This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. We got a hometown story, right the pitcher who plays for Pittsburgh, the great guy, great great Kane Skins. He's from Orange County.
I don't know. If I don't know, that's all I have to look it up.
Yeah.
No, well we got a message saying that he is from Orange County, so it's like a homecoming.
So is he pitching today? Is that what you're saying?
I am assuming you pitched yesterday or today or someone find out some point. Stocks rising today, worldwide rally. Really After Trump appeared to back off the criticism of Jerome Powell and standing firm in the trade war with China, kind of waffling a bit, Wall Street has responded. Right now the Dow at six hundred and twenty seven points.
We have talked before about the California Film and Television Jobs Act, passed by the State Assembly Committee for Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism, one of at least two attempts by the legislature to expand some of the tax credits in the state to make sure that TV and film production at least has a reason to look at California still as a reasonable option. Heather Brooker from KFI News has been following this with us. So we have one of two now that have at least passed the set of
the committee. So they're sister bills. AB one one three eight and SB six thirty. One is for the Senate and one is for the House. The House bill passed yesterday with seven yeses with kind of a resounding approval to move forward, and its sister bill is they're having a hearing right now as we speak for SB six thirty and that is the Senate version of the Film and Tax credit. So essentially, right now, California's Film and Tax credit has been stuck at the same amount since two thousand and nine.
It's at three hundred and thirty thousand dollars, so it's been capped.
That means any.
Production you said thousand million, right million, I'm sorry, three hundred and thirty.
I'm still waking up, guys. That's right, three and thirty million, thank you. So it's capped right there. That means that if productions have went, if that money has already been reached no other productions could take advantage of that credit, and it's been like that since two thousand and nine. So what they've been doing is going to other states to try to take advantage of other states tax credits
to get their money back for filming. And California makes about twenty six billion dollars a year on the film and television industry. It is a massive industry for the state of California. So get finding a way to keep those productions here, to bring those production backs means thousands of jobs. It means not just for you know, people involved in the film industry, it also means jobs for local restaurants and craft services, and there's there's a there's a wide reaching net here.
Now the exodus has already happened. We've talked about this before with you, Heather as well. Is we've seen so many productions move out of California in recent years. Whether that's from two thousand and nine, I believe it started, you know, twenty five years ago, maybe a little bit more.
But is it kind of in the same conversation that we're having with manufacturing in the United States, much of it has moved overseas in order to bring it back in order to bring film and TV production back to LA.
How many years are we.
Looking at to bring all that infrastructure structure back and is it worth it? Did?
They think, well, I think you know some of the people who are opposing the bill, and there hasn't been a lot of vocal opposition to these bills. The majority of people in this state are supporting it. But some of the people who are bringing up their opposition are saying, hey, is this going to be like a race to the bottom here, because if we raise our tax credit to seven hundred and fifty million dollars, are all the other states going to do the same thing? And then we're
right back where we started from. Right now, Georgia, we're only second if we if we if this approved gets approved, we're going to be second to Georgia, which has no cap which is why there is so many productions that went to Georgia. So then what happens is do the other states kind of start falling along and then we're right back where.
He started from it.
So what the pack, essentially, the group that's kind of fighting for this to move through, is saying, is this isn't a perfect plan. It doesn't have all the answers, but it's a good plan and it's better than nothing, and we have to at least try.
And I agree with that it is better than nothing. I just think this ship has sailed. I mean, we just talked about it. I don't remember if it was the three of us the last time we spoke about things moving out of California and how we've all gone to concerts and all the things outside of state because it's just so much cheaper. When you think about the mini city that goes with a TV production or a
film production. You're paying more in California for everything, not just you know, getting the tax credit back or whatever, but you're paying more for the you know, the people, the jockey, the key jockey, what is that? Is that something you're paying sure the key grip?
Are you saying about horse racing?
More for a lodging, for food, for crafts? Are everything you're paying more for? It's not just there is film credit.
