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Film and Sports
Limited data on entertainment projects in Florida make it difficult to assess the industry's scope and momentum. But it appears that TV production may be growing faster than film work. A recent list compiled by the Metro Orlando Film & TV Office of productions underway in Central Florida includes 17 TV programs, 39 TV commercials and just two feature films.
"We helped to double the number of feature films being made here (in Florida) by opening an office in Los Angeles four years ago," says John Reitzammer, executive director of the Florida Entertainment Industry Council, which promotes the state's film and TV industry. "We may have reached a plateau in feature film production."
To help generate more TV production for the state, the entertainment council plans to open an office in New York City in the first quarter of 1997. Perhaps significantly, the council's office space on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue will be donated by Alton Entertainment of Miami Beach, a TV production company that is partially owned by Interpublic Group of Companies, a New York holding company for McCann-Erickson Worldwide and several other major advertising agencies.
Reitzammer claims TV commercials generate more work in Florida than do films. "Television commercial production," he says, "is really an unexplained contributor to the economy."
According to the Miami-Dade Office of Film, TV and Print, the combined production value of film, TV and photography work in Dade County has been about $200 million in recent years, based on government permits for crews to shoot on location in public places. But those permits tell only part of the story. Indeed, the production value may be more like $1 billion, according to updated estimates scheduled for release early this year.
"We are going to be four or five or six times the permitted volume," says Jeff Peel, director of the Miami-Dade film office. "It's sort of confirming what everyone has thought for so long: Permitted production is only the tip of the iceberg."
Peel says the new numbers will reflect work done at the Miami production centers of the two largest Spanish-language TV networks, Telemundo and Univision. They produce many of the soap operas, news programs and game shows that are broadcast by their affiliated stations.
Also reflected in the new numbers is a growing cluster of Spanish-language cable shows with operations in Miami. Demand for programming in Spanish is rising as Latin American governments privatize their broadcasting systems and encourage companies to deliver TV programming via cable and satellite technology [FT, "I Want My MTV Latino," March 1995].
One beneficiary of the trend is Discovery Channel Latin America. Started three years ago in Miami with a small marketing staff, the company beams dubbed versions of English programs to households in Central and South America. In addition, Discovery Channel Latin America produces some of its own Spanish-language programming in Miami, where its work force of about 70 is expected to double by the end of 1997. Some of the growth comes from a new cable show in Spanish called Discovery Kids Channel.
Compared with its counterpart in Miami, the Metro Orlando Film & TV Office provides a better estimate of the value of local production because it accounts not just for production work in public places, which requires a permit, but also work done in the vast private facilities at Universal Studios and Disney-MGM Studios. The combined value of the Orlando area's film and TV work in 1996 was probably around $200 million - more than double the level of 1990.
A big share of Orlando's TV production work is done inside a complex of 9 sound stages operated by MCA Inc.'s Universal Studios, a unit of Seagram Co. Two of the sound stages are used to produce more than 85% of the programming for the Nickelodeon cable network for children. Also produced in the Universal complex is America's Health Network, launched in 1996 and billed as the first U.S. cable show devoted to health and wellness.
Sports is showbiz, too
Sports is an increasingly popular form of entertainment in Florida. And while income from gate receipts may be down for some of the state's professional sports franchises, income from related businesses, such as the sale of broadcasting rights and merchandising, has provided significant revenues.
Wayne Huizenga can attest to that: In late 1996, the Fort Lauderdale-based entrepreneur sold the radio broadcasting rights to his three professional sports teams - the Miami Dolphins, Florida Marlins and Florida Panthers - for more than $35 million, turning over the play-by-play production work for the next five years to Miami station WQAM.
Huizenga also has his own piece of the media pipeline. About a year ago, through a company called Front Row Communications, he acquired SportsChannel. The statewide sports network owns cable TV transmission rights to the ancillary programming of the Dolphins and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and live-game rights to the Marlins, Panthers and, starting in 1998, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Huizenga has looked at several other acquisition candidates, including at least one firm in the sports video business, according to Dean Jordan, president of Front Row.
Huizenga and other team owners also are wringing more money from their sports investments by getting taxpayers to foot the bill for new arenas and stadiums and demanding the revenues from skyboxes and concessions. Late last year in Tampa, the Lightning started playing hockey in their new Ice Palace and ground was broken for a new stadium for the Buccaneers. In South Florida, construction has started on a new arena near Fort Lauderdale for the Panthers, and plans to build a waterfront venue for the Heat in downtown Miami survived a local referendum proposal to ban the project. Work also has begun on the $65 million upgrade of the dome in St. Petersburg where the Tampa Bay Devil Rays will play in 1998.
