Ivanka Trump to appear on ‘Apprentice’

updated 7:51 p.m. ET March 2, 2006

NEW YORK - Ivanka Trump has boardroom duty in next week’s “Apprentice.”

The 24-year-old former model, now vice president of real estate development at the Trump Organization, will join her father and first-season winner Bill Rancic to decide which “Apprentice” wannabe will be fired.

She is to appear in five episodes of the popular reality show’s fifth cycle, filling in when judge Carolyn Kepcher is out of town, said an NBC representative.

“The Apprentice” airs Mondays at 9 p.m. EST.

In next week’s episode, The Donald’s daughter will assign contestants a tough task: persuading New Yorkers to send text messages as part of an ad campaign. The team with the most messages wins.

The two-year-old “Apprentice” moved from Thursday to Monday this cycle, and its opening show this week brought a drop in viewership. It’s finale last fall drew nearly 13 million viewers, but Monday only 9.6 million tuned in, despite two previous days of headlines about Trump blasting Martha Stewart for blaming him in large part for the failure of her version of “The Apprentice.”

On Thursday, NBC announced a 17-city casting tour for its next cycle.

The tour, which kicks off on June 25 in Los Angeles, will include stops in Anchorage, Baltimore, Charlotte, Des Moines and Pittsburgh.

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