There is a larger over overarching issue here. It is not just that we don't have the tax credit available for these productions. It is that California is exorbitantly expensive no matter what level of the production rung ladder that you're on. It's too expensive to live here. So even if there were more productions brought back, people still have to be able to afford to live here. So this bill doesn't address any of that. It doesn't address any of the cost of living stuff. It truly is just
tax incentive. What it does do is it's going to expand the number of productions that can be eligible for it. So, for example, it's going to have incentives for series for forty minutes to twenty minutes. Right now, you could only apply for a tax incentive if your series is forty minutes or longer. So this would mean there's more taxing centives for shorter shows, shorter programs, for animated series, for
animated films. The previous tax plan from two thousand and nine did not include any of these types of productions. So the hope is that by widening the net and saying we're welcoming more productions, more opportunities, that people will start to come back. I mean, so many people already live in la they already live here. A lot of people want to live here.
But if you.
Don't make if you don't have a job, if they don't have a job somewhere to go to work some way to make money. Of course they're going to go somewhere else.
Yeah, And it's it's ignoring some of the basic economic realities of what the industry has been and meant you said twenty six billion in terms of income to the state. There are people who when we talked about this the other day, you were mentioning that a production had gone down recently, film and TV production, and we actually got comments from people who said, good, I'm sick and tired of them in my neighborhood done all this and the whatever,
but without understanding. But one of the reasons why your neighborhood coffee shop or restaurant or a grocery store that you love, one of the reasons is still in existence is because of the money that's been spent by film and TV crews.
The trickle down effect is cannot be ignored in the film and television industry. We're talking about two hundred thousand jobs created and at a part of this tax credit since two thousand and nine. If we increase it, the proponents are saying, that's even more jobs, that's even more economic stimulation. That's going to happen in the community, and it is, like you said, at a very small level. Even your local coffee shop will see the benefits of that.
And for people, you know, I saw those comments too, and people are you know, they don't want production. I think it truly is because people just see the celebrity side of entertainment. And if you stop and think for a second that there is far more that goes into It takes hundreds, sometimes thousands of hands on a major feature film, from animators, tons to the key jockey, you know, whatever whatever.
In my knee.
Sometimes I just wanna slap myself right across the face.
It's working. It's people who who need good paying jobs, and film and television in a lot of ways has good paying jobs.
Well, you said, Setibill six thirty is being talked about. Now, keep us updated, as.
I definitely will.
I have a schedule later on.
I'm going to talk to one of the main proponents, the person who is leading the charge. She's actually speaking right now, and I'm going to talk to her later when she comes out of the committee.
Heather, thank you.
Hey.
Let's play Choose your Own Adventure day and dive into this Paul Skins story at Angel Stadium because it's a pretty good one. He pitched yesterday, and there's a nice moment with Mike Trout and just to feel good home Homecoming.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
So we mentioned Paul Skeins coming back to Orange County. Yes, he pitched yesterday, Now he had He's from Lake Forest. He had walked the outfield dirt of Angel Stadium before, but that was on Little League day. Growing up, he had caught batting practice home runs and the right field bleachers.
He made plenty of trips to Angel Stadium, including in that window in twenty twenty three between winning a College World Series and being drafted first overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates, but until yesterday, he had never stepped foot on the actual playing field of his hometown team. So after shagging fly balls in the outfield interacting with some fans in the stands, he got a look at how things are on the other side. He says, I was just running in the outfields. It's the same as when I was
growing up. They've got a three game set there in Anaheim. He said, the sun's right in your eyes when you're trying to catch balls and the stands during batting practice. One of those things that you can't forget how cool it is what we're doing.
When I got out of college and so when I was here, you know, I'd like to think I was the reason it was one of the one series because I was born that year. Now, but every this is this, this is my team. So obviously grew up here watching trout Otani. More recently, Derek Ivar, John Lackey, Uh, go through. It's cool, be back.
Just talked to Mike.
