The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday approved a motion to explore a potential grant program that would support vertical content creators and incentivize local production.<\/p>\n
In a 12-0 vote, council members approved a motion introduced by Councilman Bob Blumenfield in September 2025, directing the Economic and Workforce Development Department to report on a framework for the program.<\/p>\n
City staff will analyze economic development tools to attract long-term industry investments, potential funding sources, review permit fees and tax rebate opportunities, among other things.<\/p>\n
The motion directed city officials to identify $5 million in public, private and philanthropic funding sources to establish a \u201c40% launch and rebate program,\u201d which would provide up-front funding to micro-drama productions offering a 40% rebate on qualifying LA expenditures. An initial 20% up-front grant would be provided to small productions with the final 20% provided upon completion of the project.<\/p>\n
Council members Blumenfield, Imelda Padilla and Katy Yaroslavsky were absent during the vote.<\/p>\n
Vertical content refers to videos on mobile devices, which have proliferated in recent years. These videos are usually set in a 9:16 ratio, tailored for viewing on phones.<\/p>\n
Short-form content, or \u201cmicro-dramas,\u201d is projected to hit $15 billion by 2028, according to the motion. Blumenfield aims to prepare the city and position it as \u201cthe national and global hub\u201d for this form of storytelling.<\/p>\n
Micro-drama productions typically have budgets less than $200,000, which fall below the threshold to qualify for California\u2019s tax credits. Some creators relocate to other cities that offer tax credits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe targeted support to micro-drama production will not only nurture a new generation of creative talent, but also help future-proof Los Angeles\u2019 position at the center of the global entertainment industry,\u201d according to the motion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday approved a motion to explore a potential grant program that would support…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[4562,2323,68525,10659,3667,48,52,51,47,50,49,4576,68526],"class_list":["post-134180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-content","tag-council","tag-creators","tag-explore","tag-grant","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-program","tag-vertical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}