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.
One of the bad signs is that there's so many studios right now that are vacant, these big sound stages that are not being used for for movie and.
TV film and TV making anyway, you know what I'm saying.
A former hotel security guard has testified that Sean Combs feared his iconic career would be ruined if the public ever saw the video of him beating his girlfriend in twenty sixteen. That security guard testified today at the sex trafficking and racteering trial Eddie Garcia is his name. Sold the federal court jury that Combs repeatedly made a comment that he was trying to buy what he hoped was the only.
Copy of the video.
Prosecutors said the persistent effort to hush up the episode fit into allegations that he was using threats and money and fame to get what he wanted. Of course, he has pleaded not guilty to that. Meta has cut a twenty year deal to secure nuclear power to help meet surging demand for AI and other computing needs at Facebook's parent company. The investment with Meta will also expand the
output of Constellation Energy illinoid nuclear plant. The announcement today is just the latest in a string of these tech nuclear partnerships. Because AI sucks up so much electricity, they got to figure out where they're going to be getting it from.
Reminder that today is Day for Hope.
You can go to Day for Hope dot org and help our friends out at City of Hope for the fifth annual Day for Hope when the City of Hope community works together to make hope or reality for everybody touched by cancer and diabetes. Again Day for Hope dot org. Well, President Trump is talking once again about his big beautiful bill. That's where we begin our swamp watch.
I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops.
Yeah, we got the real problem is that our leaders are done.
The other side never quits what what.
I'm not going anywhere.
How you train the.
Swat, I can imagine what can be and be unburdened by what has been.
You know, Americans have always been gone as they're not stupid.
A political flunder is when a politician actually tells the truth.
Whether people voted for you with not swamp watch.
They're all counter knowing well, the Senate is moving ahead this week on the President's one Big Beautiful Bill. There is a self imposed deadline that they're working against July fourth. The President has reiterated that and said that he would love to see it by July fourth as well. The problem right now, well the it's not the only problem, but a big problem right now that Senate Republicans have is a guy named Rand Paul.
Rand Paul is a fiscal hawk.
He doesn't want to see anything when it comes to raising the debt ceiling. He says it is not conservative. He told that to see NBC this morning, and in response, President Trump has gone after Rand Paul. Not a surprise they they don't necessarily agree too much when it comes to legislative things. What President Trump said on truth social is quote. Rand Paul has very little understanding of the BBB Big Beautiful Bill, especially the tremendous growth that is coming.
Rand votes no on everything, but never has any practical or constructive ideas. His ideas are actually crazy parentheses, losers. The people of Canada, Sorry Canada. The people of Kentucky can't stand him. This is a big growth bill now. Rand Paul had said he is open to voting for
the thing. He's not a complete no. He's no right now, but not a complete no. But he said he's not going to take responsibility for any debt, said that this issue will be owned by Republican if it goes through, and he says, I think that is a big mistake. He said there are enough deficit hawks who can block
this bill in the Senate. Paul shared a Fox News article on Twitter today saying, I want to see the tax cuts made permanent, but I also want to see the five trillion dollars in new debt removed from the bill. At least four of us in the Senate feel this way. John Thune, Senate majority leader, had suggested that they do have a path to passing that hopefully before July fourth. Those were his words. But we'll see exactly where it goes.
There's also something interesting that goes on in this process. In order for the Senate to use the reconciliation process that would allow a budget, it would pass budget packages with a simple majority of votes at fifty instead of the usual sixty. It has to follow the Bird Rule Robert Byrd, the old Senator Byrd. It bars the Senate
from including any extraneous provisions in a budget bill. So anything in the bill, according to the Bird rule would be necessary to implement the underlying budget resolution the Congress already passed. If this doesn't, if a policy provision does not have an effect on the budget, it cannot be included. Even the budget changes that they say are merely incidental
to policy for VI are considered out of order. So that's where it gets a little bit complicated, because this rule would prohibit Congress from touching Social Security and a reconciliation bill. It would prohibit them from increasing the deficit for the fiscal year beyond the included bill, and in its basic form, everything in the bill has to be related to the budget.
So we'll see if it actually gets that far.
The President, meanwhile, is said to be obsessed with a phone call with President Shi. He seems to think Trump does that a call with China's president Shi Jinping is going to help reset whatever trade war has been brewing for the.
