Miss Iowa Diana Reed won last night’s (TUES) first preliminary Talent face-off for her baton twirling performance to “You Can’t Stop the Beat,” during the first night of competition in 2008 Miss America Live! at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino. For her win, Diana received a $2,000 scholarship.

Also in the spotlight was Miss Rhode Island Ashley Bickford, who was the preliminary Lifestyle and Fitness winner in a black Winnwear swimsuit with gold trim. Ashley was awarded a $1,000 scholarship for her win.

The preliminaries sometimes serve as an indicator of who will wind up in the first-cut—down to 15 finalists plus one contestant selected by viewer Internet voting as a result of the four one-hour TV shows that have been airing on TLC. The final episode of Miss America: Reality Check will be this Friday at 10 p.m. with the grand finale taking place here Saturday at 5 p.m. during Miss America Live! at Planet Hollywood, which will air live at 8 p.m. East Coast and 7 p.m. Central time zones. Locally, the special will be tape-delayed to air at 8 p.m. PST and 9 p.m. Mountain.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 11:54 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.