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The Miss America pageant is returning to broadcast TV starting next year.The pageant, which has aired on cable for the past five years, will move back to its long-time home ABC as part of a three-year deal the network signed with the Miss America Organization. Miss America will keep the January airdate it adopted when it moved to cable; the 2011 pageant is scheduled to air Jan. 15.
Details of the deal weren't disclosed, but it's likely to be a fairly low-risk one for ABC. The network dropped Miss America after the 2004 pageant following several years of declining ratings. It then moved to CMT for two years and TLC for three; this year's pageant, won by Miss Virginia Caressa Cameron, averaged 4.5 million viewers, a pretty strong number for TLC.
Despite that, however, TLC declined to pick up another three-year option, leaving the competition once again without a TV home. The return to ABC will include "new ways to honor the pageant's rich tradition while also producing a spectacular show that will offer true entertainment appeal," Miss America president and CEO Art McMaster says.
A site for the 2011 pageant hasn't been determined yet; it's taken place in Las Vegas the past several years.
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maybe Miss America will do better now that the Miss USA pagaent has gotten so skanky (thanks to the trashy Trump).
Clearly the Miss America Pageant has made significant progress in putting on an event that was able to attain a 4.5 rating on a cable channel. If it can do that on a cable channel, it ought to be able to attain double digit viewers on a network with the size of audience that ABC reaches. ABC has many reality hit series so I'm wondering if The MAP is going to get the reality treatment starting with a build-up show that begin in December, runs a few weeks, and then the MAP as a live finale???