It’s the American Grammy Way

Want to know who won’t be playing the Grammy Awards show this year? Just tune in tonight to the 26th annual American Music Awards on ABC. The rivalry between the two shows is alive and well, and organizers of the Grammys (which airs Feb. 24) are sticking with their 7-year-old vow to ban acts from performing on the Grammy telecast if they are performing the same year on the AMAs. It’s a roster that this year includes Garth Brooks, the Backstreet Boys, Whitney Houston and the Goo Goo Dolls. According to Michael Greene, CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, ratings for the academy’s Grammy broadcast suffer when it offers a “copycat show,” making a tough stance against recycled acts a necessity. Not so, says Dick Clark, the executive producer of the AMAs, who calls the Grammy stance a “childish, petty and small-minded approach.” The shows have traditionally enjoyed almost identical ratings, so who are the real losers in all this? The musicians, who long for the days when they could play both shows, double their national exposure and enjoy the accompanying spikes in album sales during the post-holiday shopping lull. The artists can suffer also if they turn down the AMAs with an eye to a Grammy invite that never comes. The Grammy nominations were announced last week and, sure enough, several acts that didn’t hear their names among the nominees began scrambling for last-minute spots on the AMAs. Clark wouldn’t name names, but he said they are acts who won’t appear on either stage. “Our show is full,” Clark said. “We already have more than we can handle.”

Jordan Film Hype? In Their ‘Dreams’

DreamWorks SKG knows how to hype a movie when it wants to. For “The Prince of Egypt,” its animated Bible epic, the studio pulled out all the stops, advertising like crazy and even teaming with the nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, to sell the film. All of which makes the lack of heat around “In Dreams,” which opens Friday, even more noticeable. Directed by Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game” and last year’s critically acclaimed “The Butcher Boy”), the thriller stars Annette Bening as a children’s book illustrator whose dreams are haunted by the twisted visions of a serial killer (Robert Downey Jr.) who kidnaps little girls. Despite its solid cast (Stephen Rea and Aidan Quinn also star) and chilling premise, the film--which cost about $40 million to make--is being described by those who’ve seen it as neither a commercial nor an art-house movie, but something in between. Speculation that DreamWorks is cutting its losses on “In Dreams” has been fueled by delays (the film, which was shot in 1997, was originally scheduled for release last fall). But Terry Press, DreamWorks’ marketing chief, vehemently denies the movie is being “dumped.” The release date was changed, she says, to put some distance between “In Dreams” and another film featuring child endangerment, Sony Pictures’ “The Deep End of the Ocean” (the Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle that was later moved to February). Press predicts that this week “you won’t be able to turn your television on without seeing” the film’s trailer, which even some of DreamWorks’ rivals praise as riveting. “That’s the traditional way you sell a horror movie: all the TV in a two-week period,” she said. Besides, she added: “We had to wait for all those Christmas movies to get out of the marketplace.”

ABC Begins Life After Football

If someone is experiencing “Monday Night Football” withdrawal in your home, imagine how ABC feels. Every year, ABC enjoys big Monday-night ratings through December, then tackles the daunting task of filling that void. ABC kicks off the process tonight with the American Music Awards, a three-hour telecast hosted by Brandy and “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch’s” Melissa Joan Hart. After that, the network will rely on movies and miniseries, including a project starring “NYPD Blue’s” Rick Schroder next week, with the three-part Stephen King miniseries “Storm of the Century,” a Sonny & Cher movie and the features “Courage Under Fire” and “Tin Cup” lined up for sweeps. To the other networks, this post-football period offers a window of opportunity. CBS and Fox hope male football fans will migrate to shows like “Everybody Loves Raymond” (CBS) and “Ally McBeal” (Fox), which go head to head with football on the East Coast. The real beneficiaries, however, could be cable’s TNT and USA, which have done well with their competing wrestling shows even opposite football. In fact, USA’s WWF wrestling pinned down a record rating Monday against the college football championship game.

--Compiled by Times staff writers and contributors

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