American Idol flees California for Georgia's cheaper pastures

Fremantle, which produces the show with Sony Pictures Television’s 19 Entertainment, confirmed reports that last year’s Hannah Harper-crowning 24th season will be its last in Los Angeles, owing to Georgia’s more production-friendly tax credits (up to 30% for unscripted and reality television productions that spend at least $500,000 in the state). The Masked Singer similarly decamped for the Garden State earlier this year owing to an even more generous tax break there and since New Jersey, like Georgia, extends incentives to a wider variety of unscripted programming. 

California, which has seen its once-unquestioned position as entertainment production capital steadily shrink in the past few years, is still awaiting the outcome of various Paramount/Skydance-Warner Bros. merger lawsuits to see if Skydance CEO David Ellison will make good on his blackmail threat to move that studio’s headquarters and operations out of the state. And while California’s legislature recently expanded the state’s tax incentives to cover more reality programming and increase tax incentives for filming, it appears that wasn’t sufficient to keep American Idol from hitting the road. (Deadline reports that while it seemed Idol would qualify for the new tax credits, the show was instead turned down owing to language in the bill concerning “traditional reality, game shows, talk shows, or docufollow television programming.”)

At any rate, the annual nationwide search for the most accomplished cover song crooners in the land will apparently finish up in Georgia from now on, pending Freemantle completing its negotiations with an unnamed Atlanta-area production facility. The competition show is also still negotiating the return of current judges Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan, and Carrie Underwood as well.