I'm pretty sure they did the press conference when they did JUST to pre-empt the Apprentice and continue screwing with Trump.
Then you have a very poor grasp of scheduling, since this announcement wasn't made until after The Apprentice had aired for something like 80% of the population of the country.

If they were really as petty as you'd like to think, they'd have made the announcement at 8pm eastern, and the following news stories would have pre-empted the entire night for the entire country.

Not that it matters what I say about it. People who irrationally hate will irrationally hate, no matter how much rationality is thrown at them.