by Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Big Apple wants a bite of the Oscars.
A group of prominent New Yorkers is pressing sponsors of the Academy Awards to share the glitter of Hollywood's biggest night by telecasting some or all of the 75th annual Oscars ceremony next March from Manhattan.
The move, aimed at helping New York rebound from the attacks of Sept. 11, was spearheaded in part by Miramax Films co-chairman Harvey Weinstein and Cablevision Systems Corp. CEO James L. Dolan.
The idea also has gained support from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Gov. George Pataki, as well as such entertainment figures as directors Spike Lee and Woody Allen and actor Robert De Niro.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has a 20-year contract to present the Oscars from the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, ruled out moving the ceremony to New York but left open the possibility of a shared telecast.
"Discussion about the possibility of broadcasting a segment of the telecast from New York could take place, but not before a producer is on board," said Frank Pierson, who was reelected as academy president by its board of governors Thursday night.
He said the academy has received no proposal from any group in New York City about a bi-coastal Oscar telecast.
But a source close to the situation in New York said Weinstein first approached Academy executive director Bruce Davis with the idea informally a couple of months ago.
"This is a unique opportunity to celebrate the Academy's 75th anniversary while providing an important economic boost to New York City," Weinstein said in a statement Friday. "We hope it will receive serious consideration."
Dolan, whose company controls two likely Manhattan venues for an Oscar telecast -- Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden -- said giving New York a role in the show would "recognize the city's historic place in the entertainment industry and ... show the nation and the world that New York is as strong as ever."
De Niro called the idea a "win-win" for the academy and New York City.
Bloomberg also weighed in.
"The Academy Awards we hope to get here," he told reporters at City Hall on Friday. He said the city also was trying to attract such marquee events as the 2004 political conventions and the National Football League Super Bowl in a bid to help New York recover from the economic trauma of the suicide hijackings last year that leveled the World Trade Center.
A spokesman for ABC, which will air the Oscar show next year, said the Disney-owned network "would certainly embrace" a bi-coastal telecast if the academy wanted it.
"We would be thrilled if the academy chose to include New York in some way during the upcoming telecast," ABC spokesman Kevin Brockman said, noting that sharing the Oscar ceremony is part of the event's history.
The show, which today is one of the highest-rated television broadcasts of the year, was simulcast from the Pantages Theater in Hollywood and the NBC Century Theater in New York from 1953 through 1957, an academy spokeswoman said.
The Oscar show moved into the newly built Kodak last year for a ballyhooed return to Hollywood after decades of telecasts from venues in downtown Los Angeles.
Supporters of a bi-coastal telecast said the idea also would allow for more than double the attendance afforded by the Kodak Theater, which seats about 3,300 people. Radio City Music Hall and the theater at Madison Square Garden both seat much more than that.
© 2002 Reuters