What are the key takeaways from this Odd Lots episode?

Key insights include: **Shoot Day Collapse:** LA production volume has declined by more than 50% since its 2016 peak of 40,000 annual shoot days, reaching under 20,000 in 2025. The industry phrase "survive till 25" reflected hopes for recovery, but each year from 2023 onward saw further declines rather than the anticipated rebound writers and crew expected.; **Tax Incentive Geography:** Production follows tax breaks, not talent or infrastructure. Shows like Eastbound and Down relocated from North Carolina to South Carolina when state incentives changed. Fox game shows and studio comedies now film in Dublin, Ireland, due to combined tax and labor cost advantages, leaving LA's newly built studio real estate underutilized.; **Writer's Room Shrinkage:** Comedy writers' rooms have contracted from 30 writers on Family Guy to single-creator models like The White Lotus. New WGA contract rules now mandate minimum room sizes when studios trigger a writers' room, which paradoxically incentivizes studios to avoid forming rooms altogether and use solo creator arrangements instead.

What did Hayes Davenport discuss on Odd Lots?

Hollywood writer Hayes Davenport joins Odd Lots live in Los Angeles to examine the structural collapse of the entertainment industry, tracing how LA shoot days fell from 40,000 in 2016 to under 20,000 by 2025, driven by streaming disruption, production tax incentives, labor strikes, and emerging AI pressure. Key topics include: **Shoot Day Collapse:** LA production volume has declined by more than 50% since its 2016 peak of 40,000 annual shoot days, reaching under 20,000 in 2025. The industry phrase "survive till 25" reflected hopes for recovery, but each year from 2023 onward saw further declines rather than the anticipated rebound writers and crew expected.; **Tax Incentive Geography:** Production follows tax breaks, not talent or infrastructure. Shows like Eastbound and Down relocated from North Carolina to South Carolina when state incentives changed. Fox game shows and studio comedies now film in Dublin, Ireland, due to combined tax and labor cost advantages, leaving LA's newly built studio real estate underutilized..

How long is this episode of Odd Lots?

This episode is 32 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

Odd Lots

Hollywood Was Cooked Before AI, and Now It's Only Getting Worse

September 25, 2026

32 min episode · 2 min read

Hayes Davenport

Episode

32 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Health & Wellness, Relationships, Design & UX

AI-Generated Summary

Published Sep 25, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓Shoot Day Collapse: LA production volume has declined by more than 50% since its 2016 peak of 40,000 annual shoot days, reaching under 20,000 in 2025. The industry phrase "survive till 25" reflected hopes for recovery, but each year from 2023 onward saw further declines rather than the anticipated rebound writers and crew expected.
✓Tax Incentive Geography: Production follows tax breaks, not talent or infrastructure. Shows like Eastbound and Down relocated from North Carolina to South Carolina when state incentives changed. Fox game shows and studio comedies now film in Dublin, Ireland, due to combined tax and labor cost advantages, leaving LA's newly built studio real estate underutilized.
✓Writer's Room Shrinkage: Comedy writers' rooms have contracted from 30 writers on Family Guy to single-creator models like The White Lotus. New WGA contract rules now mandate minimum room sizes when studios trigger a writers' room, which paradoxically incentivizes studios to avoid forming rooms altogether and use solo creator arrangements instead.
✓AI Threat Hierarchy: AI currently poses the most immediate risk to below-the-line production workers — grips, hair, makeup, and set design — rather than writers. Comedy writing remains the hardest creative category for AI to replicate due to its dependence on live performance, voice, timing, and room dynamics, but AI can already produce structural outlines for other genres.
✓Ripple Effects on Local Economy: Hollywood represents roughly 20% of LA's economy but generates disproportionate spillover through catering, restaurants, tourism, and nightlife. The production decline pushed restaurants already weakened by pandemic shutdowns into closure, reduced tourism draw, and contributed to a measurable contraction in LA's broader service and hospitality sectors.

What It Covers

Hollywood writer Hayes Davenport joins Odd Lots live in Los Angeles to examine the structural collapse of the entertainment industry, tracing how LA shoot days fell from 40,000 in 2016 to under 20,000 by 2025, driven by streaming disruption, production tax incentives, labor strikes, and emerging AI pressure.

