Anybody want to play host to a famous beauty pageant?

Fighting for its survival, the famous beauty pageant is taking to the road, hoping to reinvigorate the tired franchise by finding a new city and arena — more than one, perhaps.

The 84-year-old pageant told the city Thursday it can’t afford to continue losing money by producing the annual beauty contest at Boardwalk Hall and that it will either move it to a new city or go on the road permanently, moving from city to city, like the Super Bowl.

Under a TV deal with country music channel CMT that was announced in June, this year’s Miss America pageant was moved from its typical autumn slot to January. But neither the pageant nor the network said where the next pageant will be held, fueling worries that Atlantic City’s signature event would head for Nashville, Tenn., where CMT is headquartered.

Pageant officials at the time said they had no plans to leave Atlantic City.

But pageant chief Art McMaster said the pageant could save $1 million by finding a new venue that could pay a site fee and produce it for less money.

“We don’t need to break even. We need to put money in our pockets,” said Art McMaster, chief executive officer of the Miss America Organization, the nonprofit that runs the annual pageant and administers millions of dollars in scholarships to contestants.

“We are on a very short fuse financially right now,” McMaster said, citing the loss of network television sponsor ABC-TV last October, the pageant’s sagging TV ratings and the high cost of outfitting Boardwalk Hall with the expensive lights and audio equipment necessary for the live show.

He told the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority at a board meeting that the state’s $725,000 annual subsidy to Miss America wasn’t enough and that he wanted the state agency to release it from the last two years of the five-year contract that ends in 2007.

Stunned board members agreed to do so, but with strings attached: Ten Atlantic City appearances a year by the reigning Miss America, permanent license to use the Miss America name, brands and logos “in a manner consistent with current uses” and advertising spots in the pageant’s program book.

The organization’s main office, which consists of 11 full-time employees, will continue to run things from Atlantic City, McMaster said.

The first order of business will be finding a place to hold the next Miss America pageant, which normally would have been held next month but was postponed to January 2006 when cable outlet Country Music Television signed to become Miss America’s new TV partner two months ago.

McMaster said the pageant has yet to begin courting new cities, dismissing questions about whether Nashville or Orlando, Fla., were possible destinations.

Orlando, Fla., is where the Miss America Organization staged its first Miss America’s Outstanding Teen pageant earlier this month. Asked why the organization would launch a new pageant for girls 14 to 17 at a time when it was floundering, McMaster said the organization hoped to bolster its brand by courting the young women who are its base.

He said he hoped to have a new location within a month in order to have sufficient time to prepare for the pageant in January.

In any event, the seaside resort where Miss America started in 1921 is now facing a future without the institution that defined its past.

For Atlantic City regulars, longtime pageant volunteers and the city, it’s a bitter pill to swallow. No more Boardwalk parades, no more morning-after ocean dips by the winner, no more runway walks.

“Historically, it’s a really sad day, but the handwriting’s been on the wall a long time,” said Vicki Gold Levi, 63, who as a child served as a page for Miss America 1945 Bess Myerson. “It’s like a divorce: Everybody loses. The grandparents, the kids, everybody. But we should wish Miss America well and get behind her.”