Trump: How to Get Rich

I decided to help because no soldiers have ever been treated worse than the courageous people who came back from Vietnam, wounded and maimed, attacked physically abroad and psychologically at home. I provided over a million dollars in matching grants, and, almost as important, I helped get it built by using the best contractors in the city, along with unions who made sure it was constructed swiftly, properly, and cost-effectively. At the opening, Pete Dawkins took the credit.

Many years later, he was working as a high-ranking executive at Citibank and I phoned him to ask a small favor, to find something out for me. He didn’t respond for a while, so I called him two more times. Finally, he said, I really can’t do it for you, Donald, and I really don’t want to get involved. I told Dawkins that theManhattan, Inc. article about him had been true. I consider him to be one of the most overrated people I have ever dealt with.

Sometimes you have to hold a grudge.

The hugely successful Miss Universe Pageant. From left to right: Charles Gargano, Stephanie Seymour, Evander Holyfield, Miss Universe Wendy Fitzwilliams, me, and NFL great Bruce Smith. Also pictured: Kylie Bax (third from right) and Sirio Maccioni (far right).

Learn the Value of Saying No

I purchased the Miss Universe Organization in 1996 and immediately sold half of the company to CBS; so not only were they our broadcaster, they were a co-owner as well. This kind of arrangement, where the network actually owns the end product, was a fairly new concept and should have been a win-win situation, since CBS would actually be able to eliminate the middleman and pay a lower license fee while, in theory, the network, as an owner, would look to maximize all promotional opportunities.

The partnership was a great concept, but after five years, it had not gone as planned. CBS was not willing to promote the shows to my satisfaction. As more and more cable competition ate into the network’s market share, on-air promotion became all the more important to sustain viewership, but it just wasn’t happening. To make matters worse, CBS tried to change the shows drastically by making them MTV-style music specials and dramatically cutting the time allotted to show the women competing. I am not a network programmer, but it seemed to me that people might be tuning in to a beauty competition to see beautiful women.

I am not saying a television musical performance is a bad thing; there have been some great ones over the years. A perfect example was the 1999 Miss Teen USA pageant: A year earlier, the teen show had introduced a little-known boy band called ’NSync. By 1999 they were the biggest band around. As a sign of appreciation, they agreed to appear on the Miss Teen USA pageant again. In the middle of their summer tour, ’NSync rented a jet and flew in for eight hours the day of the show, performing two songs. They were terrific. Unfortunately, no one knew about it because CBS had chosen not to run a single promotion for the show.

So in February 2002 we were all reevaluating how we wanted to approach the network license renewal. Citing the current ratings, which were caused by the lack of promotion and the fact that CBS would always air the pageant against the toughest competition, Les Moonves, the head of the network, said he was not willing to begin negotiations until the end of the season. Obviously, with the season ending in August, the network schedules would be set and there would be absolutely no room for negotiation with any other network.

I sent a letter to Les telling him I wanted an option to buy CBS out of the partnership, exercisable up until a week after the broadcast of the Miss Universe pageant in May. I feigned disinterest in continuing with the pageants and told him if I did not exercise the option, we would commence with selling or dismantling the company. A few days later, I believed we had a deal.

I immediately signed with Jim Griffin of the William Morris Agency to begin shopping the pageants to other broadcasters. I also called my good friend Bob Wright, chairman and CEO of NBC, to tell him the pageants might become available. I knew that NBC had recently acquired Telemundo, and the pageants are huge in Latin markets. It looked like a great opportunity for cross-promotion.

In the meantime, CBS had given up and allowed us free rein to get back to the basics on the production and put more emphasis on what had worked in the past: beautiful women. We also convinced them to schedule the pageant for a night outside of the all-important ratings sweeps, which would ensure more on-air promotions.

As a result, our 2002 Miss Universe pageant hit ratings gold. Overall, it was number seven for the week and number one in demographics. The pageant even trounced the NBA playoffs on NBC. The Miss Universe pageant quickly became a very hot property.