You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Handle here on a Monday morning, June twenty three, and now the world is waiting for the Iranian response to the American attack on the nuclear facilities in Iran by B two bombers and other aircraft, American aircraft that bomb those facilities. Let's move to a very local story, and that is Hollywood. Hollywood being Hollywood, and this of course is the movie capital of the world, except it.
Really isn't anymore.
If La County were a country, the economy we be among the world's twentieth largest, but it is heading south. Payroll employment is one percent lower than at the end of twenty nineteen before the pandemic.
For the rest of the country it's up.
Five percent, and a big reason is the fall in film and video production. La County employment in motion picture and sound recording is down ten percent in twenty nineteen.
The number of shoot days, that's the number of days that are.
That's how they measure the amount of production. One measurement is the number of days that they blocked off the street going into my house and I had to go all the way around. And they call it shoot days, because that's what you want to do to these production companies when your street is blocked off.
Shoot days are days.
In which they film feature films, TV commercials. That fell for the first third straight year in twenty twenty four.
California's share of global projects.
Now, keep in mind, Southern California was the world leader still is, but it's falling in film production around the world. It was twenty three percent in twenty twenty one. It's now eighteen percent. So the President wants to fix it. We all want to fix it because Hollywood is Hollywood or the film center of the world. That's how we got to be famous all over the world. The Hollywood sign, I mean, this is sort of magic. Although if you actually go to Hollywood, you're not going to see many
movie studios. There never were movie studios in Hollywood. They're all in the San Fernando Valley or they're in West LA where.
The Sony studios are.
So the President proposed his favorite solution, tariffs on foreign made films. Well, the Hollywood folks saying no, tariffs aren't going to work.
So here's what we want. More tax incentives.
And less red tape because the permitting process is crazy. And how about more housing because people have to live here and it has become prohibitive. And that's the story we're going to do over and over again. So the governor has proposed more than doubling the California's film and TV text credit to seven hundred and fifty million dollars.
And one of the reasons.
That production is moving so quickly out of Southern California is real simple.
It's the cost, that's it. It's way too expensive.
There are tons of reasons why it should stay here. Why film started here, actually started in New Jersey with Edison, but and it quickly moved here at the turn of the last century and Southern California, particularly quote Hollywood, became the center of the entertainment business in terms of films
and later on television. Film television production has dropped and is dropping dramatically, and it's really affecting our economy big time because the entertainment business is huge for Southern California. So what is going on, Well, a big reason for the fall in film and video production. Just to give you an idea, La County employment in motion picture and sound recordings down ten percent since twenty nineteen, the number of shoot days, as I said, fell for the.
Third straight year in twenty twenty four. It is not good. And well, let me give you an example.
Disney's Marvel Studios, you know where they film Atlanta or the UK. Netflix just expanded a production facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, broke round on a huge complex in New Jersey.
And here's one in in.
The UK, there is more square footage of sound stage than in southern California.
Two key reasons.
One, other locations are offering lucrative, less restrictive incentives. They're offering not only tax breaks, they're offering to underwritight to pay for film production up to the point of thirty percent of the cost of making a film. And here in southern California there's no place for anybody to live anymore, housing shortage, shortages aggravated by the wildfires. While the cost of living here is prohibitive. Now La is a great place to film. There's a reason why the film industry
really started here. Ocean mountains, desert within a few hours drive. You can shoot almost any movie of any kind here. And in terms of going outside on location, almost any day you can shoot. You don't have to worry about the weather because of our weather A god of them. Ben Everard, a former chairman of Film LA, says it's worth paying more for the talent pool here because of
the superior quality of the shows on the screen. However, and this makes sense, we're living off of Hollywood's endowment. The difference is the cost of filming is so great now here that the films and TV shows don't have to be as good. They just have to be good enough because the cost is so high. And then you have the recent raids and the protests. Now there's not too many illegal migrants that work in the film industry, granted, but it's about uncertainty and business hates uncertainty.
And think about this.
