Miss America Returns To ABC. How To Fix It

The Miss America pageant has been on life support of late. It was bumped to basic cable a few years ago, and was in grave danger of disappearing from the landscape completely this year (Oh no! Where will Miss Tennessee play her fiddle now?). But after the Miss USA pageant got tons of attention the past two years from crowning a Muslim beauty in 2010 and a first-runner up who didn’t like gay marriage or keeping her clothes on in 2009, ABC has decided, “Hey, we better get in on some of THAT.” From Contactmusic.com comes a report that the pageant has been rescued from the dead by the network:

The Miss America pageant is returning to ABC, the network that dropped it in 2004 because of low ratings. It has aired on cable since then, most recently on TLC, which earlier this year declined to pick up a three-year option.

For a time it seemed as if the oldest national beauty pageant would not see its 90th year. But on Sunday Sam Haskell, chairman of the Miss America Organization, told the Associated press that he had made "a wonderful deal" with ABC. "It's much better than any deal that we've had in the last five years," he said. The next pageant is scheduled to take place on Jan. 15, 2011. A venue has not yet been selected.


Well, ABC isn’t going to take on this old property without a guarantee of it garnering some measure of publicity. Therefore, I suggest the pageant organizers do the following things to make the event more newsworthy:

1. CROWN AN ILLEGAL ALIEN THE WINNER. What if Miss Idaho was actually an Indonesian refugee? Think of the blog reaction!

2. OPEN THE CONTEST TO ALL AGE GROUPS. What if Miss Minnesota was 21 but Miss Wisconsin was 73? Would it be the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen? You know it would.

3. ASK ALL THE CONTESTANTS THEIR STANCE ON ABORTION. There’s never a right answer! Guaranteed to anger half the nation!

4. HOLD THE PAGEANT ON AN ISLAND THAT HAS SMOKE MONSTERS AND STUFF. Losers get stabbed by John Locke.

5. WINNER GETS TO MARRY A HANDSOME PILOT!

6. OIL WRESTLING ROUND! Should have been mandatory years ago. How much do you girls REALLY want this title?

7. MEANER JUDGES! I want hardcore evaluation. I see no reason why Idol contestants have to stand up to scrutiny while Miss Florida gets off scot free.

Do all that, and suddenly you have the hottest TV property since Battle Of The Network Stars. Get to it, ABC. You know it’s the right thing to do.

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