Grammy Move Is Music to New York’s Ears : Award: The Big Apple’s business, political and entertainment communities outmaneuver L.A. to snag the telecast.

The surprise Monday wasn’t just that New York wrestled next year’s Grammy Awards ceremony away from Los Angeles for the second straight year, but how easy the victory was.

“The business and political and entertainment community in New York really came together in a way Los Angeles just hasn’t been able to,” said Mike Greene, president of the Grammy-sponsoring National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, in a phone interview following a New York press conference Monday announcing that the 34th Grammy show would be telecast Feb. 25 from Radio City Music Hall.

The telecast will cap a week of Grammy-related activities in New York that will include parties, public performances and educational programs.

The New York offer for the weeklong celebration, which could bring upward of $40 million of tourist and trade revenue to the city, was so far superior to the Los Angeles proposal that it will take a dramatic turnabout by Los Angeles to become competitive again, several sources close to the negotiations said.

Until now, Los Angeles had been virtually guaranteed the Grammys, hosting the music industry’s equivalent of the Oscars 28 of its 33 years. But recognizing the revenue and prestige benefits, New York launched an intensive campaign in 1987 to move the show East.

New York won the Grammys in 1988 and again in 1991. Next year’s show will be the sixth Grammy awards show ever in the Big Apple and the first time it has been there two years in a row. (Nashville hosted the awards once, in 1973.)

New York reportedly offered a guarantee that various Grammy Week events would raise about $750,000 for NARAS’ Grammy in the Schools and MusiCares charities, as well as providing an array of entertainment and social events for Academy members coming to town for the awards show.

Even the man spearheading the Los Angeles drive for the Grammys said that it was hard for his city to compete with New York.

“We understand the reasons they selected New York, mainly that they were going to get a guarantee of revenue for their charities,” said Sheldon I. Ausman, president of the Los Angeles Visitors Convention Bureau.

“That is a commitment and guarantee we couldn’t make,” he said. “We could not make it because in the recording industry much of the support comes from outside L.A. Last month we contacted a couple of recording companies in L.A., but it was too late to secure their commitment of that level of financial support.”

But Los Angeles-based record executives contacted Monday said that it will take more than their involvement to turn the trend around.

“The mayor’s office makes an incredible effort, but can’t do it when it doesn’t get the support from the business sector that New York offers,” said Irving Azoff, owner of Giant Records and former chairman of MCA Records.

“We hope next year, given enough time, we can put together a program that will justify them returning here,” said Ausman, a former partner of the Arthur Anderson accounting firm. “But with the level of financial support Mike Greene says they’re getting in New York, we can’t promise that. (The Grammys) doesn’t appeal to the general community like the Super Bowl.”

But it does in New York, apparently. It was a broad coalition of business, entertainment and civic entities that gave New York the nod. New York’s aggressive stance was personified by the involvement of such high-power business figures as Jonathan Tisch, president and chief executive officer of Loews Hotels and the chairman of the city’s Grammy Host Committee, and Ed Cooperman, chief executive officer of American Express Travel Related Services, who was last year’s Host Committee head.

New York boosters also point to an array of civic and business efforts for the 1991 Grammys ranging from the gala party thrown at Gracie Mansion (the mayor’s residence) by Time Warner chief Steve Ross to the Grammy logo being painted on the famed Rockefeller Center ice rink.

The announcement couldn’t have come at a better time for the city of New York, in the midst of a budget crisis and suffering from an image problem. City officials estimate that this year’s Grammys brought in about $40 million of hotel, restaurant and other related business to New York, as well as positive publicity. New York is also hosting next year’s Democratic National Convention.

“The Grammys will provide a much needed boost to our local economy,” said New York Mayor David Dinkins at Monday’s press conference at New York City Hall. “That’s music to my ears.”

In contrast, Mike Greene said, the L.A. effort was a little out of tune, though he hopes to help change that by next year. Both NARAS and Pierre Cossette Productions, which produces the annual telecast, are based in Los Angeles. There is talk of moving the Grammys to a larger facility than the 6,000-seat Radio City or the same-size Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Both the Forum in Inglewood and the Los Angeles Sports Arena have been mentioned as possibilities, along with New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley is optimistic that Los Angeles will reestablish itself as the Grammy host next year.

“It seems that the Academy wanted to continue its brief fling with New York,” he said in a statement released by his office on Monday. “We all know the Grammys have a permanent marriage with Los Angeles. Our city is still the undisputed entertainment capital of the world.”

But Mike Greene cast some doubt on that.

“We told Mayor Bradley’s people over the weekend that we were certainly going to come back and try to facilitate their restructuring their effort,” Greene said. “But as it stands right now, L.A. generally gave us a lot of reasons why they couldn’t do it, and New York was giving us reasons why they could.”