The current Miss California, Carrie Prejean, has been booked as a cohost on San Diego’s KUSI Morning News.
The omnipresent lightning-rod Miss USA runner-up -- who has reiterated her stance against gay marriage since being asked about it during the Miss USA pageant -- will appear on-air Wednesday and Thursday with regular anchors Dan Plante and Sandra Maas.
Keith Lewis, who is the executive director of the Miss California pageant, gave his approval.
"We worked with the station, because she wants to branch out into broadcast," Lewis said. "This will be an exciting lead up to her [May 27] national appearance on 'Fox and Friends.' "
The San Diego on-air arrangement was brokered by the independent channel's general manager, Mike McKinnon, and news director, Steve Cohen.
"This is not a follow-up to her imbroglio with [pageant judge] Perez Hilton," said Cohen. "She's a hometown girl with a wide range of interests, and we'll talk to her about that. She won't be handling hard news like the election or Iraq, but she'll do some interviews."
Cohen said having Prejean on KUSI is not an endorsement of her stance against gay marriage.
"We have no opinion on that as a news station," Cohen said.
One KUSI guest scheduled to be interviewed by Prejean on Thursday is comedian/singer Joe Piscopo, who will be performing at the downtown Anthology supper club Friday and Saturday evenings. Reached by phone in New Jersey, Piscopo said he was excited to meet the comely blonde.
"I'm a Democrat, and I recently did Sean Hannity's show on Fox, and I thought I was going to meet her, but she'd pretaped her segment with Sean," said Piscopo. "She's too young, but, hey, I'm a single guy, you know? But this is great -- I'm excited to be interviewed by her. Maybe I should come out to her on the show and tell her I’m about to propose to my gay lover right there. Hey, it's something I might say."
Ron Donoho, formerly executive editor of "San Diego Magazine," is a regular contributor to NBCSandiego.com who covers local news, sports, culture and happy hours.
