Complete Story
08/30/2018
TV Shows Are Boosting America's Economy
The best shows on TV are known for captivating and thrilling viewers. But a lot of these same shows are doing much more than providing quality entertainment. The TV industry is contributing to communities all over the country. When a show films outside of a studio and on location, the towns, cities, and states where production crews decide to set up shop are significantly impacted. It's always a win when a show comes to a town and provides a plethora of new jobs, builds new infrastructure and soundstages for future filming opportunities, promotes a region and boosts tourism, and brings a community together in a whole new way.
Take Georgia, the home of FX's award-winning Atlanta, and AMC's big hit, The Walking Dead, which are among the 30 to 40 TV and movie productions that film there each year. Georgia's history hosting TV and movie productions goes way back, but its economic impact shot up in the past decade, reaching upwards of $9.5 billion. That's up from $241 million in 2007. A lot of this is attributed to TV, and particularly The Walking Dead, which has been filming in the small rural town of Senoia for nine seasons. The Walking Dead is one of the most watched television shows of all time, so to have a show of that caliber film in a small town like Senoia is a pretty big deal. Approximately 90 percent of the crew on the show are Georgians now. The Georgia Film, Music and Digital Entertainment Office Deputy Commissioner Lee Thomas described Senoia as having become a completely different town now since the show first started filming there:
"When they got there initially, there were six store fronts in that little town. A lot of empty buildings. Back then it was the perfect zombie apocalypse town. But because of the success of the show, it has totally invigorated that area. All 50 store fronts are completely filled. They have built onto the town and put creative historic info buildings there and they have leased all of those as well."
Then in Virginia, Showtime's Homeland brought in north of $40 million in one season of filming in Richmond. Andy Edmunds, director of the Virginia Film Office, called it the "biggest production expenditure the state has ever had in one collection of a production opportunity." Sixty percent of season seven's crew consisted of Virginians. "Having Homeland here was an extension of our approach to try to attract series television for the ongoing jobs that it could create year after year," added Edmunds. The production went as far as bringing revenue to hotels, restaurants, hardware stores, and office supply stores.