Last six or eight weeks.
Even if that conversation does happen this week, and the White House has said that they wanted to.
They said it's likely.
To happen, but it's still doubtful that this would be anything close to the breakthrough that President Trump has has been hoping for the United States is trying to pressure China to basically reorder the entire top to bottom trade relationship that we have with that country, which is, oh, I don't know, six hundred billion dollars worth of business. Both ways, they don't want to do lasting political damage
at home. Clearly President Trump doesn't want to hang this around the neck a boat anchor around the neck of Republicans, and it does question what exactly is the endgame here? Kind of puts that question back at the forefront. What does Trump have planned at the end of all of this, because this looks like every twist in turn is just a larger game of chicken is kind of what we're
looking for. So one former Trump official that says they're close to the White House told Politico Trump feels like a call between the principles she and Trump is a way to cut through a lot of the noise and get right to the heart of the matter. They have spoken before I mentioned yesterday, they spoke in January before Trump took office again, but this would be the first call between the two when he is as president for the second time, so a lot of pressure on that
call if in fact it gets to that point. The sidelight in all of this is that Trump has been name dropped in the ongoing discussions between Kiev and Moscow about whether or not they're going to actually sit down at a table. Zelenski of Ukraine has said that Turkey's president wants a four leader summit to end the war in Ukraine in Russia by inviting Zelenski, putin Airdowan, the
president of Turkey, and President Trump to the table. But at this point none of the other three sides have said that they expect Trump to be there, and Trump hasn't said anything. There was a White House news conference a short time ago. They didn't really mention it all right. The studio space that exists in southern California, La Burbank Century City places like that, a lot of those sound stages are going unused, and the percentage of unused sound
stages would surprise you. We're going to be talking with Elaine Lowe from the Ankler in just a few minutes about what that means going forward for the business, the business in southern California.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty, and we.
Talk about TV and movies and everything that you're catching on your couch or at a movie theater or whatever it is that you happen to be loving. And we talk about it because that is the business of this town, specifically here in Burbank, but obviously in production studios across this city and across the county is where the vast majority of TV and movies are created in the world.
And we've repeatedly talked about the industry itself struggling. One of the indicators of that is studio space, soundstage for film and TV production and whether or not they're busy. And I ran into this article on vankler dot com a n k L E. R Ankler dot com by Elain Low and it says that the current state of our sound stages in LA kind of remind us of the failure of retail malls throughout.
The country over the last few decades.
And Elaine is joining us now writer and host for the Ankler one of the top business publications on substack taking time for us this morning, Elaine, First, thanks for thanks for carving out some time in your day for us.
Thanks so much for having me really appreciate it.
Sure, I read with great interest this piece on the state of where we are in terms of sound stages. So why don't you just kind of put it in a nutshell for us in terms of the square footage that exists for production in this town, it's not being utilized right now.
No, there's something like two point eight million square feet of studio space. You have the largest operators, which are you know, when you count all of their stages together, you have Warner Brothers, which is thirty six stages, Universal which has thirty, Sony has eighteen, Paramount has twenty nine. You know, you look at Radford Studio Center Twentieth Century Studios,
you know, both known as the Fox Lot. There's a lot of sound stage space in LA And you know, when we talk about sound stages, we're talking about things like Gray's Anatomy, things that are you know, inside when they're in a room, you know, sitcoms, game shows, not We're not talking about on location like when you see a shot out on a street or outdoors. But it is a good barometer for how much production is happening.
And the numbers are pretty stark when you look at Film LA's figures, and that's the official La County Film Office.
The numbers in twenty sixteen, when things were humming along, soundstage space was at a high ninety six percent, and then obviously that figure dipped during the pandemic when all of production was halted for some time, but then it bounced back and around you know, twenty twenty two or so, you know, you were looking at at about ninety percent occupancy again, and that was during the peak of peak TV, right when there were six hundred scripted TV shows on
the air. But that number has come back down again after the WGA and STAG strikes of twenty twenty three amid a broader industry wide contraction where they've all just been pulling back on their budgets and the number of TV series that they're producing and the complements of those factors has brought soundstage occupancy down to sixty nine percent
in twenty twenty three, which was a strike year. But the more stark number is that it's actually down to sixty three percent in twenty twenty four, a year that wasn't impacted by labor stoppages. And that's what's remarkable that.
