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California has always been where stories are born, and Governor Gavin Newsom’s latest move proves the state is ready to write its next great chapter. His announcement that 52 film projects will bring $1.4 billion in new spending — including $629 million in wages — signals real progress in keeping productions thriving here at home. It’s a win for jobs, creativity, and the local economy. Now, it’s time to make sure that momentum reaches every corner of the crew.
An average studio film or television set employs nearly 588 crew members, most of whom are below-the-line workers — the craftspeople, technicians, and specialists who make movie magic possible. Their salaries run about 65 percent higher than the national average, a reminder that production jobs aren’t just glamorous; they’re powerful engines of middle-class stability.
Yet despite this promise, the people behind the camera — the ones operating sound boards, building sets, and managing payroll — still don’t reflect the full diversity of California. The crews powering our biggest shows remain overwhelmingly homogeneous. While tax credits succeed in drawing productions back to the Golden State, they don’t ensure that the economic rewards reach Black, Indigenous, Latinx, AAPI, LGBTQ+, and disabled professionals who have long been excluded from the industry’s infrastructure.
The Core Problem: Incentives Without Inclusion
California’s Film & Television Tax Credit Program 4.0, expanded by Governor Newsom to $750 million annually, is one of the most ambitious incentive programs in the country. It’s designed to keep productions in-state, create jobs, and drive billions in economic activity. The program even includes new DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) requirements, encouraging productions to outline how they plan to hire, train, and promote underrepresented talent.
But here’s the challenge: while the intent is strong, the mechanism for accountability is still limited. Productions can earn tax credits by submitting diversity plans, yet they aren’t required to meet measurable benchmarks in hiring, training, or ownership to qualify. In other words, a production can receive millions in public subsidies without demonstrating real workforce diversification — or even tracking outcomes once the credits are granted.
That means the program’s DEI component, as promising as it sounds on paper, functions more like a statement of good faith than a system of structural change. Without verified data or compliance thresholds, the state can’t fully measure whether its investments are translating into lasting equity — especially among below-the-line crew, where diversity gaps remain the widest.
So, when $629 million in wages are paid, most of that money still goes to the same workforce demographics that have always dominated below-the-line jobs. The state is effectively subsidizing the status quo.
From Intent to Accountability
That’s where Diversity Production Pro® (DPP) can turn intent into accountability. As Education Media’s established entertainment learning and workforce platform, DPP already tracks real hiring and training outcomes across multiple statewide cohorts administered through the California Film Commission. By integrating DPP into the tax credit reporting process, the state could move beyond self-reported workplans to a verified data model — one that automatically captures who’s being hired, trained, and retained across productions. This system would allow studios to demonstrate measurable progress toward diversity goals, while giving the state the transparency it needs to ensure its public investments are creating equitable, long-term opportunity behind the scenes.
Building Apprenticeship Pipelines That Lead to Real Jobs
Training programs open the door — but apprenticeships keep it open. Education Media’s approach expands on the state’s Career Pathways pilots by transforming one-off training experiences into certified, data-tracked apprenticeships that lead directly to employment.
Through the Diversity Production Pro® (DPP) platform and the Education Media Command Center, every apprentice’s journey can now be documented in real time — from enrollment and coursework to on-set hours, union alignment, wage verification, and job placement. This automation eliminates the manual follow-up that often leaves promising trainees disconnected from employment pipelines.
The Command Center’s Workforce Skills Intelligence Layer (WSIL) enhances this process even further, automatically identifying each participant’s verified skills and matching them to open, high-demand production roles across the state. The system doesn’t just track outcomes — it actively creates them by connecting skilled graduates to hiring productions participating in Tax Credit 4.0.
For California, this creates a measurable, closed-loop model:
- Training partners feed verified talent into the system.
- Studios access a ready pool of qualified, diverse workers.
- The state gains real-time data proving that public investments are producing tangible employment outcomes for underrepresented Californians.
