Set viewrecords property of jqgrid dynamically

Hi,

I want to set viewrecords property of jqgrid dynamically. By default this property is set as false but i want to set this to true or false sometimes to show and at times not to show the recordText at the table footer depending upon the data that i am populating in the grid dynamicaly. I tried with the following but with no avail-

jQuery("#gridID").jqGrid({viewrecords : true});
jQuery("#gridID").setGridParam({viewrecords : true});


Thanks