Miss Uni­verse 1952-2015 (Pia Wurtzbach from Philip­pines)

• Re­port rights in­fringe­ment
• pub­lished: 24 Dec 2015
• views: 92835

Today's Miss Uni­verse Pageant was found­ed after Yolande Bet­beze, the win­ner of the 1951 Miss Amer­i­ca pageant, re­fused to pose in a swim­suit from its major spon­sor, Catali­na Swimwear. The brand's man­u­fac­tur­er Pa­cif­ic Mills with­drew its spon­sor­ship from Miss Amer­i­ca and set up the Miss USA and Miss Uni­verse con­tests. The first Miss Uni­verse Pageant was held in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia in 1952. It was won by Armi Ku­usela from Fin­land, who gave up her title, though not of­fi­cial­ly, to get mar­ried, short­ly be­fore her year was com­plet­ed. Until 1958, the Miss Uni­verse title, like that of Miss Amer­i­ca, was dated by the year fol­low­ing the con­test, so at the time Ms. Ku­usela's title was Miss Uni­verse 1953. Since its found­ing by Pa­cif­ic Mills, the pageant has been or­ga­nized and con­duct­ed by the Miss Uni­verse Or­ga­ni­za­tion. Even­tu­al­ly Pa­cif­ic Mills and its sub­sidiaries were ac­quired by the Kayser-Roth Cor­po­ra­tion, which was in turn ac­quired by Gulf and West­ern In­dus­tries. Don­ald Trump ac­quired the pageant in 1996. The pageant was first tele­vised in 1955. CBS began broad­cast­ing the com­bined Miss USA and Miss Uni­verse pageants in 1960, and as sep­a­rate con­tests in 1965. John Charles Daly host­ed the pageant from 1955 to 1966, Bob Bark­er from 1967 to 1987, Alan Thicke in 1988, John Forsythe in 1989, Dick Clark from 1990 to 1993, and Bob Goen from 1994 to 1996. In 2003, NBC out­bid the other net­works for the TV rights. From 2003 to 2014, the pageant was broad­cast in the US on NBC. NBC and Uni­vi­sion dropped the pageant in 2015 due to com­ments made by pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Trump about il­le­gal im­mi­grants from Mex­i­co. Start­ing in 2015, Fox was the of­fi­cial broad­cast­er of the pageant. Up until Septem­ber 2015, the Miss Uni­verse Or­ga­ni­za­tion was a joint ven­ture be­tween NBC and Don­ald Trump. The com­pa­ny has run the con­test since 2002. Fol­low­ing Trump's con­tro­ver­sial com­ments about il­le­gal im­mi­grants dur­ing his 2016 Pres­i­den­tial an­nounce­ment speech, NBC can­celled all busi­ness re­la­tion­ships with the Miss Uni­verse Or­ga­ni­za­tion and with Trump. In Septem­ber 2015, Trump bought out NBC's 50% stake in the or­ga­ni­za­tion mak­ing him the com­pa­ny's sole owner, which he held for three days be­fore sell­ing the en­tire pageant to WME/IMG. The cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Miss Uni­verse Or­ga­ni­za­tion is Paula Shugart.