Richard Verrier

Los Angeles, once the king of TV pilots, is rapidly losing its domain to New York and other rivals. The LA region's share of pilot production dropped to a historic low in the most recent pilot season, as producers took their business to the Big Apple and other cities offering stronger tax breaks and rebates, according to a new report.

Among 203 pilots produced in the 12 months ended in May, only 44% (90 pilots) were filmed in the LA region, down from 52% the previous season and 82% from the 2006-07 pilot season. The rest mainly filmed in New York, Atlanta, and the Canadian cities Vancouver and Toronto, an annual survey released by FilmLA concluded. The decline has been especially sharp in the category of TV dramas -- New York surpassed Los Angeles for the first time in filming one-hour TV drama pilots.

The Big Apple drew 24 TV drama pilots versus 19 in LA. The decline in the number of TV drama pilots is especially significant because dramas are considered the most economically valuable type of TV production, employing large crews and often over a period of several years. A TV drama pilot costs about $6 million to $8 million to produce.

At a small community park in Santa Monica, a group of Los Angeles-area musicians wearing dark blue and orange T-shirts with the slogan "Listen Up!" gathered around a flatbed truck as union leaders, a minister and a local city councilman fired up the crowd.

"Make no mistake, music that we produce is a critical component in the artistic and financial success of any film that's produced here," said Neil Samples, a violinist. "We say to Lionsgate: Abandon the low road, stop offshoring jobs, do the right thing and bring the music home."

After his speech, a zydeco band took the stage, and Samples and his colleagues huddled into a van and drove a few blocks to the headquarters of Lionsgate, the independent studio behind the hit "Hunger Games" movies. They parked outside the studio and used a dolly to deliver four boxes containing a petition signed by 12,000 supporters urging Lionsgate to "stop sending musicians' jobs overseas."

The labor unrest is the latest sign of disharmony between local musicians and their employers. The American Federation of Musicians has previously organized rallies against Marvel Studios for hiring London musicians to work on such movies as "The Avengers" and "Iron Man 3" even though those films were shot in the United States. Now, with the backing of the AFL-CIO, the union has singled out Lionsgate. It says the studio is hiring foreign musicians to play music on movies that filmed in the US with the support of taxpayer subsidies.