During the latter part of the last Century and the first part of the current century, much of the answering service business was relocated to other countries. At first, it was mainly for economic reasons. But then as that became less so, I think some companies began to understand that there is value in having support people and operators who could work with their customers. It turns out that people didn’t like having to converse with someone who had trouble understanding their needs and there was pushback. The next shoe to drop was the affordable myth. It was not really all that much less expensive to farm out the phone services overseas, and it made the customers mad!
Making your customers angry is a good way to encourage them to use the services of other companies. Being a company that values their customers is something that the bottom line people often don’t factor into their equations, But the customers will let them know the only way that the bottom line people understand. By taking their business elsewhere. That makes them understand.
Over the past 20 years, more and more film and tv productions have begun to work outside of Hollywood. In states like Georgia and New York, the studios have been lured away from Hollywood by big financial incentives and let’s face it, less traffic and a lower cost of living. But even that is beginning to change.
It seems some Los Angeles actors would prefer to stay closer to home and not be forced to leave their families behind for months on end. To get those people to commit to a movie or tv show, it makes sense to do the filming closer to home, which would be one of the studios in Burbank or Hollywood.
from: https://www.marketplace.org
“For a long time, it seemed like Hollywood was becoming more a state of mind than the center of the entertainment industry.
Year after year states offering sweet deals to movie producers lured away hundreds of millions of dollars in business from Los Angeles.
Some shows, like “Lucifer” and “Legion,” have relocated to Southern California. It’s an up-and-down game, though. After a solid 2016, on-location film production in Los Angeles County fell 36 percent in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the same time last year, according to a report out this week from Film LA, which tracks production.
So, it was big news this week when Netflix, which will produce around $6 billion worth of original content this year, said it’s going to increase its infrastructure investment in California rather than chasing tax credits in other states.
“Incentives have become a key aspect of every production,” said Joe Chianese, who heads up production service company Entertainment Partners. “Producers today, when they’re budgeting a movie, they do about six to sometimes 10 budgets based on different locations.”
A decade ago, nearly every state offered incentives to lure productions that might have otherwise set up shop in Hollywood. Now, that number is closer to 35.
“Some states economically couldn’t afford to maintain their programs,” Chianese said. “Other states decided they wanted to allocate their funding to other places.”
Netflix’s decision to concentrate production in California could cost the company, even though the state expanded its tax incentives in 2015. But Vicki Mayer, a communications professor at Tulane University, said Netflix will benefit from creating its own studios.
“They have the infrastructure, they have the equipment, they have the crews that they can fund,” she said.
Staying in Hollywood could also give Netflix a competitive advantage with Hollywood actors and directors, who won’t have to leave their families for long periods of time to shoot on location…”