Yeah, I actually met him earlier today in the outfield. Who was Who's the first one out there doing early work for them? Pretty pretty cool to to meet him, got to, you know, spend a little bit of time with him.
That's really it's like your childhood hero. Yeah. He was there at Otawani's first home pitching start. And here's how we got the tickets. Mark Chapman went to Skien's High School in El Toro and and hooked up with the tickets since the A's were in town, and then in the bleachers a few days later when o'hanne sailed that majestic shot over his head. How cool He's like, I like to think I was the reason the Angels won the World Series because I was born that year, in two thousand and two.
That is, I mean, I covered that World Series.
Yeah, I was just gonna say that that's not.
Fun so funny.
Wow, that's great. I mean, this is one of those guys' schemes. Is one of those guys that is just hard to describe in terms of his his impact on the game. To be that young and to already be considered one of the top two or three pitchers in the entire league.
He said that he said, well, most well, while most people have dreams of playing in the Majors when they visit their hometown stadium growing up, he says that that dream never felt like a reality until he went to Coors Field when he was with the Air Force, went to the Air Force Academy.
I don't think he pitched last night. He's not scheduled to pitch against the Angels. He'll probably pitch on Fridays.
Well, I mean he warmed up on the mound. I guess is what they're Yeah, how cool is that?
It's one of that's one of those great stories that you don't I don't know. There's a difference between baseball and other sports when it comes to stuff like that, and not just because I think it's I it's my favorite sport. I think it's just because the way that the sport is played, the way that it is so much older than a lot of a lot of the things that we watch.
I think also, I think about children more with baseball. I think of kids watching baseball growing up more than any other sport. But then maybe that's just because of where I grew up. I don't know, I get I grew up in a big hockey town, so it wasn't like everyone would go to the San Jose Sharks games.
That's true. When did they even start? When did the Sharks even start as a franchise? I would say late eighties. I mean, I know artrus urbe played in nineteen ninety three.
He was always on my video game that I would play. They began play in the ninety one ninety two season. Yeah, all right, all right, up next, we'll talk about these power lines. We've heard this over and over again for as long as I can remember living in California. The power lines should be buried because of the potential fire Hasard and over the last decade, we've seen those fires caused by power lines in a way we've not seen
in the past. So we'll talk about what goes into actually burying power lines, what it means, how long it how long it would take, and how expensive it would be.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Since the fire in Paradise, the campfire that killed eighty five people and destroyed thousands of buildings, there have been calls and started long before that, but there have been calls to put electrical lines underground throughout California because of our risk of wildfire. Now, wildfire itself is not new
to California. That's been around for long before that was California, and there are discussions ongoing about putting some of these power lines undergrounding these power lines in some of the higher risk areas around the state. But it's gonna cost a lot of money. After the fires and after an executive order from the governor I'm speaking of the Eton and the Palisades fires, so calitis and released a plan.
They said they were going to bury more than one hundred and fifty circuit miles of distribution power lines in the footprints of those fires, the Palisades and Eaten fires. Most of those would take place in and around Altadena and Malibu.
It makes sense that you would target these super high risk.
Areas, right.
The problem with that is, I mean, there's one good thing in those higher risk areas is think of the hills above Altadena, for example, there's fewer other utilities that they'd have to deal with. But if you're talking about a neighborhood that you would consider, and maybe those right on the outskirts there at Altadena where it meets the mountains, you are going to have sewer lines, cable line, You're gonna have other utilities that you have to deal with.
It's not as easy as.
Just putting in a trench and then drop it a wire down there. LA Department of Water and Power, by the way, says they are going to go underground with some of their four thousand power lines out in the Palisades area since that's their jurisdiction, and they say it will cost somewhere between one million and fourteen million dollars per mile, depending on the location.
The statics of quite a gap.
Well, and that's just one million is ridiculously expensive. Fourteen million. One million is not feasible. There's no way it's going to be only a million.