The big name actors and the big name directors still are here in southern California. It's the mid level people that can't afford to be here. Same thing with Silicon Valley. The high end people are there, the mid level people are out. They can't afford to be there. Wall Street top executives are there in New York, but the mid tier jobs or go to other places. Cheaper housing, lower taxes, and just the cost of doing business here not just
the taxes, not just the housing. But for example, the cost of producing using a dog on the set is almost one thousand dollars. That's one day for a dog. Now you go to one of the major studios in Hong Kong, it's a couple of dollars per day. And it doesn't even pay to bring them back to their trainer. They either let them go where they eat them. It's just cheaper get them to the crafts people and you have them for lunch. And this is a dog that you hired to be on the set. It's a shame.
And so what the governor wants to do is increase the tax the underwriting and the tax break. And here is the problem, and this is where the cost the taxpayer dollars. Does the film the filming of that movie or that TV show and giving tax breaks and underwriting it with tax money, does it do more for us than not? Does it actually make money for the town or does it cost money? And the detractors are saying,
if it costs us money, why do it. And for people that argue we still want to keep the reputation of Hollywood, go to Hollywood. Yeah, it's a nice place to visit, but it's all tourism. It's all tourists. How many people actually live in Hollywood walk along Hollywood Boulevard or walk along Sunset?
Who live there?
You know, bill Wyn Tracy, my wife and I first got married, We lived in Hollywood for two and a half years, three years something like that, and we would go in that area every now and again for things that we needed. And we'd be walking through there and you have to you're bombarded with people trying to sell things a tourists and you'd have to go live.
Here, live here, live here, live here, and just.
And you were one in thousands. For example, go to Las Vegas. How many people that live in Las Vegas ever get near the strip? It is one hundred sent tourism. You know, our friend Saville, my partner, you know, lives in Vegas, and uh, when I go to visit him and we'll go to dinner along the strip one of the high end restaurants that he pays for, thank you, it's two three times a years when he actually goes
along the strip. So Hollywood is really a myth, but it's a nice myth and it and at one point, and not too many years ago, Hollywood was really a sewer, a toilet where they had adult film, these little adult film palaces and dance clubs and strip clubs. And it was actually Disney bringing the Capital Theater back that reversed it. You have to give Disney, Michael Eisner a lot of credit for bringing Hollywood back.
So it was similar. Pardon Times Square? I think was it Disney that did Times Square too?
I think so.
I think that was.
What's his face? The Who's gone nuts?
Now?
Was the Mari at the time?
Oh Giuliani?
Yeah, Okay, switching gears here. There is a guy by the name of Derek Mobley who was looking for a job, and he is an IT professional in North Carolina, and he applied for more than one hundred jobs during a stretch of unemployment from twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen, a couple of years, and even after that, and back came rejection or silence. He was ghosted, and sometimes the rejection emails arrived in the middle of the night or within an hour of submitting his application.
And he is not alone.
Millions of US job hunters every year or US job hunters submit millions of apps every year online and they get gusted, ghosted, or automatic rejection and never know if they got a fair shake from.
Whom from the algorithms.
That's why MOBILEI noticed that a lot of these companies have applied for used an online recruiting platform from a.
Company called work Day.
And this platform called Applicant Tracking Systems, Well, it helps employers track and screen job candidates. He sued him, suited him for discrimination, saying the algorithm screamed him out based on his age. He's fifty, race, he's black, disabilities, he suffers from anxiety and depression, and he's a black graduate of Moorhouse College. And he said he applied only for jobs that he was qualified for. And he says there's a standard bell curve in statistics. You can't have a
failure rate of one hundred percent. By the way, MOBILEI has since gotten hired the old fashioned way, and so his lawsuit is now coming up, and it's a pretty significant challenge because virtually every highering decision made these days is based on an algorithm. And a federal judge said that the age discrimination claim could proceed, and the judge said it was it was not on purpose, so that part of it punitive damage is not going to fly
yet he still has a case. Work Day says claims have no merit because the software matches keywords on resumes with chob qualifications and then it scores the applicants and therein lies.
I guess the secret.
