Somewhere former Miss America host Bert Parks is rolling over in his grave due to this as reported in the New York Times:
After more than 80 years on the very boardwalk that she helped make famous, Miss America is taking her tiara and ducking out of Atlantic City, pageant executives announced yesterday.
The beauty contest, once a staple of mainstream American culture, has recently been blemished by low television ratings, increased competition from reality shows and a financial situation that is not pretty.
After ABC, which had broadcast the pageant since 1997, dropped it last year, pageant officials said they could no longer afford to produce the elaborate annual show in Atlantic City, which, even after public subsidies, still cost more than half a million dollars each year.
“The days of getting the big money are sadly over,” said Art McMaster, president of the Miss America Organization. “We realized to survive we needed to take this show on the road.”
Well, here’s an idea if you want to cut your budget: how about Utica, New York?
Pageant officials would not say where the contest was headed.
It sounds like it’s headed to you-know-where in a handbasket. But we digress:
Mr. McMaster said he had received offers from many cities around the country and was weighing them carefully. The next pageant will be in January.
Bridgeport, Connecticut?
Pageant fans say the beauties could march down to Nashville, home of Country Music Television, which bought the rights to broadcast the next two contests. Mr. McMaster would not comment on that, except to say that Nashville had made no firm offer.
He also said the contestants could become nomads.
“We’re considering moving this thing around the country,” he said. “After all, Miss America belongs to all of America.”
With spin control like that, he has a future job at the White House.
ATTENTION PAT ROBERTSON: hire this guy immediately to explain how you didn’t really say what TV cameras caught you saying about assassinating a certain South American President…
To leave Atlantic City, the pageant had to get permission to break its contract with the Atlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority; that was granted yesterday afternoon. One catch, though, is that the reigning Miss America must continue to appear 10 times a year on behalf of the visitors’ bureau for the next five years.
“I don’t care what people say about Miss America,” said Jeffrey Vasser, executive director of the visitors’ bureau. “She remains a great selling tool.”
(There’s a dirty joke in there somewhere, but we won’t pursue it..)
Pageant officials said casting off Atlantic City was part of a larger effort to give the pageant a new image, perhaps one that better resembles the heartland, not a casino town in New Jersey.
Atlantic City officials said the issue boiled down to money. Each year, the visitors’ bureau kicks in $720,000 to turn a historic hall on the boardwalk into a temporary television studio for the contest. Apparently, that was not enough.
“Miss America needs to go somewhere that will give them a site fee and pay all the costs and put a million dollars in their pocket,” Mr. Vasser said. “We were not going to do that.”
Hmm. Pay all the costs…Put a million dollars in their pocket. Hey, wait! This governor can help you with that…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.