N.Y. Sings--Grammy Is Impressed

Pointing to the successful telecast of the Grammy Awards this week from Radio City Music Hall, New York City is making a bid to regularly share the record-industry awards with Los Angeles, the traditional home of the Grammys.

New York City officials estimate that this year’s telecast, which was seen by an estimated 53 million people Wednesday night on CBS, will bring $45 million to $60 million to the city in money spent in Grammy-related expenditures, from restaurants to limousine rentals.

“We want to have the Grammys here with some regularity, at least every other year,” Mayor David Dinkins declared backstage during the Grammy telecast. “This occasion demonstrates the wonders of our city, and we’ll continue to do that.”

In interviews with The Times, record-industry officials said that they had been so impressed with New York during this year’s telecast that they would consider the idea of alternating telecasts between New York and Los Angeles in the future.

Grammy thus has two big-city suitors, meaning that Los Angeles will likely be under more pressure to provide the kinds of services and amenities that New York provided this year.

“The show this year was terrific, and New York City did an excellent job in helping us with all of the activities that surrounded the telecast,” said Mike Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), the industry group that administers the Grammys and picks the site of the award ceremonies. “I’m not leaning in any direction for next year, but I hope that L.A. will put all of its ammo into their guns to get us back there.”

“The show got a great rating, and there’s something about the geographical concentration of New York that allows the event to take over the whole city,” said Bill Ivey, chairman of the recording academy’s board of trustees. “It would be premature for me to speculate on the long-range plans for the telecast, but I think that all of the parties involved with the Grammys are leaving New York with a better feeling towards New York as a site for the Grammys.

“My feeling is that the Grammy telecasts will remain mostly in L.A. But New York’s performance is a challenge to L.A.--and we are going to be asking L.A. to do some events” such as New York did.

In Los Angeles, city officials said that they do not intend to take lightly New York City’s advances on the Grammys.

“Los Angeles is the home of NARAS, and we’ll do whatever we can to make them feel welcome,” said Valerie Fields, Mayor Tom Bradley’s arts and entertainment coordinator.

One of the criticisms of New York as a Grammy site is that expenses here are higher than in Los Angeles. But New York City helped reduce that cost differential by finding corporate sponsorship for some of the Grammy-related activities earlier this month.

“It probably cost us up to $1.5 million more this year to do the Grammys here than in Los Angeles,” Greene said. “But with the support (the city helped find through its host committee of corporate executives and city officials), we as an academy were probably out only about $600,000 or $700,000.”

Mayor Dinkins, who was the honorary chairman of the host committee, ordered all of the city agencies to cooperate with Grammy officials and producers, and he attended many of the Grammy-related functions himself. The city even painted the Grammy logo on the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center, down the street from Radio City Music Hall.

One might not think that high-profile music stars would be moved by free dinners and logos on ice-skating rinks. But Grammy officials said that it had made a difference. “The fact that so much attention came from so many places made all of the nominees feel very special,” Greene said.

L.A.’s Fields, like officials in New York, declined to get into specifics as to what the city would offer the academy in its proposals for next year’s telecast. But she noted that Los Angeles already participates in Grammy-related activities.

“I don’t want to get into panning New York, but I understand it rained on the red carpet during Grammy rehearsals,” Fields said. “It costs more to produce the Grammys in New York--and Los Angeles has great weather.”

Academy trustees will be meeting with officials from Los Angeles and New York City and will make a decision about next year’s telecast sometime this spring. Academy executives said that the decision is up to the trustees, although CBS, which has a contract to broadcast the event again next year, will have some input.

Greene said that the record academy also will be in negotiations with CBS in the next several months about extending the contract for Grammy telecast rights beyond next year, and he has another idea he would like to put on the table there: broadcasting the Grammys over two nights.

“I think it would be great if we could do one night ending maybe with song of the year, and another with record of the year,” he said. The plan would help end the controversy over so many Grammys not been awarded on the air, he said.