Tennessee Film Industry Stakes Claim As National Leader

Over the last several years, movie and television production from within the state has cast Tennessee onto the national and international stage, exposing audiences from around the world to the many benefits Tennessee has to offer.

In the process, the film and production industry has played a major role in boosting the state economy, employing thousands of residents with wages higher than the state average and generating hundreds of millions of dollars in economic investment from Memphis to Mountain City.

According to a new report released in January from the Center for Economic Research in Tennessee (CERT), the research arm of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, Tennessee currently ranks No. 7 among all states in the nation for employment in the film production industry. Since 2010, employment in Tennessee’s film industry has grown 8 percent. Nearly 4,400 Tennesseans work in the film industry, earning an average of nearly $59,800 annually before benefits, a figure that is 21.3 percent higher than the average wage of all industries in Tennessee.

While Tennessee has been the birthplace and home of several movies and television series over the years, perhaps none have had the same economic impact as that of “Nashville,” which recently began airing its fifth season on the Country Music Television station.

In 2014, the Convention and Visitors Corporation surveyed overnight visitors to Nashville and found that nearly 20% of tourists came to visit Nashville because of the show. Not only do visitors attracted to Music City because of the show stay longer, the survey reported, but visitors also spend more money while they are in Nashville — on average $44 more per person per day than those tourists who have not seen the “Nashville” television show.

CERT estimates that tourism resulting from viewership of “Nashville” had an estimated $486.7 million in visitor spending and $34 million in state sales tax revenue over the three years following the show’s premiere.

For a full picture of the impact and growth of the television and movie industry in Tennessee, download the full Economic and Community Development motion picture impact analysis by visiting http://bit.ly/2kPZk2D.