It’s the missing link between policy and practice — a living, data-backed workforce pipeline that ensures every dollar the state invests helps build lasting equity on and off set.
Invest in Ownership, Not Just Employment
True equity goes beyond access to jobs — it’s about access to ownership. If California wants to lead the future of entertainment, it must not only employ diverse talent but also empower them to own and produce content within the state.
Education Media’s framework takes the next step by pairing workforce advancement with co-ownership and infrastructure development models inspired by community land trusts and limited-equity cooperatives. These models are designed to keep production power — and the economic returns it generates — rooted in California’s diverse communities rather than exported to states like Georgia or New Mexico.
Under this approach, the state could allocate underused or public land parcels for the development of diverse-led studio spaces operated through public-private partnerships. Emerging producers, independent filmmakers, and regional creative collectives could gain shared equity stakes in these facilities — ensuring affordability, representation, and long-term participation in California’s creative economy.
Through the Command Center, every project within these new studio cooperatives could be linked to the state’s verified workforce and DEI data infrastructure, ensuring that ownership also comes with accountability: who’s building, who’s hiring, and who’s benefiting.
For California, the return is both cultural and economic. Every new studio becomes a regional anchor — creating jobs, generating tax revenue, and reinforcing the state’s leadership as the global capital of inclusive storytelling.
Deploy Regional Production Hubs
Equity can’t thrive if opportunity remains centralized. For decades, California’s entertainment workforce has been concentrated in Los Angeles, even as communities from the Central Valley to the Inland Empire have produced the talent, creativity, and culture that fuel the industry. The next evolution of California’s production economy must bring the work — and the wealth — closer to where people live.
Education Media’s framework proposes a network of regional production hubs — in South Los Angeles, Oakland, the Central Valley, and the Inland Empire — built through partnerships among state agencies, local governments, workforce boards, and studios.
Each hub would serve as both a training center and a working production site, equipped with studio infrastructure, technology labs, and union-aligned apprenticeship programs powered by Diversity Production Pro® (DPP) and the Education Media Command Center.
Because the Command Center aggregates data statewide, these hubs would operate within a unified reporting and compliance ecosystem, ensuring that every production — whether shot in downtown LA or Bakersfield — contributes to California’s verified DEI outcomes under Tax Credit 4.0.
This regional strategy accomplishes three things at once:
- Keeps productions in-state by reducing location costs and expanding qualified labor pools beyond Los Angeles.
- Creates local jobs by connecting residents to live training and immediate employment opportunities.
- Revitalizes communities through investment in creative infrastructure, small businesses, and local economies.
By decentralizing opportunity, California can reclaim its creative leadership not just as the home of Hollywood, but as the model for equitable production ecosystems worldwide.
A Call to Lead the Next Era of Inclusive Production
California has always set the standard for innovation — not just in how stories are told, but in who gets to tell them. Governor Newsom’s expansion of the Film & Television Tax Credit Program 4.0 has already reignited production and brought thousands of jobs home. Now, with the right tools in place, California can make sure those jobs reflect the diversity of the state that makes those stories possible.
Education Media’s Command Center and Diversity Production Pro® give the state that ability — transforming good intentions into verifiable progress, and progress into sustainable opportunity. Together, they provide the data, automation, and accountability needed to ensure that every public dollar invested in production fuels measurable equity — not just activity.
The choice ahead isn’t about rewriting policy; it’s about strengthening it. By aligning the Film Commission’s Career Pathways Program, union partnerships, and regional workforce networks under a single verified system, California can move from pilot programs to permanent infrastructure — from diversity in theory to inclusion in practice.
This is more than a workforce plan. It’s an economic growth strategy that keeps production local, strengthens small businesses, and builds pathways to ownership for the next generation of creators. With the Command Center as the backbone and the state’s leadership as its engine, California can cement its legacy not only as the birthplace of Hollywood but as the model for how an entertainment economy can be both profitable and profoundly equitable.
