Miss Universe and the death of the beauty pageant - Beauty Pageants - Salon.com: And then something happened. Miss America became a serious thing and began to boast about the scholarships it funds and the lives it improves, and today, it's rotting on unremunerative perches like TLC (though it will be broadcasting its 2011 edition on ABC). In marked contrast, the Miss USA-Miss Universe franchise has refused all along to fret about whether its contestants could carry a tune or spell their names or build latrines in Burkina Faso. It has remained a principality of the flesh, where the currency is two-piece bikinis.