Miss America pageant returning to Las Vegas for 2007 contest, organizers say

Miss America Pageant Returning to Vegas

LAS VEGAS, Aug. 25, 2006

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(AP)

(AP) The annual Miss America pageant will be held on the Las Vegas Strip again next year, organizers said Thursday. The crowning will air live on Country Music Television from the Aladdin Resort & Casino on Monday, Jan. 29, organizers said.

The 85-year-old beauty contest jilted its hometown of Atlantic City, N.J., for Las Vegas last year in search of a younger audience, a fresh look and lower production costs.

"I can't tell you how happy everyone is to be returning to Las Vegas," Art McMaster, chief executive of the Atlantic City-based Miss America Organization, told The Associated Press.

"We got a tremendous amount of media coverage in Las Vegas and that is why we went there in the first place," he said.

McMaster said the pageant would stick with the back-to-basics makeover that producers delivered in 2006, scuttling a plan announced in April to incorporate elements of reality TV into the pageant.

"Finding Miss America," a seven-episode series, was to follow the contestants through preliminary competition in Los Angeles and give viewers a chance to vote on which beauties would make the top 15.

Pageant organizers have introduced viewer call-in elements in past years, as the contest has struggled to increase viewers and revenue. Last year's return to the basics _ a bathing suit, talent and evening gown competition _ was welcomed by the army of loyal pageant fans.

CMT executive producer Sarah Brock said the reality TV idea was abandoned to maintain the integrity of the pageant, which began as a bathing beauty revue in 1921.

"A pageant has its own kind of air about it," she said. "We did not want to take away from that."

Nashville, Tenn.-based CMT picked up the pageant in 2005, after ABC dropped it due to low ratings. The cable network moved the contest from Atlantic City's boardwalk to the Aladdin for January's pageant, won by Miss Oklahoma Jennifer Berry.

The show drew 3.1 million viewers _ fewer than one-third the number who watched on ABC the year before, but still a CMT record.

The deal announced Thursday ensures one more year in Sin City. It offers the Aladdin, now being rebranded as a Planet Hollywood hotel-casino, the right of first refusal for the 2008 contest.

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