After more than two decades broadcasting live from Los Angeles, "American Idol" is packing up for Georgia, the latest in a growing list of major productions fleeing California's high costs and restrictive tax credit rules.
The show's producers confirmed the move ahead of its milestone 25th season. Fremantle, which co-produces the series alongside Sony Pictures Television's 19 Entertainment, is relocating to the greater Atlanta area, drawn by Georgia's 30% tax credit for unscripted and reality TV productions that spend at least $500,000 in the state. ABC, Fremantle, and 19 Entertainment all declined Variety's requests for comment on the decision.
The math tells the story. California's expanded film and television tax credit program now covers unscripted competition shows, but only those with budgets exceeding $1 million per episode. "American Idol" reportedly falls below that threshold. Georgia asks far less: a total production spend of $500,000, with a credit worth up to 30% of costs. For a show navigating tighter margins and shorter episode orders, the gap between those two numbers is the difference between staying and leaving.
The departure lands in the middle of a sharp downturn for Los Angeles production. On-location shoot days in the city fell 12% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2026, with only 4,711 shoot days recorded, 36% below the five-year average and barely more than half the 8,632 logged in the same quarter of 2019.
Unscripted television has been hit even harder. Reality TV shoot days in Los Angeles have dropped 40% year-over-year and plunged 62.7% against the five-year average, according to the New York Post.
California's expanded tax credit has brought 170 films and TV shows to the state, but as The Wrap noted, it "still hasn't halted the decline in on-location shooting in Los Angeles." The credit still excludes entire categories, docuseries, talk shows, and game shows get nothing. Reality and unscripted television, outside the narrow competition-show carve-out, remain shut out.
"American Idol" is not an isolated case. "Shark Tank" left the Sony lot in Culver City for Atlanta. "Lego Masters" departed Van Nuys for the same destination. "Family Feud" and "Celebrity Family Feud" moved to Georgia as well. Fox's "The Masked Singer" abandoned its longtime home on the Fox lot in Century City for New Jersey.
Todd Weinstein, an attorney and owner of the firm Weinstein Senior, flagged the problem in a LinkedIn post last year. His argument was blunt: California's tax credit framework leaves out one of the state's most productive sectors.
"Reality and unscripted television remain excluded (with the exception of competition shows), despite being one of California's most productive, scalable, and culturally influential sectors. At a time when producers are navigating shrinking license fees, shorter episode orders, and tighter margins, the ongoing omission of this entire category raises real questions about the long-term viability of keeping these productions in-state."
Weinstein pressed the point further, noting the economic footprint that Sacramento's policy ignores:
"Reality television has been a foundational part of California's production economy for decades. These shows produce thousands of jobs, support local vendors, keep post facilities running, and increasingly require the same physical infrastructure as scripted content. They might look different with faster schedules, leaner teams, and alternative storytelling structures but they are no less real in terms of economic impact. Still, they continue to sit outside the framework of the tax credit."
No one in Sacramento appears to have listened. The shows kept leaving.
Atlanta has spent years branding itself the "Hollywood of the South," and productions like "American Idol" reinforce that claim. But Georgia's own film economy is not without cracks. Film and TV production spending in the state dropped from a peak of $4.4 billion in 2022 to $2.3 billion in the most recent fiscal year. Total productions fell from 412 to 245 over the same period, with Marvel shifting work to the United Kingdom.
Lee Thomas, deputy commissioner of the Georgia Film Office, pointed to the 2023 writers' and actors' strikes as a turning point.
"We saw a lot of productions start looking overseas, knowing that they wouldn't have another work stoppage."
The human toll has been real. Chris Ratledge, a digital imaging technician in Georgia, posted on Instagram in December: "All I want for Christmas is for my film career back." Other states, including California and Texas, have increased their own incentives to compete with Georgia's credits, which cover up to 30% of production costs.
So "American Idol" arrives in a Georgia market that is still rebuilding, but one that at least wants its business badly enough to make the tax math work.
"American Idol" is one show. But the pattern it represents carries staggering potential costs. A study by the LA County Economic Development Corporation found that California could lose between 28,990 and 57,980 full-time jobs and between $10.6 billion and $21.2 billion in annual revenue if a single major studio, Paramount, relocated to another state like Tennessee.
The study noted that those estimates capture direct, indirect, and induced job losses, including "the ripple effects through Paramount's supply chains in California as well as the economic activity of household spending." One studio relocation could cost the state economy more than $10 billion. Dozens of individual show departures, compounding year after year, carry their own cumulative weight, even if no single exit makes headlines the way a full studio move would.
"American Idol" first went on the air in 2002 and broadcast from Television City in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles for most of its run before shifting to Red Studios Hollywood. For twenty-four years, the show's live broadcasts, production crews, vendors, and support staff fed money into the local economy. That spending now moves to Georgia.
California's leaders expanded the state's production tax credit and claimed progress. And for scripted film and television, the program has drawn work. But the expansion left reality and unscripted television, one of the fastest-growing and most portable segments of the industry, largely on the outside. The competition-show exception, with its $1 million-per-episode floor, covers only a fraction of the unscripted market. Shows that don't clear that bar have no reason to stay.
Georgia, New Jersey, and other states saw the opening and walked through it. They offered simpler, broader incentives with lower qualifying thresholds. Producers did what producers do: they followed the money.
The workers who built sets, ran cameras, catered meals, and managed post-production in Los Angeles are the ones who pay the price. They don't get to follow the show to Atlanta. They wait for the next gig in a market where shoot days are down by a third and reality production has collapsed by more than 60%.
When a state makes it more expensive to do business inside its borders than outside them, businesses leave. California's political leadership has had years of warnings, industry testimony, and hard data showing exactly where this was headed. "American Idol" packing for Georgia is not a surprise, it is a consequence.