Part of it, the strike part of it, I think is what intrigues me because when those were going on writer strike and the actors strike, they were just coming back from COVID and all the production that was shut down, and I had this gut feeling like this is not the right time to do this, because you're already dealing with an industry that's been punched in the face and the guts and then kicked in the crotch. I mean,
it was in a bad space at the time. Is there any blame that can land on the unions for those for those work stoppages.
From the union's perspective, It's look streaming has so severely disrupted the industry, you know, and you kind of look back to the two thousand and seven two thousand and eight writers strike when people referred to streaming as like new media, and it was kind of like, well, what
do we do about this new media? And over the years, you know, the economics of TV have really changed so severely, and you know, writers and performers really felt like they weren't able to, you know, to reap the gains of of you know, the many different streaming shows that are on you know, massive platforms like Netflix and Disney Plus and all of that, and so that was the reasoning
behind those strikes. You know, certainly the town has still been in recovery mode over the last couple of years, and I think, you know, talking to people, I talked to a lot of agents and producers and showrunners, there was a lot of perhaps misplaced optimism going into twenty twenty four, coming right out of the strikes, thinking that
things would bounce back, but that didn't really happen. It really didn't pick up again until the back half of twenty twenty four because the largest guild IATSE, which represents you know, something like one hundred and fifty thousand crew members, was in negotiations in the top half of the year, and so there was some apprehension about going back into production when there was potentially a third strike around the
corner that didn't materialize. They came to an agreement. This year, there's been a lot more optimism about the state of production though, but it's still kind of notable to see how much soundstage use has moved out of LA and outside of the strikes. A lot of people would point to the tax incentive issue, the fact that there are just more appealing tax credits and tax incentives outside of
California and outside of the country. You know, it's interesting when you think about game shows, like you know that Rob low game show The Floor.
Thought I saw that in Ireland.
If that was that's an amazing The idea of taking everything that you have here flying it to Ireland. I mean, I know they use some of the people there, but still that idea that that's a cheaper move for the studios than to produce it down the street here in Burbank or something is mindful.
Right, Yeah, I mean a lot of game shows film out in Ireland. It's it's wild and I don't think many people, you know, know that the average American viewer and they're watching a show like The Floor or something.
Else, well if they maybe if they had Irish accents, that'd make a big difference. Elaine, could you could you hang on for a second. I have a couple more questions I'd love to ask you. Sure, all right, Elaine low Rider and host for The Ankler, one of the top business publications. You can read it on substacho to the Ankler dot com. You can also search where you find your podcasts The Ankler. Th Ankler is a n k l e R. Elaine is going to join us when we come back.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI Am six forty.
We're talking with Elaine Lowe, writer for The Ankler. You can find her work at Thenkler dot com a n k l e R. And specifically this story regarding sound stages and stage occupancy down to sixty three percent in twenty twenty four, down even from the year that they were the writers and the actors were on strike.
And I wanted to ask you, Elane.
You mentioned that obviously a lot of production has gone to places like British Columbia, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee is now getting into this game as well. What are they doing right that either California or La County specifically is doing wrong.
Regardless of who I talk to, it always comes back to the tax and Senates and the tax credit and California lawmakers are looking at potentially, you know, there's a proposal to more than double that tax credit from three hundred and thirty million to seven hundred and fifty million right now. But some people say that doesn't even go far enough. You know, the way it's structured, you know, the intricacies of it just aren't as appealing as other
states and other places out of the country. And you know, it doesn't apply to above the line salaries like you know, actors, and you know, non scripted you know, we were talking about game shows like The Floor, you know, anything that's a non scripted reality show, game show, documentary, those are all not even eligible for the tax incentive right now. So there's an entire part of the industry, you know, that would love to be able to be a part
of that. And you know there's a huge stay in LA production campaign to try and keep more production local to southern California. But again, it all just comes back down to that tax conversation.
Outside of AI, which brings with it its own set of problems for actors and writers, et cetera. Will will technology make these sound stages obsolete? At least the way we've used them for the last one hundred years.