So cal Edison says that their cost per mile is somewhere between three and five million, which is still completely outlandish. Now there's other options. One of the other options that they talk about is to basically spray some of I don't know how they do it. They cover their lines with what they refer to as a fire resistant material, the covered conductor program that Edison is working on.
Now.
Again, Edison says to underground their lines would be somewhere between three and five million dollars per mile. To put this covered conductor resistant material on there would be about seven hundred thousand dollars.
How about just getting all the infrastructure in working order for twenty twenty five. How About instead of talking about putting all the lines underground, you spend the five dollars per pole and get everything working so that they don't start the fires because all the infrastructure is aging. How About we'll start there and we'll get everything in working order, and then we can talk about the unicorn dreams of putting everything underground.
What I understand is that this is not even considered. Even two and a half three months later, nobody says the Palisades fire started because of power lines.
I haven't seen that anywhere. The Altadena one.
Yes, I mean they have video that shows what they say is the start of that fire under an edit.
Power countless fire started by power line.
Oh yeah, And I'm not saying that's.
Because it's aging infrastructure.
And the Altadena fire is probably the best example of that. That they said that this was a tower that was not being used but existed for the last sixty five seventy seventy five years.
About we just go and we we update the infrastructure, because that's not expensive, that's not nearly as expensive as this. This is. This is this is a pipe.
Dream, the underground pipe the reaction that utilities have had lately. Of course, these public safety power shutofs, which are not a great option for a lot of people. Think of what happened in Altadena, for example, that fire. Everybody's attention was on the Palisades that day because the fire had already started. The fire started during our show, so thankfully we have an alibi. We didn't do it, But everybody was talking about the Palisades fire for the first twelve
hours of the Palisades fired. That's where the attention was. And then something sparks in Alta Dina and you're talking about much later at night. And in the event that they had shut off the electricity, no one there would have been I shouldn't say no one. Getting word out about the fire would have been more difficult if nobody had electricity in that neighborhood.
We didn't.
And that's the thing.
We didn't have electricity. That was the problem. Remember, because I remember I had no electricity. My electricity went off.
It's sick.
I think it was because I'm a couple canyons over from where that burst in Alta Dina. That fire erupted, but I think it was a shut off by the power company at about six pm so, and then the fire started. And we had no way of knowing. The only way I knew because Twitter was down, everything was down. I didn't even know there was a fire in Altadena till one of my friends texted and said, are you close to Altadena? And I thought, oh, crap, Alta Dina's on fire now, So.
Yeah, And that proves my point these public safety power shut offs as reactive as they are in terms or proactive I guess is what the utility would suggest, they could potentially cause more problems than they solved. Yeah, because of the fact that they don't have people don't have the ability to communicate the way that they should in those instances.
Now, especially with how quick those both of those fires took.
Off very quickly because we knew the danger.
Now, the argument of undergrounding these power lines is a good one, but it is financially absolutely unfeasible now because you think the state has enough money to do it, not by a long shot, and the utilities are just gonna end up charging you for you You could.
Dip into all the big pot of money that the city set aside for homelessness that they don't even bother spending because they don't know what to do.
Well, that would but then again, you're only talking about a couple hundred miles maybe of lines that go under ground, and there's thousands of thousands of miles.
All right, dealer's choice. You want to talk about porner murderer, you pick porn or murder.
Let's do the porn one because I think it's funnier.
You don't have to justify why you want to talk about porn.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six.
Forty CBS has entered a new period of turmoil. The executive producer of sixty Minutes says he's resigning. Oh no, Bill Owens, only the third person to run sixty Minutes over the course of its fifty seven year history.
It's like the Pittsburgh Steelers of TV news Shows.
Told his staff and a memo that over the last months, it's become clear I would not be allowed to run the show as I've always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for sixty Minutes, right for the audience.
I have news for you, Gary Hoffman, your face today has only looked disappointed in me today. For the first two hours of this show go on, I've looked across the table and seen nothing but disappointment.
Is this something about Megan?
