<i> Survive This, Miss America</i>

Talk about devastation. When I eavesdropped on Bunky pouring out his heart and sobbing while voting to evict Krista from the “Big Brother 2” house on CBS Thursday night, I bawled along with him.

Don’t tell me about the severe drought ravaging Central America or last week’s explosion and inferno at a Hollywood apartment building that killed and injured residents. For we who watched “Big Brother 2,” misery was spelled B-u-n-k-y.

When noting which pair of contestants had fallen ominously behind on a screening tape of the coming CBS series “The Amazing Race,” my spirits sank then too.

When I leaned forward anxiously on the edge of my seat during last week’s “Manhunt” on UPN, the suspense was so great I could hardly bear it. I expect to be as emotionally involved, too, in NBC’s coming “Lost,” the WB’s “Elimidate Deluxe” and “Lost in the USA,” and “Shipmates” in syndication.

The sniping I’m hearing about television being thick with “Survivor” and its many progeny is sour grapes. If you’ve no fresh ideas of your own, why not borrow? That’s been the industry’s mantra for more than half a century. If this bothers some viewers, they should give up TV, where cutting edge is defined as having the chutzpah to break old ground. I say spread “Survivor” and its Orwellian faux reality wide, spread it far, repetition being the soul of pop culture.

There’s a news hook here. I have been as distressed as you by plunging ratings for the annual Miss America Pageant that chooses the nation’s most outstanding young woman. So I welcomed word last week that the Sept. 22 telecast on ABC will be more like “Survivor” and its burgeoning spinoffs.

“Survivor” to the hilt is a new pageant rule providing for contestants to have their fates determined in part by the women they’re competing against. The first 41 eliminated will later have a hand in voting on the 10 semifinalists, their picks becoming one-eighth of the judges’ decision.

The other changes are cosmetic and uninfluenced by “Survivor.” The swimsuit event is now euphemistically titled “Lifestyle and Fitness,” the evening wear phase “Presence and Poise,” the talent competition “Artistic Expression” and the traditional interviews “Presentation and Community Achievement.”

Not bad, but the pageant remains too decadently stodgy, as if ABC and Miss America executives feared it being labeled a “Survivor” clone were the changes more daring. Well, what would be the harm?

If consulted, I would have urged the pageant to draw even more from “Survivor” and the others, knowing that “Eyewitness News” here and ABC stations everywhere would be giving it their best team coverage.

First, I’d drop Atlantic City as host locale and move the pageant someplace more challenging, like, say, Borneo. To draw more viewers, these Miss America wannabes need hardship and humiliation, to say nothing of betrayal and romance.

No more of that wanting-to-be-a-brain-surgeon-and-working-for-humanity stuff, either. I’d encourage contestants to be openly cutthroat and self-serving, form Machiavellian alliances, sell themselves to the devil as Nicole, Hardy, Will and sniveling Bunky have done on “Big Brother 2,” and go on power trips during their three weeks together.

In addition to creating a Shopping for Shoes Challenge, I’d also have contestants tell the camera backstage which of their fellow contestants they’d like to spank.

I’d bunk them all together, and, taking a tip from “The Mole,” have one contestant secretly wear a pantycam to snoop on the others. The first contestant to discover the mole and her hidden camera would earn points toward staving off elimination. There would be a second mole, too, one secretly working against the others and creating panic by stealing their lip gloss, blusher and brow brushes in the dark of night.

Thinking of “Temptation Island” and the “Big Brother” shows, I’d encourage the contestants to have sex with each other in multiples of three, for the pageant’s new lescam. In addition, they’d have conjugal visits from boyfriends in front of a state-of-the-art nymphcam.

With “Fear Factor” in mind, I’d add to the evening-gowned “Presence and Poise” competition thousands of crawling cockroaches, and, even scarier, to “Lifestyle and Fitness” a night locked inside a torture room with Martha Stewart. Contestants heard screaming hysterically would be evicted from the pageant.

I wouldn’t leave out “Boot Camp,” so here’s an idea. Have the five finalists dressed down publicly by bull-necked Marine drill instructors (“You call those breasts?” “You call that a hair flip?” “Wipe that smile off your face!”), with quivery lips or tears bringing expulsion. They could earn their way back into the finals only by kneeing a drill instructor in the groin.

Because the Miss America pageant remains patriotic to the core, I’d have each contestant recite the Pledge of Allegiance ... while bungee jumping. One missed word and it’s all over.

Announcing the winner wouldn’t end the contest. To juice up Miss America’s triumphant walk after her crowning, I’d have her do it barefoot on a runway of hot coals, and if she faltered, pass her title to the first runner-up.

Instead of former Miss Americas, I’d use Richard Hatch and other “Survivor” alumni as TV commentators. And as host, intimately relating to contestants on the stage, who else but Howard Stern?

That is, if Gary Condit were not available.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted by e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.