These are pretty old sound stages. A lot of them, but a number of them are being outfitted for virtual production. You know, when you have like a giant led wall, you can do things more digitally. And you know, I've talked at some folks who are optimistic about repurposing sound stages,
you know outside of TV and film use. You know, they're they're being leased out for like commercial usage or like magazine cover shoots or live events or sporting events, you know, but in order to actually keep production here.
I was actually at this AI on the Lot conference last week talking to the CEO of light Craft Technologies, and you know there's somebody that have a background, they have an engineering emmy, you know, and are working on AI and virtual production technology, and you know you can do a lot.
With just a green screen. And I said, well, doesn't this, you know, disincentivize as somebody coming to a traditional sound stage and you know they're there's thee I would tell me, actually, you know, I really hope that this actually creates more opportunities.
You know, if you divvy up a traditional sound stage, you know, put up some green paint or a green screen, and then maybe you can actually have more occupants in a you know, traditional large sound stage setting, you know, with that's rigged up with all the lights and acoustics and everything. You know, so people are trying to get creative with alternate usage. But you know, episodic TV, which
is really the lifeblood of the industry in LA. You know, that's down to twenty percent sound stage use here, down from thirty percent year of a year.
I'm also curious, I don't know if you saw this story about actors and producers demanding that their shows be shot in LA. Zach Braff has finally signed on to reprise his role as JD on the Scrubs reboot, and there was a going back and forth about whether or not they would. When he signed on, he said, I'll do it only if it's filmed in LA despite the original plans to have it moved off to Vancouver and
produce up there. Do you think that's a trend that we might see as some of these people saying, some of the actors saying they believe so much in keeping production in southern California that they make these demands.
We've certainly seen that from high profile showrunners and producers and on screen talent, but it's a very small part of a population that has the leverage to be able to do that, to be able to say, you know, no, we'd like to keep all production here, although certainly it's something that a lot of people would like to be able to have the power to do. Especially again, there's this big stay in LA movement to try and keep
production here. But again, that conversation keeps coming back to the text incentives more than anything else.
I know you've been writing on TV for a long time. What do you watch? What's your favorite show right now?
Oh?
Gosh, what am I watching? Just finished watching the four seasons that new Tina fe Steve Carell series from Tracy Bigfield on Netflix. That was fun, And just actually watched the season two with Squid Game. I know season three is coming up soon.
You gotta get caught up, caught up.
I know there's too much TV out there. Well there's not too much, but well there's a lot of shows to catch up on.
And it's funny that you mentioned that.
I know that in your piece you mentioned that peak TV probably was twenty twenty two when you said what six hundred scripted television shows the.
TV series were on the air. I mean a lot of people call that a bubble. You know, we're unlikely to see that level of TV again because you know, there are only so many hours in the day.
But we've broken away from I feel like we've broken away from the usual, you know, pre you know, season premieres in the end of September. Obviously they're still available, but now it seems like every.
Three year around the industry.
Yeah, I love it.
Listen, my couch loves it as well, because because it gets it gets a lot of good use. All Right, Elaine, what a wonderful conversation. Thanks for taking time for us. We'd love to have you back on because we know that this, this business of show business is UH is top of mind for so many people here in southern California.
Absolutely, thank you so much for having me on.
You bet Elaine Lowe, writer for The Ankler. She also hosts the podcast at The Ankler. So go to The Ankler t h e A n k l e R Theankler dot com uh and find that podcast and listen to her talk with a bunch of these industry head honchos, et cetera. Yeah, I mentioned and I was gonna do this a little bit earlier in the show, but Zach Braff. If you hadn't seen, he was the doctor in Scrubs.
He's been doing a lot of directing recently. Did I think ted Lasso for a couple He did some shrinking episodes, but he signed on to reprise his role for the TV show Scrubs. If you remember that comedy about a hospital in the valley, and it comes after these negotiations that hit major hurdles over money and his request that the series be made in la not Vancouver as they were originally planning. So they finally came to an agreement. Scrubs is still in development, but no filming location has
been announced. So good to see that somebody like that can throw their weight around and make a difference. When we come back, they're trying to hook your kids again. Not drugs, not vapes, skincare. We'll talk about these sephoric kids in this new investigation.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI. AM six forty.
