Las Vegas – After 84 years of crowning beauties on the Boardwalk, the Miss America pageant is moving to the Las Vegas Strip, organizers announced Wednesday.
It will be the first time the contest has been staged outside Atlantic City, N.J.
The Aladdin hotel-casino will host the pageant, scheduled to air Jan. 21 on cable channel Country Music Television.
The pageant has been dogged by financial troubles and slipping viewership in recent years. It was dropped by ABC last year, leaving Miss America without a network TV contract for the first time since 1954.
Pageant officials went looking for a host city that would pay for the right to hold the annual competition.
Organizers would not discuss terms of the deal, which was completed this week, but said it was for one year only.
They noted the move to Las Vegas would necessitate some changes.
Fans have probably seen the last of the Miss America parade, in which all 52 contestants rode down the Boardwalk in convertibles before throngs of spectators.
And Miss America’s victory dip in the ocean, when the winner frolicked in the surf for gawking photographers, would be impossible in landlocked Las Vegas.
