It’s pretty easy to find reasons to dislike David Ellison, especially in the wake of his recent draconian op-eds and surreptitious meetings with his trusted allies at Paramount Skydance where it was discovered that he’s plotting to take his talents–more importantly, those of the remaining creatives and decision-makers he hasn’t already jettisoned or already has earmarked for same–outside of California. It’s created a vertiable cottage industry for those aghast at the thought of two century-old legacy studios both potentially going East. This morning the LOS ANGELES TIMES’ veteran “culture critic” Mary McNamara dropped a scathing rebuke of Ellison’s attempt to curry favor with concluding statements like these:
(F)or the thousands of local workers who depend on Paramount production to make a living, well, Ellison and his executives may be able to afford to relocate or (more probably) commute out of state, but most of the people who actually make movies and television cannot. Business, of course, is business and it has become financially and politically fashionable to desert California to avoid whatever local law, regulation or tax you now find unfair. Tech mavens, including Musk, have ditched California for the Lone Star State. Ellison’s father recently took Oracle out of Redwood City, first to Austin, Texas, then to Nashville, workers be damned… It’s pure politics, of the savage, oligarchical variety.
And last night the perpetually disheveled David Poland’s HOT BUTTON Substack included this wailing expression of impending doom:
I just cannot anymore…But I will…David Ellison has, in the midst of all of this drama, managed to pull off his version of the Access Hollywood bus “Grab ‘em by the pussy” moment with his threat, made in “private” then spread by a loyal base of Gossipteers™, that he might move Paramount to Tennessee or Texas if he doesn’t bag his Burbankian prize.
And in the Sunday afternoon WAKEUP missive that THE ANKLER’s Sean McNulty regularly drops from his Jersey shore hideaway he amplified a piece authored on Friday by VARIETY’s Gene Mattheus that included the following “objective” analyses:
Ellison believes the move would save the company $500 million a year in taxes. The figure is meant to make the play both more credible and more threatening, quantifying both what Paramount stands to gain and what California stands to lose…But moving out of California would not reduce the company’s tax bill by anything close to that, according to experts and financial statements. For one thing, the company’s state tax liability is far closer to zero than to half a billion dollars. And for another, relocating its headquarters wouldn’t actually change its tax bill.
“The effect on corporation tax is going to be pretty minimal,” said Rowan Isaaks, an economist with the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan advisory body. “The location of your employees does not factor into how we calculate corporation tax liability. So even if they did move most of their jobs somewhere else, it wouldn’t affect corporation tax.”…”When I’ve done the analysis of the tax savings of moving out of California, for most companies that are not flow-through [i.e., not partnerships or LLCs], there really isn’t an income tax savings,” said Robert Johnson, a CPA who teaches state and local taxes at Cal State University Northridge. “California is market-based sourcing. Unless you’re going to get all your customers to move, you’re not going to change how much gets sourced to California.
I’m hard-pressed to discern exactly how “nonpartisan” folks employed by the State of California can truly be, though I don’t disagree with their findings. Mind you, I’m no fan of how and why Ellison is in the position he is. He wasn’t born merely with a silver spoon in his mouth; hell, his trap has a 160-piece set of plantinum-embossed flatware overflowing from it. I’ve certainly been gulity of my own snarkiness along such lines and his continuing blanket endorsement of Bari Weiss’ reshaping of CBS NEWS while hemmoraging millions of viewers from just about every daypart is both to me both idealogically and strategically odious.
But I do have to wonder why his even harsher critics have stopped short of the full list of potential relocation options that were detailed by those “Gossipteers” that didn’t have immediate ties to those politically aligned with Fat Orange Jesus and friends. When the story first broke last Tuesday morning here’s how THE WRAP’s J.D. Knapp regurgitated it:
An individual with knowledge of the conversation told TheWrap that Ellison held an hourlong lunch meeting on the Paramount lot with his 12-member executive leadership team last week, in which he insisted his goal was to keep the company’s 30,000 jobs in Southern California but cautioned that if Bonta won’t negotiate a settlement by the time the company’s $7 million per day ticking fee kicks in, he will be moving standalone Paramount or the combined Paramount-WBD out of state regardless of the outcome. Tennessee, Texas and Georgia were all mentioned as options for the new Paramount home, and Ellison is in touch with multiple states to discuss his potential five-year plan.
Funny how Georgia seems to have escaped the consternated wraths of the likes of McNamara, Poland and McNulty. Could be that’s because it’s a much harder argument to make that going there would for any studio or production company would be a bad business decision. Especially since plenty of others long before America’s Sh-tstain even farted his way down the golden escalator already did.
