Darryl Ross was a star, but not a name.

Thousands of people watched him host the Harrah's revue "Skintight" for more than five years. The job parlayed into TV recognition as well, when the show was the subject of the E! reality series "Nearly Famous 2: Vegas Showgirls."

But five months after "Skintight" morphed into "Bareback," producer Greg Thompson opted to close it rather than inherit a dispute about logo art from Harrah's Entertainment.

"Erocktica," another Thompson production, closed the same October weekend. It went to the neon graveyard along with "Buck Wild," "X," "Headlights & Tailpipes," "Cover Girls" and "Splash" in a bad year for smaller revues marketed by title.

"The mid-range dance show just got wiped off the map in a hurry," says one local performer. "There are a lot of out-of-work dancers in this town." Or at least a lot moving from steady gigs to nightclub go-go cages, topless clubs or convention promotions.

Ross already had inroads into a parallel career as a TV entertainment reporter, and continues to work for KVVU-TV, Channel 5. His wife, "Fantasy" peformer Jennifer Ross, continues to work offstage as the show's dance captain while on maternity leave.

"Bareback" singer Nellie Norris headed to Seattle for a "Legends in Concert" job. Raymond "Ray-J" Jones, the "nearly famous" singer in "Erocktica," decided to pursue fame in Nashville after the genuinely famous Prince evicted his show at the Rio.

A couple of things seem to be going on here at once. Ray J-to-Prince is part of Las Vegas cycling back to stars such as Toni Braxton and Barry Manilow who are interested in a steady presence here.

Less obvious may be a delayed correction: Las Vegas entertainment divesting the smaller, generic-title productions to the tribal casinos exploding around the country.

"If you don't work in Vegas, it seems like the promised land. And it's still a prestige market," Thompson says. "But once you're here, you realize how hard it is to make money. There's so much competition."

The producer says he was fine with "two-wall" deals in which casinos shared expenses and profits. He even learned to cope with the "four-wall," in which the producer pays most costs but at least gets the room basically free.

But now he calls Harrah's new policy a "six-wall," where "you pay every single cost plus rent on top. That just takes any profit you hope to make."

For now, he says, Las Vegas has "the world on a string," so he's focusing on other markets. Places from Reno to Biloxi, Miss., and beyond, where the famous haven't bumped the nearly famous from the marquees.

Mike Weatherford's entertainment column appers Thursdays and Sundays. Contact him at 383-0288 or e-mail him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com