7/11/2009

12 Responses to “Creators Syndicate vs LA”

1. Creators Syndicate is, in effect, an intellectual property company: there is nothing that physically ties them to Los Angeles. I suppose that they lease some office space, but that’s about it.

   That means they can pull up stakes and move to Elko, Nevada or Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania — I’d love to see them here! — or really anyplace they want.

   Hey, Creators, c’mon up! The house your people paid $850,000 in LA costs $85,000 in the Poconos, it’s nice enough that I don’t have air conditioning, even in July, we’re not that far from New York or Philly if you have to go there, and if you forget to lock your front door at night, it’s no big deal.

   Yeah, you’ll have to pay taxes here, too, but they aren’t insane.

   The economist Dana (474dfc) — 7/11/2009 @ 5:48 pm

   
   

2. Even more incredible is the fact that the new classification was to be imposed retroactively to 2004 with interest and penalties

   Wow.

   I can understand – sorta – deciding to reclassify the organization.

   But doing so retroactively and imposing a penalty on the company for not paying higher taxes it hadn’t been told it needed to pay?

   This is ethically wrong.

   It also ought to be illegal. The ex post facto clause really ought to apply to situations like this.

   aphrael (9e8ccd) — 7/11/2009 @ 5:59 pm

   
   

3. aphrael – when it comes to the government and taxes, it appears all is fair.

   JD (afa5a9) — 7/11/2009 @ 6:25 pm

   
   

4. All I can figure is:
   “Yeah, looks pretty illegal. Who you gonna call? LAPD?”

   Foxfier (db0f51) — 7/11/2009 @ 6:47 pm

   
   

5. Creators will no doubt go the way of Wyatt Oil, Taggert Transcontinental, D’Anconia Copper, and Reardon Metal. See ya! Baa Bye.

   J. Raymond Wright (e8d0ca) — 7/11/2009 @ 7:41 pm

   
   

6. According to the article, 15 years ago Creators disputed the City’s attempt to classify them in a category with a higher business tax rate. The City’s own bureaucracy sided with Creators. Now the LA claims that its decisions bind the taxpayer but not the City. Whatever the result of the current litigation, I think Creators will move.

   Stu707 (471645) — 7/11/2009 @ 8:57 pm

   
   

7. I think Creators Syndicate was wrong in its initial attempt to classify itself as wholesale/retail. It’s not buying anything wholesale nor selling anything retail.

   That said, they got a big break when the city ruled for them. And the city should have abided by its own ruling.

   I don’t blame the company for wanting to move; I’d do it, too.

   Steverino (1b3695) — 7/11/2009 @ 9:11 pm

   
   

8. It’s not buying anything wholesale nor selling anything retail.

   It buys written material from writers and sells it to newspapers and other outlets. The writers are not Creators’ employees. Sounds like a wholesaler to me.

   Agreed that the City should abide by its own decision on Creators’ tax status.

   Stu707 (471645) — 7/11/2009 @ 9:19 pm

   
   

9. Sotomayor is a bigot and a racist. She is typical of the Southern California racists who say “If you’re not La Raza, you’re nothing.” That is, if you are not Hispanic, you don’t count. You have seen them demonstrating in the streets of Los Angeles, promoting their racist bigotry against anyone who is not Hispanic. When the high schoolers came marching past my husband’s business in Long Beach (my husband is a minority person, not Hispanhic), I shouted to them to not display Mexican flags, but American flags, then we could talk. But they think that they can protest in the street and somehow they will get their way? I’ve always said, “One yard at a time.” In my old neighborhood in Anaheim, the Mexican flag was often displayed on flagpoles, indeed marking the taking of Southern California “one yard at a time.” I have to remind these people that we are one, ONE, people under God. And I was driven from my home by these unfriendly, antiseptic bigots.

   MonaClaire (7e25b5) — 7/12/2009 @ 3:42 pm

   
   

10. Why haven’t the big film studios moved?

    I think that they are close. No one watches the dollars closer than Hollywood. The advantage to shooting in LA is that there is a very large base of experienced crew to draw from. The cost effect of an experienced crew is that a film is done faster and thus cheaper than elsewhere. When you read about a $200M movie, most of that production cost is for crews, sets and effects. The big name actors are mostly leveraged to benefit from the tickets sold and it doesn’t take many of those kind of films to generate outsized taxes that will equal the cost of the professional crews.

    When the costs of shooting in LA outweigh the advantage of professional crews, the film studios will move and hire/train inexperienced crews at a lower rate which translates directly to the bottom line. Watch where the smaller films (smaller budgets = smaller films) get made. Vancouver (gotta watch the exchange rate) Denver and of course Texas. New York? Same situation as CA, watch how many TV shows disappear from NY and start shooting elsewhere. One more thing to consider, if the studios move, the suppliers, caterers and other companies serving the industry will relocate as well.

    BeachBumBill (31bd98) — 7/12/2009 @ 4:52 pm

    
    

11. ^ The way things are going, the only thing that Los Angeles will be left with is the idiotic politics of the Hollywood crowd — their politics but not their industry, per below, and whose election-day habits are mimiced by far too many of the voters throughout California — and the always-struggling nature of large percentages of people immigrating from even more dysfunctional locales south of the border.

    A truly wonderful combination.
    

    Today’s LA Times:

    Hundreds of small blue-collar businesses like these sustain Southern California’s entertainment industry. Many are struggling amid a sharp drop in local film and TV production triggered by the recession, a rise in runaway production, and the fallout from a writer’s strike and a yearlong contract dispute between studios and the Screen Actors Guild. According to the state Employment Development Department, jobs in movie and television production were down 13,800 in May compared with a year earlier.

    On-location feature film production in the area has fallen to its lowest levels on record. Student films generated as much activity on the streets of Los Angeles in the first quarter of 2009, when only a few movies, including “Fame” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel,” were shot there.

    California’s share of U.S. feature film production dropped to 31% in 2008 from 66% in 2003, according to the California Film Commission. That largely reflects a falloff in the Los Angeles area, where feature filming activity in 2008 was nearly half what it was at its peak in 1996.

    Television production, which recently has been a more reliable source of jobs in the region, is also declining. A recent survey from FilmL.A. Inc. found that 44 of 103 TV pilots this year were shot in such disparate locations as Canada, Illinois, Georgia, New York, Louisiana and New Mexico.

    Mark (411533) — 7/12/2009 @ 6:43 pm

    
    

12. It took a while, but the liberals have succeeded in undermining the jobs factory that LA used to be. Taking the train through Van Nuys a few weeks ago I was reminded that this was the city the developed the P-51 Mustang, one of the most important aircraft in the history of the world. What businesses are moving in to replace the hundreds that are moving out? None that I can see.

    tyree (707587) — 7/12/2009 @ 8:14 pm