In 2011, in the wake of a declining syndication line-up and the wishes of new host Steve Harvey to be closer to his Chicago base of operations, FAMILY FEUD took up residence in Atlanta, taking full advantage of the aggressive tax breaks versus what California had been theretofore offering to its Fremantle production company. After a brief return to La-La Land per BUZZERBLOG’s Alex Davis they returned permanently to Atlanta in 2020, this time housed the impressive new Trilith Studios in Atlanta’s Fayetteville suburbs. The same modern facility that now also houses Fremantle’s other prime time ABC series PRESS YOUR LUCK and reportedly is making serious inroads on the company’s iconic PRICE IS RIGHT that only recently left Television City in Hollywood for the far less impressive suburb of Glendale. Other ratings-strapped syndicated game shows, including two produced by Paramount’s CBS Media Ventures syndication division, FLIP SIDE and THE PERFECT LINE, also produce in Atlanta. Meanwhile, Trilith also housed the production of Warner Brothers’ sole DCU hit to date SUPERMAN.
You don’t think in his current position Ellison or members of his team wouldn’t have access to those accounting details and be able to contrast them to those encountered by other divisions, including the Skydance world he knows better than others?
At the same time this was being played out NCS’ Michael P. Hill reported that Ellison was making similar saber rattles regarding CBS NEWS. ostensibly as retribution for Bonta’s New York counterpart Leticia James being among the dozen states joining him in being hell-bent on killing the Warnermount coupling. The same “Tish” James who, of course, openly campaigned and celebrated her eventual conviction of FOJ and pinning the label “convicted felon” on him that so many TDSers gravitate to to justify their own venomous despisal of everything and anything he stands for. The additional concern was that in one fell swoop CNN would be in solidarity with CBS NEWS and make its own departure from the Big Apple.
Again, funny how it has been forgotten that New York gleefully took CNN from Atlanta when David Zaslav chose to move it out of the economically advantageous trappings of CNN Center in 2023 so as to place it in closer proximity to its competitors and, more importantly, his own aegis. Nor has anyone noted how James’ predecessors incentivized Comcast to move THE TONIGHT SHOW out of Burbank in 2014 after more than a half-century of providing hundreds of jobs and a daily destination to the lot at 3000 West Alameda. The same lot that is now in Warner Brothers’ hands by proximic default and essentially sits empty with ghosts of NBC series past to remind visitors of what used to be.
Where were folks like Bonda, James and, for that matter, Gavin Newsom when all of this other relocation was going down? Where was Newsom as late as last August when an elected official who still finds time for his day job released this update to his constituents:
This week, U.S. Senators Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced bipartisan legislation to extend and expand tax credits for American-based film, television, and live theatre productions. The Creative Relief and Expensing for Audio and Television Enterprises (CREATE) Act would support the film, TV, and music recording industries by extending a tax provision that allows these businesses to deduct expenses incurred in the United States more quickly than they would otherwise be able to.
This would increase the incentive to keep production in the United States. The legislation would also extend the tax credits to now include music recording productions. Georgia is often referred to as the “Hollywood of the South” with entertainment productions providing billions of dollars in economic impact and thousands of Georgia jobs.
When was the last time you saw anything with the word bipartisan in it? Maybe Newsom missed it because he was far too busy mimicing “truths” and gaining brownie points for his own higher office aspirations? While someone like Bonda takes full advantage of every opportunity to break bubble tea with the elitist ANKLER podcasters at the drop of a hat to expound on his own James-like determination to advance his own brand and perhaps emerge as the eventual apparent to Newsom once the unimpressive Xavier Beccara or the corrupt Steve Hilton run their course?
Nothing could have cemented Newsom’s street cred better–yes, even above and beyond his comedy efforts–than finding a way to keep a few productions in California long before Ellison and CNN became political touchstones in the process. He still technically has the job and with all of this mishagoss going on elsewhere a competent strategist might have advised him to seize this spotlight and wrest a few things back from “Y’allywood” and Europe, even those that have nothing to do with anything remotedly connected with politics.
Haven’t seen someone like Poland, McNamara or heaven forbid Richard Rushfeld even try to raise those points lately. Too busy chasing clicks, likes and subscribers, I guess. These are indeed busy and certainly Interesting Times.
I know where I was and where Ellison wasn’t when the first waves of seismic shifting began a decade and a half ago. I even know where our duly elected officials were. Tell us, journos, where were YOU and what’s your take on Georgia? If it were your call while actually helping to run a studio–which I know you all secretly believe you can do a far better job than those of us who have had the opportunity did–would you say that following in the lead of Tyler Perry and a bunch of silly game shows–not to mention the legacy of Ted Turner–is also an indefensibly immature and ignorant authoritarian play?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Until next time…