Does this sound familiar?
Executives from ABC's Nashville are thinking about taking the show down the road to Texas or Georgia if it gets a third season, The Tennessean reports. It's the same ditty they were humming a year ago, before the state (with a little help from Metro) offered a $13 million incentive package that kept the show in place for its second season.
This is all part of the game, of course. The show completes a season, full of those wonderful establishment shots (this is not sarcasm; they are wonderful) and all that advertising the city can't buy (this is sarcasm) and when the time comes to start talking about its deal with the state and city, executives start glancing Georgia's way, wondering aloud whether some street there might work just fine as a stand-in for Broadway, and oh wouldn't that be a shame. And then the city and the state do what they can to come up with some combination of tax breaks and / or cash grants that will keep the show here for another year.
Trouble is, the money might be harder to come by this time around.
Last year, the state came up with $12.5 million for the show, appropriated outside of the state's film incentives program. Metro chipped in $500,000 and the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. contributed $125,000. With tight budgets coming at the state and local level, it's not clear whether that kind of money will be available this year.
State and local officials were vague with the daily, indicating that they'll work to keep the show in town, but declining to get too specific. So we don't know where the line is, after which officials will let the production walk. But you can be pretty sure that if the show gets renewed for a third season and does stick around, you'll see this episode again.
Nashville may not yet be in syndication, but we're already seeing reruns.
