NEW YORK WILL NOT WOO OSCAR -- THIS TIME

A trial balloon floated with great fanfare on the East Coast last summer -- that New York City would make a concerted push to host all or part of the Academy Awards -- apparently has run out of air with the disclosure Monday that New York officials do not plan to lobby the Oscar organization to include the Big Apple in this year’s show.

A spokesman for the New York City Host Committee said there just wasn’t enough time to present the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a formal proposal.

“If New York City does something, we do it right and we do it big,” said Jeffrey Stewart, spokesman for the host committee, an arm of the city’s convention and visitors bureau. “So, due to a lot of different circumstances, a formal proposal was not put together and is not being submitted to the academy.”

Stewart, however, held out the possibility that the idea would be revived next year for the 2004 Oscars. He was responding to a report in the entertainment trade paper Daily Variety that a consortium of New York media heavyweights is working behind the scenes to move at least part of the celebration to the East Coast following an aborted bid last summer to bring “the whole party to Gotham.”

But Stewart shot down even that speculation, noting that the host committee did not plan to pressure the academy.

Academy President Frank Pierson said, “We certainly haven’t heard anything from anybody. That’s where we stand.... As far as we’re concerned it’s not happening.”

As for whether Oscars producer Gil Cates might work a Gotham presence into the March 23 ceremony, Pierson said, “Gil is still laying out his plans for the show.... Those are things we don’t want to discuss in advance.”

Academy spokesman John Pavlik also noted that nothing in the way of a proposal had ever “come in to us.... This whole thing has been sort of a made-up story. At the time, we said we were not going to New York.”

In a recent interview, academy Executive Director Bruce Davis reiterated that the academy has a contract to stage the show from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

“We have a contract with the Kodak Theatre and we’re going to honor that,” Davis said. He added that had they moved part of the production to New York, it would have incurred twice the cost. “No one ever explained that would nearly double the cost without an increase in revenue with no one picking up the tab for that. That was never attractive to us.”

One of the people who had been behind the move was Miramax Films Chairman Harvey Weinstein, who said giving New York a piece of the Oscars would bring revenue and comfort to a city suffering the continuing aftereffects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Weinstein could not be reached for comment Monday.

The New York Host Committee, which is chaired by businessman Jonathan Tisch, brother of Hollywood producer Steve Tisch, has been searching for ways to revitalize the city’s economy through events that attract major media exposure. On Feb. 23, New York will host the Grammy Awards. The city is bidding to host the Republican National Convention in 2004 and the Super Bowl in 2008. The city also wants to host the Olympics in 2012.