Told you also about the Sean Didty Combs trial. A former hotel security guard testified the Combs feared that his career would be ruined if the public ever saw the video of him beating up Cassie Ventura in twenty sixteen. Security guard testified that his name is Eddie. Garcia testified that Combs allegedly made the comment repeatedly while he's trying to buy what he hoped was the only copy of
that video. Of course, we all know the video did eventually get leaked to CNN, and that led to the eventual downfall of.
Sean Divvy Combs.
We'll see if he gets convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking. There is a bill making its way through Sacramento that would try to cut back on a number of skincare products sold to tweens. Skincare products then you'd think, you're You know, skincare products themselves aren't necessarily bad, but if you get into some of the chemicals and the compounds that exist in say anti aging ingredients, those can be
harmful to young skin. It's they call this the Sephora Kid's trend, although it wasn't Sephora that started it, but it's this trend of cosmetic stores that will sell viral skin care brands. Think of your kids watching all of these different ads, makeup tutorials or whatever on TikTok, Instagram,
et cetera. And then they go to the stores to go buy those products, and there is a concern that some of those products could actually be very, very detrimental to the healthcare or to the care of your kid's skin.
Most shoppers wouldn't know simply by looking at the shelf or even the fine print on some of these packages that they're potentially dangerous because just like we saw in the tobacco industry, when they made the flip to go after kids who wanted to vape or who could get into vaping, they did the fruit flavors and the rainbow unicorn farts, and the brightly colored packaging and the fruit shapes on all of this stuff, Strawberry smooth, the baby Facial.
The CEO of Sephora says that they do not market to kids. They said it's incumbent upon them to make sure that they're talking to the right audience at the right time about the right thing, because the other thing is if the product doesn't do anything, the kid's not going to come back and buy it. But they did say there are promotions on Instagram for things like Sephora Barbie, and there are Sephora stickers that you can get and
cartoons on Sephora. There are other popular brands. One of them is drunk Elephant posted a list on its social media with products that it says are safe for kids, and then another list of products that they should avoid in their online FAQs under the younger fan section. But if you're just looking at the packaging, you would never
be able to tell the difference. So this bill that's being written that's being worked on right now, Democratic Assembly Member Alex Lee wants to target the industry that he says is cashing in on this craze. Bill seven eight AB seven twenty eight would trigger an age verification flag at the register if a clerk scans something that's got anti aging products with certain ingredients in it, things like retinol, things like the harsher acids that can.
Be found in some of these things.
And you kid, if you, if you were a kid, you'd need someone over eighteen in order to buy the product in the store. There would be a pop up similar to this one for vapes when you purchase the products online, and with that warning, does it make a difference, Well, it hasn't when it comes to the vape industry. Some of the opponents of this bill, include the skincare industry, dermatologists.
They say that this thing is misguided.
They said the blame should actually lie strictly with social media, not the skincare industry. The age restrictions, they say, would be too difficult to implement, which it's all it does is trigger an age verification flag. Does that mean that the store is going to be on the hook for the execution of that? Are they going to do it on a regular basis? CBS did a whole look into this.
The Personal Care Product Council represents the skincare industry. They said that they spent thousands of dollars targeting lawmakers with misleading ads that claim that the bill would require an ID to buy cosmetics, which is not the same thing as suggesting that someone who's eighteen has to be there with you. And again, you you can write this bill so that this little flag pops up on the screen or there's a warning, or you got to check the idea or whatever.
But how many times have you.
Seen a retail checker just ignore that or X out of it or say that they did look when they never checked the ID. The problems I think is when you get into the specifics of retinol or acids or anything like that gets that specifically targets children. There are the concerns that parents are going to be involved with all of this, or should be more involved with all
of this. The director of Pediatric Dermatology U See Davis the Healthcare Center said younger kids appear to be the target audience for a lot of these viral skin care products and that she has seen the adverse reactions firsthand.
The peeling of the skin.
A lot of these things will remove the layer of kid's skin that can be painful, rashes, you could get sunburn. She does prescribe retinoids for acne treatment, but basically it's over the counter and typically used in anti aging products. If a twelve year old has acne that needs medical treatment, they should do it through a dermatists, through an actual doctor, not just going to the store and picking it up.
So that's the other side of that. All right.
Up next trending stories, we'll talk about what's better movie theaters or streaming from your couch and a couple of true crime Tuesday stories to wet your whistle. 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 app.