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NYC Film and TV Employment Plummets as Studios Seek Cheaper Programming and Locations

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3 weeks ago

October 29, 2024

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NYC Film and TV Employment Plummets as Studios Seek Cheaper Programming and Locations

New York City’s film and TV industry, which never completely recovered from the actors’ and writers’ strikes in 2023, is contracting again as streaming services cut back on the number of scripted shows they are commissioning.

The prospects for any rebound soon are uncertain, given New York’s reliance on producing comedy and drama series at a time when reality TV and other programming is ascendant.

Local employment in the industry has plunged from 42,800 in May to 30,800 in September, according to then latest monthly report from the state Labor Department. Since the industry employs only half of the workers directly, with the rest working for contractors such as caterers, the number of jobs lost is likely to be double that number — almost 25,000.

The number of jobs today is about the same as during the lowest point of the pandemic. Aside from 2020, New York City hasn’t seen as few jobs in film and TV since the mid 1990s, before the explosion of cable and then streaming programming.

Long-term industry trends underlie much of the problem. Legacy media companies like Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery are cutting costs or being acquired to survive. Streaming services, with the exception of Netflix, are under pressure to cut costs and become profitable.

In addition, streaming services are betting billions of dollars to secure sports rights as the best strategy to lure new subscribers and retain existing ones. Amazon is paying the NFL about $1 billion a year to air just a few NFL games. It will pay $2 billion to stream 66 NBA and WNBA games starting next year.

“Streamers have less money to divert into scripted programming,” said David Viviano,

chief economist of the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA. “Some streamers are testing how low they can go on scripted work.”

Doubling Down on Studio Space

Most studio executives in New York declined to discuss the decline in work. But Doug Steiner, head of the city’s largest production facility, Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, said the number of major projects is declining, the number of episodes per show is being reduced and costs are being cut on the productions that are given the green light.

“Some of our shows are wrapping up, and we won’t be booked solid like we were,” he said.

He doesn’t expect that to change in the near future as consolidation continues to roil the industry.

Because the trends are industry-wide, the number of shooting days in Los Angeles

dropped to 5,000 in the third quarter, the lowest level of the year and far below expectations. (No similar figure exists for New York City.) The decline there has prompted talk of a campaign to expand California’s tax credit for film work to make it more lucrative.

Last year, New York increased its tax credit to $700 million a year from $420 million and raised it to 30% of most costs. But Steiner says tax credits offered in the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe have become a problem, as studios seek out locations not covered by the new contracts with the writers and actors that raised industry costs by $600 million a year.

Meanwhile, there is no sign that the administration of Mayor Eric Adams is rethinking its support for building more production space, aiming to double the 2 million square feet of existing sound studio stages.

The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment wouldn’t address the plans for additional studios except to say that it will continue to support the industry.

“The decline in desire for scripted streaming content is an industry/worldwide situation, but NYC is doing better than most,” said Pat Swinney Kaufma, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, in a statement. “This is due to a competitive tax credit, infrastructure, the best workforce in the business and the rare commodity of NYC as a location, one that can’t be duplicated in a soundstage.’’

The city’s prospects depend on the hope that at some point the industry will stabilize and that studios will decide that they cannot entice new subscribers or retain them without a steady stream of new scripted shows.

“Like all media, film and television production goes through cycles from time to time,” said Kris Bagwell, executive vice president and general manager at Silvercup Studios in Queens. “We’re confident that after the last two difficult strike and near-strike years, we’ll see many more productions come to New York City in 2025 and the years ahead.”