LA's on-location filming metric, 'shoot days,' peaked at 40,000 in 2016. Post-strikes, instead of recovering as many hoped, shoot days fell below 20,000, representing a 50% collapse in production volume and dashing industry hopes for a 2025 rebound.
The global race for production incentives has led to a surprising shift: major American network game shows are now being filmed in Dublin, Ireland. Studios are flying entire casts and celebrity hosts overseas to take advantage of favorable tax and labor environments, a sign of extreme cost-cutting.
The traditional large writer's room, once boasting 30 writers for shows like 'Family Guy,' is disappearing. Studios now favor the 'Mike White model' (creator of 'The White Lotus'), where one person writes an entire series, or use 'mini-rooms' with a handful of writers for short periods, drastically cutting labor costs.
The decline in Hollywood filming has severe, direct ripple effects on LA's local economy. Simple, routine activities like large writer's rooms ordering daily lunches provided a lifeline for local restaurants. The shutdown of these productions has pushed many of these small businesses, who barely survived the pandemic, into failure.
The rise of streaming has fundamentally changed the competitive landscape for new content. A new TV show is no longer just competing against other shows in its time slot. It is competing against the entire back-catalog of globally popular shows like 'Family Guy' and 'The Office,' which are instantly accessible to viewers.
While writers and actors garner attention in the AI debate, the most immediate job threat is to 'below-the-line' workers. Roles like hair and makeup, set design, and grips are on the precipice of being disrupted or replaced by generative AI, posing a huge risk to a large segment of LA's local economy.
The current dominance of the horror genre is an economic phenomenon. Unlike comedy, horror films can be produced on a mid-range budget while having massive commercial upside potential at the box office. This financial reliability is causing studios to greenlight more horror projects and is attracting top talent from other genres.
Los Angeles, the long-time exporter of American culture via film, is losing its narrative-setting power in the social media age. New York City's spontaneous, street-level content—like viral 'what are you listening to?' videos—is proving more effective at shaping and exporting a compelling story of city life than LA's more curated influencer economy.