Raise your hand if you saw this coming: Donald Trump and MTV are collaborating on Pageant Place, a reality series that will find Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA cohabitating in a New York City apartment. (It's like the Justice League, only with whiter smiles.) Says Variety, semi-disgraced former Miss USA Tara Conner will serve as a "den mother" to the three title-holders.... Uber-emotional Anna Nicole Smith Judge Larry Seidlin has committed to develop a fall 2008 court show with CBS Television Distribution, says Broadcasting & Cable.... A new Speed Racer animated series is set to launch next year on Nicktoons.... Nick Jr. has renewed Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! for a second season.
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Fresh out of rehab, semi-shamed and tiara-retaining Miss USA Tara Conner will grant her first interview to Today's Matt Lauer on Feb. 1 — the first day of sweeps, coincidentally. Conner will also recount her saga on the Feb. 3 Dateline.
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Miss USA avoided being stripped of her title, but what about her unmentionables? Donald Trump and Miss Universe organization execs are mulling an offer from Playboy to have Tara Conner, who is currently getting squeaky-clean in rehab, pose for an upcoming cover, the New York Post's Page Six hears. A sticking point, says a source: "It would have to be in good taste" — i.e., non-nude — in keeping with the issue's theme of, "Um, what's the point?"
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Donald Trump has afforded Tara Conner a second chance and let her retain her Miss USA tiara, this amid reports that the just-turned-21-year-old has been painting the Big Apple red, availing herself of many an illicit vice/warm body. The Donald's decision elicited the wrath of, among others, infamous Apprentice alum Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, herself a onetime Miss USA and Miss America contender, and now an international beauty-pageant coach. "I'm shocked that, in the context of what [Conner]'s accused of, he wouldn’t consider the impact of this [decision]," Omarosa tells the New York Daily News. "It's hard enough these days to recruit girls, but if parents think pageants are all about partying and boozing, it will be even harder." Citing the restrictive terms of the Miss USA contract, she says Conner's carousing "is way over the line. This is a shock for everybody."Though Conner, teary-eyed from Trump's forgiveness, denied that she has a drinking problem, Trump says that she...
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