It was wonderful to see “The Tonight Show” back in New York Monday night with Jimmy Fallon after its four-decades-long holiday in California. We trust most New Yorkers feel the same way. And they should — because they’re paying for it.
Yes, New York taxpayers are sparing NBC and its corporate parent, Comcast, more than $20 million a year in production costs alone, according to an estimate by Hollywood Reporter.
That’s not all: NBC could also get partial reimbursement for the new state-of-the-art studio and control room it built, as well as post-production expenses. Not to mention the free advertising and other discounts on goods and services NBC buys from select local businesses.
If “The Tonight Show” were simply taking advantage of the program under which Albany divvies out billions in tax credits to the film and TV industry each year, that would be one thing. But it isn’t. A year ago, the Legislature carved out a special provision in the budget to make “The Tonight Show” eligible.
The Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon rightly notes that these tax credits rest on the assumption that they’re essential to attract job-creating activity that would otherwise go elsewhere. And indeed last year there was much talk of New York’s efforts to woo “The Tonight Show” back home.
But statements from Fallon & Co. suggest it might not have been necessary. For one thing, Fallon was already here. A Brooklyn-born boy raised upstate, he cut his teeth on “Saturday Night Live” — and “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” was already being produced here. Of “The Tonight Show,” Fallon says New York is “where it should be.”
Fallon’s executive producer, Lorne Michaels, was more explicit. He told the Times, “It simply never came up that we would move to LA.”
If that’s true, why are New York taxpayers using tax credits to bribe — er, subsidize — these men to do something they intended to do all along?