Grammys Coming Back To NYC

The Grammy Awards are leaving Los Angeles and returning to New York City after a four-year run on the West Coast, according to the mayor's office.

"L.A. is the entertainment capitol of the world, and we would hope that at some point in the future the Grammys will return to the city," said Julie Wong, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn.

Officials with the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, which stages the Grammys, declined to comment Friday but scheduled a news conference in New York next Wednesday to make what they called a "major announcement." They're expected to formally announce the move.

The awards ceremony is typically held in February, but the 2003 date hasn't been set.

The Grammys were last held in New York in 1998, when Bob Dylan won best album for "Time Out of Mind."

That was the same year a bitter dispute erupted between C. Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, and then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Several months later, Greene announced the Grammys would return to Los Angeles but denied the disagreement with Giuliani motivated the switch.

Greene has often said the program should alternate between New York and Los Angeles, the two centers of American pop music. In the early years of the show, simultaneous ceremonies were held in both cities.

After Giuliani left office, Mayor Michael Bloomberg extended another invitation to the Grammys, hoping to attract the ceremony back to New York.

Bloomberg plans to attend next week's news conference at Madison Square Garden.

The Grammys are broadcast in nearly 160 countries.