MMM(ovie)M # 133 -- Hollywood Incentives

     Businesses love to play one state against another when to comes to incentives.

     How hard is it to fake an interest in a half dozen site locations for a plant, only to select the one you really wanted in the end, having pumped up the tax cuts and outright cash prizes for opening your plant there.
     How much money did Alabama spend in the losing effort to win the Air Force Tanker contract? We tend to celebrate the big wins like Mercedes and Hyundai without takign into account the loses.

     Movie incentives are the same...if a film is being made outside California, you can bet somebody is demanding, and somebody is paying, incentives.

    Over the weekend AP reported that Georgia is considering scrapping it's own film incentives, the tax breaks etc that a state or municipality pays a company to make the film in their jurisdiction.

     While they do spend money and generate taxes during filming, so do superstar concerts and the little carnivals and conventions.
     Where are their incentives?

     But Hollywood may be waking up to the new economy: the states are broke. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley's proposed budget includes huge cuts in tourism spending...including, in theory, the state's film office, which is part of the Tourism office.

     The Decatur Daily's Trevor Stokes wrote a story last month about Alabama's two year old film incentives legislation, suggesting that it doesn't compare with what other states offer because of caps, and yet doesn't help small home-grown film efforts either.
     The Golden Era of paying Hollywood to come calling may be ending.

    
[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]