Key Questions Answered

•Shoot Day Collapse: LA production volume has declined by more than 50% since its 2016 peak of 40,000 annual shoot days, reaching under 20,000 in 2025. The industry phrase "survive till 25" reflected hopes for recovery, but each year from 2023 onward saw further declines rather than the anticipated rebound writers and crew expected.
•Tax Incentive Geography: Production follows tax breaks, not talent or infrastructure. Shows like Eastbound and Down relocated from North Carolina to South Carolina when state incentives changed. Fox game shows and studio comedies now film in Dublin, Ireland, due to combined tax and labor cost advantages, leaving LA's newly built studio real estate underutilized.
•Writer's Room Shrinkage: Comedy writers' rooms have contracted from 30 writers on Family Guy to single-creator models like The White Lotus. New WGA contract rules now mandate minimum room sizes when studios trigger a writers' room, which paradoxically incentivizes studios to avoid forming rooms altogether and use solo creator arrangements instead.
•AI Threat Hierarchy: AI currently poses the most immediate risk to below-the-line production workers — grips, hair, makeup, and set design — rather than writers. Comedy writing remains the hardest creative category for AI to replicate due to its dependence on live performance, voice, timing, and room dynamics, but AI can already produce structural outlines for other genres.
•Ripple Effects on Local Economy: Hollywood represents roughly 20% of LA's economy but generates disproportionate spillover through catering, restaurants, tourism, and nightlife. The production decline pushed restaurants already weakened by pandemic shutdowns into closure, reduced tourism draw, and contributed to a measurable contraction in LA's broader service and hospitality sectors.

Notable Moment

Davenport argues that Hollywood writers are less threatened by AI than outsiders assume — not because AI is weak, but because the industry already spent years competing against the entire archive of human creativity available free, algorithmically curated, on demand. AI simply cannot undercut free.

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Episode Transcript

00:00:02 Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. 00:00:04 Speaker 2: Podcasts. 00:00:05 Speaker 1: Radio. 00:00:06 Speaker 3: News. 00:00:18 Speaker 4: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the OddLots Podcast. I'm Traci Alloway. 00:00:22 Speaker 5: And I'm Joe Wiesenthal, and we're here live at the Vermont Theater in Hollywood. 00:00:28 Speaker 4: It's our first ever live show in Los Angeles, and we have an incredible lineup. So first up, we're going to be speaking with Hayes Davenport. He was a writer for shows like Eastbound and Down and Family Guy. He is now the creative director of LA Material and co-host of the podcast Hollywood Handbook. And we're going to talk about the business of writing for Hollywood. 00:00:52 Speaker 5: And we're going to talk about the state of Hollywood and whether Hollywood exists in some form that we know it and whether it will continue to exist. 00:00:59 Speaker 1: So take a watch, take a listen and enjoy. 00:01:02 Speaker 2: Hayes, thank you so much for being here. 00:01:04 Speaker 4: Hi, guys. 00:01:04 Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. Welcome to L.A. Thank you. 00:01:07 Speaker 2: Thank you. 00:01:08 Speaker 4: I feel kind of intimidated to be talking to a fellow podcast professional. 00:01:13 Speaker 2: I feel like there's more pressure. 00:01:15 Speaker 3: You're in a city of podcast professionals. You're in the right place. 00:01:19 Speaker 1: There's a podcast lawyer in the audience. Oh, yeah. 00:01:21 Speaker 3: I know who you're talking to. 00:01:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. 00:01:24 Speaker 3: We all know each other. 00:01:25 Speaker 5: Tracy was telling me before the show. Her favorite ever season of TV was Family Guy season 13. 00:01:31 Speaker 3: Family Guy season 13. It is the best one. It's the one that I worked on. I don't know if that's related. 00:01:35 Speaker 1: That's just a total coincidence. 00:01:37 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:01:37 Speaker 2: Total coincidence. 00:01:38 Speaker 3: Wait, okay. 00:01:39 Speaker 2: So first question, is Hollywood just screwed at the moment? 00:01:43 Speaker 4: No, like honestly, you hear about, you know, the stats about writers not earning as much income, fewer shoots and production actually taking place in LA, the threat of AI. 00:01:54 Speaker 2: Is everyone cooked? I. 00:01:57 Speaker 3: if you want to do the numbers, I can talk about like shoot days in LA. The numbers that we look at are, are, are shoot days. Like that's the metric. And that's for reality, for commercials, that's for everything, right? Shoot days in LA, uh, hit a high in 2016, about 40,000 shoot days. And from there it sort of leveled out to around 37,000 by 2019. Okay. Pandemic hits the shoot days collapse, obviously. There's a backlog. And then in 2021, they sort of skyrocket again. 2022, we're back to 2019 numbers, around 37,000. The next year, 2023, the …

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