No, it's about the Golden Bachelor?
Oh? Okay, duh.
Do you want to know who the new Golden Bachelor is?
Please tell me it's Gary again.
How about a quick gas go around.
Of who the new Golden Bachelor is? Yeah?
Famous people? Uh that are over sixty five.
I don't know.
I don't know who's married and who's not married.
Just name an old guy could be dead. I don't know. Like Sean Connery, is he still with us? I don't know. No, No, Dennis Quaid old is Dennis Quaid sixty something? But I love Dennis Quaid. I love him in all those religious movies that have come out recently. He's seventy one. Okay, so interesting, but I think he's he is married. He got married in twenty twenty. Look at him. Let's see here, Robin, do you have an exam a guest of an old guy? Not even close.
I don't know any Pick someone old, you say me, I will walk in there. Okay.
No.
Gary Hoffman is not the Golden Bachelor yet. Keana, do you have a guess?
Uh?
What am I guessing about?
A person? An old man? Chase a famous old man?
Okay, I'm just gonna say Tom Hanks because that's what's coming to my mind.
Asking young people to mention somebody old and I don't even know who this is either.
Justin Bieber mel Owens.
Do you know who mel Owens is?
No clue?
Former NFL player, he played for your Los Angeles Rams. He was the ninth draft pick in nineteen eighty one by the Los Angeles Rams. He's sixty six played nine years in the NFL before becoming a lawyer after he retired. The premier date for the next season of The Golden Bachelor has not been announced. But mel Owens is your guy. I can't wait, I can, I can. He looks like a nice.
Guy, a football player. Stills, he's still he's got a bit of a blockhead.
Yeah, not to be mean, but he's I mean, he's a big guy.
Right when they showed the preview, like revealed him on Instagram, I could only stare at his teeth.
Why, because they were there's a lot year Yeah, they're very there's a lot of them. He's from Michigan, born in Detroit, born in nineteen fifty eight, went to University of Michigan. He lives in Orange County. Big guy, big guy linebacker. Yeah, his teeth. Because here's the problem. He's got thin lips, so he looks like he's kind of like, oh, you know, I have a heck comount like the cripkeeper a little bit.
Well, he revealed his smile and then it was just teeth.
Down. In Orange County, there is a fight about the word porn, which is a fight about porn in libraries, but is now coming to fruition.
As a fight over the word porn.
There's a special election set for June where in Huntington Beach voters are going to weigh in on a couple of ballot initiatives, Measures A and Measure Measures A and B that would figure out who actually controls the city's public libraries.
And the argument is.
The pretty conservative city government there at Huntington Beach voted to establish a board of residents to review books that are in the city's public libraries weed out kids books that they determined would have inappropriate content sexually inappropriate content based on their criteria. So opponents say the job of choosing and classifying books should be left to professional librarians, so they wanted to get Measure A on the board.
Public library advocates mounted a second petition drive after the city flirted with the outsourcing library operations to a private company. Measure B would prohibit the city from doing that. So the people who want to make sure that the residents are the ones in charge of what's in the library have put up signs protect our kids from porn know on A and B. People who don't like the signs say it's introducing a word to kids that they don't know.
We've got a whole city full of.
Kids googling what is porn on their smartphones. Hey, if they've got a smartphone.
They know what it is. Yeah, yeah, they know what it is. One of the people.
City council member Chad Williams defended the sign and said, I redirect your attention to the fact that this sexual content was pushed into the public library, and this is what has pushed this into the public forum. Said his own kids have even asked him about the word porn, and I just told them these are his words. It's a bad thing they're trying to protect us from. You
don't have to get into the details. Well, you're right, but that is a very steep uphill climb to prevent your kid from finding out, especially if they've got the smartphones like you're talking about.
So I'm all, sweetheart, Oh dear, look at you kids.
Know if you gave us smartphones, break on time.
Okay, yeah, right now, we'll be back with swamp Watch right after this.
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio ap