Tom Bergeron Taking Over "Miss America"

It's with a twinge of moroseness (morosity? mority?) that I announce that ABC has let Wayne Brady out of his commitment to host the Miss America pageant (which is a word that ABC prefers not to use).

The replacement, Tom Bergeron, has proven his talent over the years as host of "Fox After Breakfast" and "Hollywood Squares" - but it seems to me that the real reason ABC replaced Bergeron is that Brady is no longer a network personality, with "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" no longer on the schedule, and his "Wayne Brady Show" showing up on stations other than ABC's. Bergeron, however, is an ABC company man for purposes of hosting the pageant, by virtue of his hosting "America's Funniest Home Videos" (on which he has become the best of the procession of hosts the show has had, going all the way back to Bob Saget).

In the old days, Bert Parks, Ron Ely and those who came after him weren't hired for network promotional value. But as the network exerts increasing control over the pageant and its contents, the network seems now to have final approval of hosts, which explains the decreasing calibre of hosts: we regress from Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford (their talk show is from another Disney division), to the likes of John and Eva Callahan ("All My Children"), and Meredith Vieira ("The View"). (Hey, Meredith, I'm still waiting for my date in the Hot Seat.) Pretty soon ABC may get its secret wish and move the pageant out of its 83-year standing Atlantic City home base to Orlando - making it yet another disposable Disney dream-come-true ending.