factor.