Whatever Happened to...
Gretchen Carlson, Miss America 1989

The former CBS correspondent is still speaking her mind about Miss America’s moves — as well as her own, which have taken her from CBS to NYC’s Fox NewsChannel — all driven by the motto: “Carpe diem.”

By Fred Abel

OUT ‘FOXING’ THEM ALL: Gretchen Carlson is a familiar presence at an anchor position for cable’s Fox NewsChannel in New York City.

?“I am always a big believer in change when it is needed,” Miss America 1989 Gretchen Carlson told me during one of several interview sessions last year and earlier this year. From the beginning, Gretchen has voiced her support of the changes Miss America has made, as the pageant moved from Atlantic City to Las Vegas and a multi-year contract with Country Music Television (CMT).

Like the Miss America Organization itself, Gretchen also engineered a major change of position last summer when she left her two-year-old, high-visibility seat at the anchor desk of The CBS Saturday Morning Show to become a news anchor at the Fox NewsChannel in New York City. From her post on Fox’s 17th-floor offices on New York City’s Avenue of the Americas, Gretchen remains one of Miss America’s most visible success stories with a major-media-market presence. “It is a great opportunity for me to do my own show five days a week,” she told me when she first made the leap in June 2005, “but it’s sad to leave CBS.”

At that time, the Miss America competition was still looking to Atlantic City to host its annual fall rite of passage for MAO’s 52 scholarship-seeking state beauty queens for 2005. But by later that summer, as Gretchen settled into delivering her new daily newsroom reports, the pageant found itself making its own news, as ABC and MAO parted ways and the pageant began shopping for a new long-term television partner as well. “They needed to find a place that valued the Miss America program and everything it stands for, so that it would be promoted right,” Gretchen told me following MAO’s late 2005 decision to join with CMT. “I think the move to Las Vegas is a good one. While Atlantic City was steeped in tradition... it was time for a change.”