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Miss America Does Vegas, Baby
To quote a certain Swinger, this move is so money.
Yes, Vince Vaughn will be happy to know that the beautiful babies will be heading to Vegas in droves, with the announcement Wednesday that the Miss America Pageant is relocating to the Strip after 84 years of being headquartered in Atlantic City.
"Las Vegas is the perfect host city to bring new energy to the Miss America Pageant," says pageant honcho Art McMaster in a press release trumpeting the move. "It should make for a fantastic pageant and great television."
The two-hour telecast will originate from the Aladdin Resort and Casino (soon to be renamed the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino) on Jan. 21 and air live on CMT.
The Miss America franchise has fallen on hard times in recent years. Beset by ratings that plunged lower than a contestant's neckline, ABC decided to dump the telecast a year ago, leaving Miss America without a network TV contract for the first time since 1954.
Bleeding money, the pageant brain trust then convinced Atlantic City to release the contest from its contract binding it to the New Jersey shore town, freeing organizers to investigate other locales. More than two dozen sites applied to be the new home of Miss America, but Sin City won out.
"By bringing Miss America to Las Vegas, we are coming to a top-rate production town with excellent promotional opportunities," said CMT's vice president of programming and development Paul Villadolid.
The pageant has a one-year deal for the Vegas site.
The contest was first staged in 1921 in Atlantic City, and was designed to attract tourists to the area. (While the pageant is moving, the Miss America Organization, which oversees the contest and related activities, remains in Atlantic City.)
It wasn't televised until 1954. Now, a typical contest cycle attracts more than 10,000 women from all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
No word yet on who will host the 2006 edition, a job previously held by everyone from Wayne Brady to former NFL star Boomer Esiason to Tony Danza.
There's also been no specifics released on any potential format change. Organizers had been considering more of a reality-TV element in the show, and several wags have suggested incorporating backstage footage to up the drama quotient and boost viewership, which rarely topped the 10 million mark in the last decade.
In any case, the Viacom-owned CMT believes it can market the pageant in a different way than ABC and lure a younger demographic. As Villadolid proclaims, the network and casino have "a glamorous new vision of the pageant."
If not, Miss America could go missing for good.
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