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Fashion Police
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Now, We All Can Pick Miss America
Beginning this year, the pageant will let you vote for your favorite beauty by making a fifty-cent call to a 1-900 number. This follows last year's successful call-in campaign, when one million callers voted to keep the swimsuit competition, boosting the TV show's ratings 15 percent over the previous year. An estimated 45 million watched Miss Oklahoma capture the coveted tiara.
Now the pageant masters are upping the ante. "For the first time in our history," said CEO Leonard Horn, "[we are] taking viewers out of their armchairs and putting them into the judges' box."
Audience members will effectively be the eighth judge for the semifinal round, with the collective call-in vote carrying one-eighth of the total vote count. Callers select one of 10 semifinalists, helping to narrow the field to a final five. Only the seven celebrity judges will be able to vote for Miss America 1997.
Pageant officials are still trying to iron out the kinks in the system. Using an undisclosed technology, they promise to ensure only one vote per phone line. But critics say there are ways for clever boosters to circumvent call-blocking schemes. Organizers of the 76-year-old spectacle also have to figure how to eliminate big state bias--for example, Miss Alaska would tally a fraction of the votes of a Miss Texas or Miss California, for example, just because of the disparity in the potential voting pool.
Others say that audience-participation will demean the annual Atlantic City contest, which will be held September 14 and broadcast on NBC. "You have young ladies entering this [event] seriously with the idea they're going to be judged by 'professional judges,' " said Harry O'Neill, vice chairman of the Roper Division of Roper Starch Worldwide Inc., a firm with its finger on the pulse of public opinion.
In the past, the so-called professional judges have included such noted arbiters of beauty as Donald Trump, Bruce Jenner and Joyce Brothers.
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