By MICHAEL MILLER Staff Writer, (609) 463-6712
Published: Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Updated: Tuesday, May 23, 2006
ATLANTIC CITY — Going without a pageant in 2005 hit Miss America where it hurt most – in her designer pocketbook.
The pageant lost $2.1 million last year, according to an internal March 21 memo provided anonymously to The Press of Atlantic City.
Setting up a new show in Las Vegas pushed pageant week back from September to January. But the move from Atlantic City's Boardwalk to the Las Vegas Strip might have been the tonic the pageant needed. The nonprofit posted net earnings of $405,000 in the first two months of 2006.
Producing the show at a casino theater in Las Vegas cost just $47,096, a fraction of the nearly $1 million it cost each year to prepare Boardwalk Hall for a live TV show.
The organization has not yet filed its 2005 tax returns, which are public records. But the memo's estimates were what one might expect from a year without a crowning moment.
“We did not have a pageant in 2005. We did not have a good year,” pageant president Art McMaster said.
The memo drafted by pageant treasurer Gary Lax suggested that 2005 was a low financial point in the pageant's recent history. The organization lost $2.1 million, mostly in investments. Its assets have dropped steadily from $12 million in 1999 to just under $2 million last year.
With a new reality-TV deal and a new slate of Las Vegas board members, the pageant is on the rebound, McMaster said.
“We feel we've turned this thing around already. But it took getting an interested network involved,” he said.
ABC dropped the pageant after the 2004 show posted record-low ratings. The pageant struck a deal with Country Music Television to televise the pageant live from the Aladdin Resort & Casino.
The January show attracted 3 million viewers, a record for the cable network but 7 million fewer than watched the pageant live on ABC in 2004. Unlike past years on network television, CMT re-broadcast the show 10 times. The cumulative effect was millions more people saw the January show than saw it on ABC in 2004.
“It's encouraging. The sponsors are starting to come back. We're back on the road again. We're on the mend. There are a lot of good things going on with Miss America right now,” McMaster said.
No date or venue has been announced for the 2007 show. But signs suggest the pageant will remain in Las Vegas at least another year.
Meanwhile, the pageant appointed five new board members, further cementing its relationship with Las Vegas.
The organization in April appointed Lynn Hackerman Weidner, the wife of a Las Vegas casino executive. She competed as Miss New Jersey in the 1971 Miss America Pageant. New, too, this year is Lynette Boggs McDonald, a Clark County, Nev., commissioner and a former Miss Oregon.
Rounding out the appointments is John Bermingham, a Texas businessman; Rebecca King, Miss America 1974 who has a law practice in Denver; and Ryan Wuerch, chairman of a cellular phone company in Durham, N.C., and the husband of Miss America 1996 Shawntel Smith.
Boggs McDonald said the board of directors is dedicated to making the pageant lucrative.
“All of us sitting on the board consider ourselves the turn-around team,” she said.
Her goal is to trumpet the pageant's charitable mission as the world's largest scholarship program for women. The pageant scaled back the scholarship awards granted to this year's contestants. She said she would like to provide more.
She and Hackerman Weidner pitched the pageant to the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority this year to build local support for the show. She also talked to the other members of the Clark County Commission.
“Once people get it and they understand the difference between a nonprofit like Miss America and a for-profit like Miss USA, they'll support the nonprofit,” she said.
With more lead time, Las Vegas can give the pageant the reception she thinks it deserves.
“If we can solidify a deal to return to Las Vegas, we know we have more time to plan for a parade or some other communitywide events,” she said. “Everyone wants to do more the second time around.”
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