Miss Universe change of Format: WME/IMG brings a different outlook to the competition
By GB | Miss Universe 2016, News | 20 June 2016
Donald Trump’s era of beauty ended when he handed over the reigns of Miss Universe to William Morris Entertainment last year. Michael Antinoro at IMG Original Content talks to Business Insider about the changes taking place in the pageant, the idea to keep it current, and the value of women empowerment over Trump’s ideals of beauty.
By Paul Schrodt, Business Insider — Miss Universe knows what you think of it. And it’s quietly making a number of changes that might make you rethink the pageant.
Many people criticize Miss Universe for being an antiquated celebration of superficial femininity. While the annual show remains popular with its core audience more than 50 years after it was founded, its image as a brand has seen better days.
That may be changing. Donald Trump unloaded the organization in 2015 after a falling out with its broadcaster, NBC, following his controversial statements about Mexican immigrants. He sold to WME/IMG, which is primarily known as a talent agency but is widely growing its business ventures, including original productions.
In Miss Universe, first of all, WME/IMG saw a chance to obtain a massive global audience that will take advantage of the company’s other relationships within entertainment. (Actress Julianne Hough cohosted this month’s Miss USA competition, and she also happens to be signed with WME.)
The new Miss Universe/Miss USA owners want to take full advantage of that audience in ways the old shows simply left behind. They launched the Miss U app, the first official app for the Miss Universe organization, which allows fans a say in the voting and gives them access to content before and after the shows.
“There’s a huge community around this that we can leverage 365 days a year,” Michael Antinoro, Senior Vice President of Programming and Production at IMG. Antinoro, who oversees Miss Universe at IMG Original Content, told Business Insider. “Frankly, in the past, most people looked at the organization, whether it was Miss USA or Miss Universe, once a year when the three-hour special came on TV. It was the only time they thought about it.”
But perhaps more significantly, WME/IMG wants to rethink what it means to be Miss USA or Miss Universe, and how it portrays the women aiming for the prizes.
“Celebrating women 60 years ago was a very different idea of how to do that than now. What we saw in the opportunity here was, first of, to kind of join the conversation that’s happening in 2016. That’s men and women talking about celebrating women and women’s empowerment and getting women to work together to raise all levels and awareness on women’s issues and other issues around the world,” Antinoro said.
That shift in how Miss Universe treats female competitors, means, for example, that Miss USA went to the 51 competitors’ hometowns to spend a day with each of them and shoot footage of their daily lives: their jobs, their families, and everything else that goes beyond the skills of the show.
This year’s newly crowned Miss USA, Deshauna Barber, is an officer in the Army Reserve and impressed viewers by giving an answer in which she defended women being allowed in all combats roles of the military. It was a far cry from the type of blanket, abstract answers competitors have given in the past, and got to the core of Barber’s service and ideas about the country.
“There are many ways to define beauty,” Antinoro said, “and it’s about confidence and about taking yourself out of your comfort zone.” Read the original article here.
GB Comment: During Trump’s days of Miss Universe, the always-popular Top 10 personal interview was scratched from the telecast in order to focus on pure physical beauty. The interview segment was always very popular with followers and fans of the Miss Universe pageant; and its disappearance left a gap in how the older and newer generations following the event perceived the contestants.
The change was evident in the last Miss USA telecast on June 5th; a focus on the human side, portraying these delegates as warm, relatable human beings instead of unattainable vain goddesses. The format emphasizes in two interview rounds with the top 5 finalists with questions of substance, allowing the panel of judges to evaluate personality over beauty.
It would be nice for the pageant to return to some of its basics including said interview which connects the contestants with the viewer in much more ways than a video. A change in the format is very welcome, as Miss Universe has always been a celebration of the overall accomplished woman; something that got tainted during the past years when scandals about the pageant dominated the news more than its achievements.
Not everybody has agreed on MUO’s new stance on personality as criticism over the new titleholders has been lately out of control on social networks. The pageant needs to prove to regular viewers that is much more than a 5-minute gaffe on Television (an unfortunate situation that ironically put the Miss Universe pageant back in the spotlight it deserves). Maybe its time to teach new values to the followers and fans as well.
Tema: Miss Universe, nueva era... de las feas?
Mar Jun 21, 2016 2:12 pm 
