BATON ROUGE – With the news that NBC will not broadcast the Miss USA Pageant, Baton Rouge Councilman John Delgado asked the City-Parish Administration Tuesday to withhold scheduled payments to the Miss USA organization.
The Council had previously authorized payments of $200,000 to Miss USA BR Productions, LLC, and Visit Baton Rouge to support the event and the economic impact it has for Louisiana's Capitol City.
With NBC's decision to disaffiliate from Donald Trump, owner of the pageant, the impact for the city has been minimized or eliminated, Deglado said.
"The agreement with Visit Baton Rouge calls for the pageant to be broadcast on NBC," Delgado wrote. "It is clear from recent statements by both NBC and Donald Trump, who owns or controls a majority interest in Miss USA, that their relationship is irrevocably broken and that the pageant will not be broadcast on NBC as we had anticipated.
"The City-Parish entered into its own separate agreement with Miss USA predicated on the 'substantial economic impact and positive publicity' that would otherwise have been generated by the pageant," Delgado wrote. "In light of the failure of Miss USA to broadcast the pageant nationally (and internationally) through NBC, I believe that it would be a misuse of tax payer funds to further subsidize this event. Unless Miss USA can remedy their breach of agreement with Visit Baton Rouge, I request that you suspend any further payments to Miss USA. In short, the City-Parish must refrain from throwing good money after bad."
Delgado, an attorney, said Miss USA and Visit Baton Rouge are in "constructive breach" of their agreements.
"Regardless of who is at fault, this is a disappointing situation," Delgado said. "The pageant provided tremendous economic impact to Baton Rouge last year and we were optimistic and excited to see it return. Without the broadcast, however, the return on investment of public dollars cannot be justified. If NBC and Mr. Trump can overcome their differences in time, I'd be happy to revisit this issue."
