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Miss America is putting pageantry back into her pageant.
Despite three major changes this year -- a new channel (cable's CMT), city (Las Vegas) and date (Jan. 21, 8 p.m. ET/tape-delayed PT) -- the show is looking back, tipping its tiara to the Bert Parks era.
Gone are attempts to give the 85-year-old institution a modicum of modernity: the jeans-heavy casualwear competition, the game show-like civics quiz and the American Idol-style talent face-off.
"When people see the Miss America Pageant, they want to see the Miss America Pageant," says Art McMaster, acting president and CEO of the Miss America Organization.
"They don't want to see all these games and gimmicks."
The quiz show was considered too cruel ("A disaster waiting to happen," McMaster says), and the casual-attire segment lacked razzle-dazzle.
So there she'll be, beaming in her state sash, last seen draping gowns and swimsuits in the late '80s. She'll tap-dance or tumble on TV; the top five, rather than the top two, showcase their talent this year.
The 52 contestants also will elect a Miss Congeniality, an honor last awarded in 1974, well before any of this year's contestants were born.
But perhaps the most vigorous nod to the show's highly rated roots is that producers are trumpeting the spectacle as the Miss America Pageant with a capital "P" rather than the Miss America Competition.
"Being on CMT gives us the freedom to acknowledge that, because our audience is by and large not a cynical audience," says Paul Villadolid, vice president of programming and development for CMT, a significantly smaller home than the pageant's previous venues.
The country-crooning cable channel averaged 324,000 prime-time viewers last year; ABC's final September 2004 broadcast drew a record-small audience of 9.8 million, down from 33.1 million in 1988.
CMT viewers "believe in these stories of small-town girls, underdogs, who achieve success," Villadolid says. "And to us, that is the underlying theme of Miss America."
Harking back to the show's crinolined past also is meant to mollify the anxieties of "die-hard, core Miss America fans," Villadolid says. "The great fear was that we would somehow countrify the pageant."
The host, in fact, is a star on the network that dropped the pageant: James Denton of ABC's Desperate Housewives.
Still, a traditional tone does not mean a return to matronly maillots. The MissAmerica.org home page spotlights a photo gallery of smiling contestants largely in plunging necklines.
"We're not producing an old-fashioned show," Villadolid says. "We're really placing traditional values in a contemporary production."
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