Los Angeles Filming Bust Deepens With Sharp Decline In Reality TV

FilmLA, the partner film office for the City and County of Los Angeles and other local jurisdictions, released a new report on Wednesday that detailed film production continued dropping in the second quarter due to an ongoing slowdown in content spending and Hollywood still reeling from post-strike paralysis.

Local on-location filming fell 12.4% year-over-year from April through June, reaching 5,749 shooting days in the quarter. There were declines in feature film production (-3.3% to 704 shooting days) and commercial production down 5% to 817 shooting days – both are minor declines compared with the crash in unscripted television production. 

“Filming of Reality TV fell -56.9 percent to 868 SD, taking the broader Television category (down -27.7 percent to 1,901 SD) lower with it,” FilmLA wrote in the report. 

Inversely, the report noted, “Elsewhere within the Television category, scripted content production increased substantially for the period, compared to the earliest strike-affected months of 2023. TV Drama production rose 98.3 percent to 714 SD, and TV Comedy production rose 103.6 percent to 171 SD, while filming for TV Pilots rose 54.5 percent to 17 SD.” 

Bloomberg was the first to cover FilmLA’s new report, indicating the slowdown in shooting days stems from “studios began cutting production and firing staff under pressure from investors to show a profit in streaming” in the second half of 2021. Compound this with the labor actions by workers in the Los Angeles entertainment industry last year that halted production. However, striking actors and writers have resolved their labor contracts with studios. 

Decreasing shooting days paint a grim picture for the industry, while the streaming downturn intensifies with Netflix cutting back on shows and hundreds of workers from Amazon Prime and MGM Studios being laid off earlier this year.

Bloomberg cited data from Creative Economy showing that LA’s entertainment industry workforce contracted by 16% last year. 

Most Americans couldn’t care less about the Hollywood film bust. Studios have been churning out “woke” content that many find unappealing. Additionally, the threat of AI continues to loom over the remaining workers.