Fewer yellow signs are popping up in Los Angeles this spring.
Those placards, which direct cast and crew members to a location shoot, normally sprout like wildflowers in March and April, as pilot production reaches full bloom.
But despite an uptick in broadcast pilot orders this year, Los Angeles -- and New York, too -- is increasingly losing out to a wide variety of locales across the country.
The trend is most notable in drama, as a majority of pilots are being shot this spring in places such as Chicago, Atlanta, Hawaii, New Mexico and Dallas.
The runaway champ may be CW, which is taking a page from cable and shooting all but one of its pilots in Canada.
“It's simply about the economics," one studio exec says. “We all have to take our shows abroad and get the benefits of tax rebates."
If an average drama costs between $2.7 million and $3.7 million an episode, and a network is paying between $1.5 million to $1.7 million in license fees, that 10% to 25% tax rebate suddenly looks very good to a studio exec.
“That makes a difference between these shows taking terrible deficits or being somewhere in the break-even range in season one," one exec says.
That extra $300,000 to $750,000 back is also critical given the uncertainty of both the international sales and domestic syndication markets.
Those placards, which direct cast and crew members to a location shoot, normally sprout like wildflowers in March and April, as pilot production reaches full bloom.
But despite an uptick in broadcast pilot orders this year, Los Angeles -- and New York, too -- is increasingly losing out to a wide variety of locales across the country.
The trend is most notable in drama, as a majority of pilots are being shot this spring in places such as Chicago, Atlanta, Hawaii, New Mexico and Dallas.
The runaway champ may be CW, which is taking a page from cable and shooting all but one of its pilots in Canada.
“It's simply about the economics," one studio exec says. “We all have to take our shows abroad and get the benefits of tax rebates."
If an average drama costs between $2.7 million and $3.7 million an episode, and a network is paying between $1.5 million to $1.7 million in license fees, that 10% to 25% tax rebate suddenly looks very good to a studio exec.
“That makes a difference between these shows taking terrible deficits or being somewhere in the break-even range in season one," one exec says.
That extra $300,000 to $750,000 back is also critical given the uncertainty of both the international sales and domestic syndication markets.
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