Las Vegas ? They’ll tap dance, sing and glide around the stage. They’ll don glitzy costumes, bathing suits and bright smiles in a quest for big money and a chance to see their names in lights.

Just don’t call them showgirls.

Today, 52 driven, young beauties will arrive in Las Vegas to begin the weeklong whirlwind Miss America pageant. The televised finale airs at 7 p.m. Jan. 21. It will be the first time in the annual pageant’s 85-year history that the winner will be crowned outside Atlantic City, N.J., a move designed to use Sin City sexiness to stop the show’s slipping TV ratings and declining popularity.

It’s also the first time the show will air on MTV Network’s Country Music Television, a cable channel with red-state roots and a Kenny Chesney-loving following. And instead of the usual talk-show type host, the pageant this year will be fronted by flat-out TV hunk James Denton of “Desperate Housewives.”

The many changes raise one big question, a sad one for longtime viewers to even contemplate: What happens if the pageant’s latest incarnation doesn’t revive the venerated, but creaky, Mom-and-apple pie institution? Is “Miss America’s” survival on the line?

“I don’t even want to go there,” said Art McMaster, chief executive officer of the Atlantic City-based Miss America Organization, a nonprofit group that, along with affiliates, makes $45 million in scholarships available to women each year, including $50,000 to the winner.

McMaster notes the organization has entered into a multiyear contract with CMT. He said he hopes the move to a cable network draws new viewers and sets up new, lower expectations for the show’s television ratings.

Actor James Denton, right, is greeted by North Dakota's Miss America contestant Jacqueline Marie Johnson on Wednesday in Pasadena, Calif. Denton, who plays a hunky plumber on television's Desperate

“Will we ever get 20 million viewers again? You know and I know that’s never going to happen,” he said. “But as long as we get the longtime pageant fans watching, we’ll be around another 85 years.”

In an attempt to cater to its die-hard followers, producers say they plan to restore the show to its earlier glory by ditching a quiz show and a casual-wear competition, elements recently borrowed from reality television and game shows to try to give the pageant a more updated feel. A record low 9.8 million viewers watched the show on ABC in 2004, a 20 percent drop since 2000 and about half the viewership that watched in 1984.

But McMaster also acknowledges traditional values and scholarship contests don’t always make for great television. That’s where Las Vegas comes in.

“We’ve got to show we can put on a very entertaining show,” he said. “Quite honestly, no other city has the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas.”

The contrast, though, with Miss America’s past is eye-opening.

While conceived in 1921 as a way to keep tourists on Atlantic City’s boardwalk after Labor Day, the pageant quickly evolved into a symbol of modesty.

“It never has been about glamour or spectacle, all those things that represent Vegas,” said Sarah Banet-Weiser, professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and author of “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity.” “It’s much more about respectability and typicality than it is about showcasing a kind of glamorous model-type woman.”