By Alyssa Guzman,Editor
Copyright dailymail
From a reality TV show spinoff to fan voting, the new Miss USA CEO has outlined three bold ideas to clean up the pageant’s image after years of scandals.
Two years ago, Noelia Voigt, now 25, historically stepped down from her title of Miss USA just seven months after taking home the crown to prioritize her mental and physical health.
Two days later, Miss Teen USA, UmaSofia Srivastava, now 18, also resigned from her post, with her mother accusing the organization of abusing and bullying the girls.
Voigt and Srivastava were the first ever to forfeit their titles after winning in the pageant’s 74-year history, but it wasn’t the only recent scandal.
Just the year prior, the beauty pageant was engulfed in a rigging scandal after several contestants, including ringleader and former Miss Montana Heather Lee O’Keefe, accused the organization of preselecting R’Bonney Gabriel as the 2022 winner.
The scandal blew up online, eventually prompting a documentary and leading to an internal investigation and then-Director Crystle Stewart stepping down and her brand being suspended, which Daily Mail exclusively reported on in 2022.
Earlier that year, 2019 winner, Cheslie Kyrst, 30, plunged to her death off a luxury residential building in Manhattan after battling high-functioning depression, which lead to many questions about how the pageant was protecting contestants.
Now, the organization – which is owned by Miss Universe – has appointed Thom Brodeur as head honcho to get the pageant back to its glory days, where titleholders were practically celebrities and families tuned in every year for the glitzy pageant.
‘Most people don’t want to run into a burning building,’ Brodeur told Daily Mail when asked why he’d want to join the scandal-ridden pageant. ‘But my belief is this: Inside of this building, there lives 74 years of very, very rich history.
‘There have only been 74 winners of Miss USA, and only 42 winners of Miss Teen USA, but there have been tens of thousands of lives who have changed because [of] this brand.
‘And I remembered making a promise to myself that when I got done doing my grown-up job, whatever that grown-up job would be… I would dedicate my life to the transformative work that this industry does, and try to do it at scale.’
In the glory days of the Miss USA pageant, taking home the glittering crown was a life-changing moment. Titleholders would go on to do amazing things, like handing out Emmys and Globe Globes to celebrities at the award shows and making real change. They became household names.
But now, with dwindling viewership numbers and scandal after scandal rocking the once pivotal American institution, pageant winners have become blimps in the sky.
Brodeur wants to change that. He wants those girls and women to be back on center stage, but he also wants viewers tuning into their lives well past the national pageant, which takes place in the fall.
As well as changes to voting and a reality show, Brodeur’s third major change is to show scoring on the screen again like the old days.
‘[The winner] were somebody who was seen as having something to say, and having a point of view, and having a public image, and we haven’t seen a lot of that over the last handful of years,’ he admitted.
Miss Universe’s new CEO, Ronald Day, whose appointment was announced in May, has connections to NBC from his previous work, and Brodeur is hoping to use the network as a new home for the Miss USA competition.
From there, the reality TV shows, which are still in the ideas stage, would be distributed onto NBC’s streaming network, like Peacock and Bravo. The main pageant would also be available to re-watch on those platforms as well, Brodeur proposed.
‘I think the brand has to be more than a monolithic,’ the native Ohioan told Daily Mail.
‘We watch the Academy Awards once a year to celebrate filmdom. We watch Miss USA once a year to celebrate what happens with 51 Miss contestants and 51 Teen contestants. I think there has to be an always-on content infrastructure around the business in order for people to want to stay plugged in and engaged.’
He envisions the pageant having its own America’s Sweethearts moment, an ongoing Netflix documentary about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders making the team.
‘Netflix is killing the game with the Dallas Cowboys franchise, both the team and the cheerleaders, right? People want to follow the real-life stories of people who are pursuing their dreams,’ Brodeur told Daily Mail.
‘I feel like being able to follow the journeys of these young women – the highs, the lows, the goods, the bads, all the things that they experience… This is a very intense sort of pursuit, and I think it deserves for the American public and the fan audience to see more than just the glitter and the gold.
‘I mean, this is a sport that requires a lot out of you, physically, mentally, spiritually, financially. It is not for the faint of heart.’
On average, contestants will spend $120,000 to $130,000 on the gowns and makeup and more to participate in the multiple pageants that lead up to the national one. And it will take them seven to eight years to complete all of it, so he believes they deserve their moment in the spotlight.
He also thinks the pageant needs to meet viewers where they are and they aren’t always available to watch the competition while it’s airing live or have a subscription to cable TV.
Many people subscribe to Netflix and Hulu, rather than paying cable providers like Spectrum and Dish for services. In the past, the pageant has streamed on The CW, a cable channel.
‘People aren’t watching on cable television,’ Brodeur told Daily Mail.
However, the biggest obstacle Brodeur faces is winning back the trust of the viewers, but more importantly, the contestants.
The 2022 rigging scandal left a bad taste in many of that year’s contestants’ mouths, as they complained of being silenced and not given answers by the previous administration.
After Voigt and Srivastava stepped down, many called for their non-disclosure agreements to be dissolved after they were not allowed to openly speak about their experiences inside the organization.
O’Keefe, former Miss Montana, when asked by Daily Mail what she would like to see answered by the new administration, said she wanted to know how they would deal with transparency and fairness as the organization doesn’t ‘uphold its own rules’.
‘Many contestants and industry observers are eager to see the organization uphold its own rules,’ she said in an email, while also congratulating Brodeur on his new rule.
‘It’s an exciting moment for the organization, and many in the pageant community are watching closely to see how he will lead with his stated core values of “integrity and trust restored.”‘
When Brodeur was announced as the new CEO, he said in his statement that he would dissolve the notorious NDA involved with the pageant. He also told Daily Mail, he’s getting rid of the selection committee, which could overrule the judges’ votes and may have been involved in the rigging scandal.
‘If we can’t do a good enough job of telling the judges that we entrust to choose our next winners, if we fail to communicate what we’re looking for and what we’re interested in seeing represent the brand for the period of time that she does, that’s a failure on us,’ Brodeur said.
And: ‘If you have nothing to hide, don’t,’ Brodeur told Daily Mail. ‘The idea of having this onerous, sort of choker around your neck in terms of not being able to speak about your experience, just doesn’t make sense to me.
‘The centerpiece to this Thanksgiving table has to be the women that we are, again, responsible for helping nurture through this journey.’
Brodeur is also surrounding himself with women in his administration, including his new Co-National Director, Laura Clark, who started the Still She Rose initiative while running Miss Earth, which introduced mental health programs after Kyrst’s death.
He also has Psychotherapist Elisa Banks-Lovely, who will be a co-national director with Clark, on his team.
‘She will be operationally charged with integrating mental health and wellness programming for our title holders and for the team writ large, so that we’re all able to support each other the way we need to,’ Brodeur told Daily Mail.
April Simpkins, Cheslie’s mother, was excited by the appointments, telling Daily Mail in a statement: ‘I was excited to see Thom step into the leadership role, and I can’t say enough good things about my dear friend and fellow NAMI Ambassador, Elisa Banks, as the co-director for the pageant.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing what’s in store.’
At the end of the day, Brodeur wants these women and girls to leave the pageant, not only with a career set up for them, but feeling like they left with a ‘big, warm, tight hug.’
‘I really want the stamp for my leadership team to be: They walked into a burning building, they saved the building, they saved the family heirlooms, and there were no lives lost.