I mean when I hired for people for my surrogacy agency, I looked at keywords, and I looked at qualifications, and I looked at do they have experience in the field I wanted? And it was sort of an algorithm, but it was done individually. We looked at it. This one is done via the internet, and this one is done with a very sophisticated algorithm. And how fair is that? If you don't match those keywords, you're screwed? Now work
They says. Those keywords are part of a resume and your background that lists whether you are qualified or not. The problem is is, what if you don't put in the right keywords and you're qualified? Is that discrimination? What if you admit your age or even worse, they know how old you are because there's data mining and they know everything about you. For example, how do they know that Mobili was depressed and suffer for anxiety. It's not
like they got his medical records. It's like throughout his chats and what he posted and I'm not feeling too good, I'm depressed today. Put it all together and he said there was a pattern there, and so the lawsuit goes on.
Now I have a question, and.
That is do you use artificial artificial intelligence use AI to then figure out when you're looking for a job and it puts the words that you need to at least get an interview. And do they have an AI program that realizes that there is a program of AI that is putting in those words.
See, it's a little strange because we use work day. I don't know if it's the exact same thing, but we use work day. And I used to do the hiring, ye, and I use the filters to put them in a certain order, but I go through all of them. I did at the time.
But that's the well, the point is that these are companies that don't.
These are companies that don't. And I remember we talked about it.
When you used when you would hire, first of all, you'd filllter out everybody who wasn't happy with minimum wage and would stay with minimum wage for the next ten years.
There's a filter.
You filtered out, we'd have no one working for us.
That's pretty much what happens, isn't it. That's pretty much ye okay, I get it out of your system. Yeah, we're done with that all right.
Around Mount Saint Helen's, the number of rescues just keeps on climbing.
One man twenty one years.
Old kayaked over a waterfall. Brilliant, huh, A spinal injury. A fifty four year old woman glaciated. I don't even know there was a word down Mount Saint Helen's. That's sliding down a snow covered slope. I guess just on her ass. She struck a rock and suffered a head injury. There are more and more of these coming up, and there are some shriff now because usually they're county rescue teams pondering sending you know, send them a bill, Send
them a bill. The sheriff Summershire said, and this is I think, Sacamania County, I need to find a creative way to deter the current behavior we're witnessing while attempting to recoup the financial burden placed on our country, on our county. In May, in Sacramon County, the number of search and rescue missions just exploded compared to.
The same month last year. By the way, He's not alone.
Southern Utah Garfield County announced it was requiring permits for some of the most remote and challenging slot canyons. Effectively, it's an insurance policy. You want to go off the trail, you want to go in that area, you're paying an extra permit to pay for potential search and rescues. Nationwide, last year, over thirty three hundred of these rescues. Uh and man, you know that's just it's dumb for these
people to go. Now, we're only talking egregious stuff off the trail, going into areas, going there in the middle of winter where there's snow.
Why would people do that? Explain that to me.
When I go to Brents, Delhi or I go to Anaheim White House, I don't get lost.
People don't have to look for me.
As matter of fact, they know exactly where I am. I mean hiking off are these trails?
Amy? Do you hike? Nop good, Neil?
I know I want to fall off the trail.
Exactly, Nail, Neil. Do you hike what you hike? What can I know? I hike?
Kno do you hike, no chance. See, we're going to live a while, all right. For those of you that hike and go off the trail and do these you know, weird sports. You know you're gonna die. It'll kill you every time. You know I'm here to help you. I want you to live a long life. Stop this crap hiking and off the trails. People should get nailed, by
the way for that, because these these searches are a fortune. Yeah, Amy, I was just gonna say, in some ski areas when you go out of bounds, they do charge.
You good good, especially when you hit a tree and they have to come and rescue you.
Yeah, the Sunny Bono story, you know, Offully one got in an argument with a tree. He lost, the tree won the argument. We're done. Coming up, Gary and Shannon. Tomorrow morning we start all over again on a Taco Tuesday. Amy and Will five to nine, five to six wake up call, Neil and I join a board at six right till about now. And of course you got Kono and and who make the show happen, which without them show would probably be better. All right, Gary and Shannon
up next. This is KFI AM six point forty.
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