Hollywood Employment Slumps to Four-Year Low
By Steve Gorman
Friday October 26, 6:35 pm Eastern Time
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Employment in television, film and commercial production hit a four-year low last month as Hollywood's sluggish business climate was stalled further by worries over the Sept. 11 attacks on America, economic officials said on Friday.
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Production work already was knocked off balance by an advertising slump, which hit TV networks especially hard, and by studios' rush earlier this year to stockpile film and TV projects ahead of a threatened strikes by writers and actors that never materialized.
Just when many in the industry were looking to get back on track, suicide hijackers crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania.
Uncertainty sparked by the Sept. 11 tragedies prompted studios to put some projects on hold and to rethink others, while TV programming was thrown into disarray.
``You had a slowing economy to begin with. Then Sept. 11 compounded the situation, and at this moment this industry is feeling a lot of the same things everyone else is feeling,'' said Morrie Goldman, vice president of the Entertainment Industry Development Corp. (EIDC).
According to the California Department of Employment Development, the number of Los Angeles County jobs in film and TV production, including commercials and music videos, fell to 129,500 in September, the lowest level since June 1997.
By comparison, the high mark for the last four years was in February 1999, when 143,200 people were employed in the industry, the agency's figures show.
In another key sign of a production slowdown, off-lot shooting of feature films last month fell to 856 production days, half of its September 1999 level, according to EIDC figures. Location shooting overall, including TV, commercials and music videos, was off nearly 32 percent from September 1999. Goldman said 1999 offers a better basis for comparison than 2000 because of an actors strike that curtailed commercial production last fall.
``Right now, it's rather gloomy,'' said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. ''There's probably not going to be much of an uptick in employment until early 2002.'' He added that the TV industry has been especially hard hit.
SOFT MARKET, WEAK ECONOMY
The market for commercials already was soft due to a weakened economy, and TV networks lost hundreds of millions of dollars more in advertising when entertainment programming and normal viewing patterns were disrupted by news coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks and the ongoing U.S. war on terrorism.
``Sept. 11 really threw a monkey wrench into the financial planning of the television networks,'' he said. ``This was financial planning that was already bare bones.''
Indeed, networks and studios have said in recent weeks they are looking at cost-cutting measures. Sony Corp. (NYSE:SNE - news) said Thursday it was consolidating its television studios, 20th Century Fox Television is asking all its producers to trim show costs by 2 percent, and Warner Bros. Television said it was looking for new savings in both development and production.
At the networks, NBC is phasing out broadcasts of theatrical and made-for-TV movies, while ABC may do away with original programming altogether on Saturday nights.
The bumpy economy is particularly rough on the little guys in Hollywood, Kyser said.
``This is an industry that's driven by small business. You have suppliers, set builders, people who rent out equipment, from cameras to trailers used on location,'' he said. ``Now all of a sudden, the pipeline has dried up big time.''
Art Brewer, head of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 44, told the Los Angeles Times that 29 percent of the union's nearly 6,500 members were out of work, adding, ``Sept. 11 definitely had an impact.''
Layoffs also are sweeping Hollywood's talent agencies, as bookings wilt.
``Normally, this time of year, it's like we're giving away prizes, it's that busy,'' said Michael Lien, a partner in Lien Cowan Casting, one of the larger commercial casting agencies in the business. ``There's still activity, but it's dramatically slower.''
NBC is a unit of General Electric Corp. ABC is a unit of the Walt Disney Co. (DIS.N.), 20th Century Fox Television (NYSE:FOX - news) is a unit of News Corp. Ltd. (Australia:NCP.AX - news) and Warner Bros. Television is a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news). |
