Centric moves 'Single Ladies' to Toronto for production. Strange, eh?

The show was shot in Atlanta its first three seasons while it aired on VH1. Then VH1 cancelled "Single Ladies" in a surprise move given its decent ratings. Then a smaller sister station Centric grabbed it for a fourth season.

Since Georgia raised is tax credits for production companies in 2008, hundreds of films and TV shows have flooded into the state. Often, Georgia masquerades as another locale, such as Kansas (ABC's "Resurrection"), Los Angeles (Lifetime's "Devious Maids") or New Jersey (Sundance's "The Red Road"). Occasionally, scripted shows will actually treat metro Atlanta as Atlanta (e.g. "The Walking Dead," "Rectify").

This is the second show that is fictionally based in Atlanta but is moving elsewhere.  BET's "Being Mary Jane" will be going to Los Angeles if the show gets renewed for a third season due to a lottery win by the production company. (The second season, already in the can and set to return early next year, was shot here.)

"Single Ladies," a light relationship drama, stars LisaRaye McCoy-Misick, Denise Vasi and Charity Shea. (Will Vasi be back after two seasons? She's pregnant right now.)

Why Toronto? Canada has comparable tax credits but nothing so advantageous as to make this an obvious move, said Adrian McDonald, a research analyst at FilmLA, a private, nonprofit organization that coordinates and processes permits for on-location motion picture, television and commercial production in the Los Angeles area.

McDonald studies film and TV tax credits worldwide. "That's bizarre," he said. "Georgia on paper has a slightly better tax credit," he said. "You have me flummoxed."  He theorized that exchange rates and capacity in Georgia might be factors but he isn't sure.

Toronto gives cash directly back to the production companies at 25 percent of the budget (with some salary ceilings). Georgia offers generous 30 percent tax credits that are often sold to a third party so film and TV companies typically do not recoup the maximum 30 percent. Still, the incentives are competitive with each other.

Ric Reitz, a local actor who came up with the sweetened 30 percent tax credit in 2008 as long as the company provides a Georgia logo at the end of the production, said if companies achieve certain thresholds, they could potentially get up to 40 to 50 percent back from the Canadian government. He said Canada likely   promised Centric at least 40 percent to entice them to move. But ancillary demands from Canada can be relatively great, including guaranteeing at least two-thirds of crew and actors from the country. Georgia's credits are streamlined in comparison and comparably easy for production companies to get.

Irony: "Single Ladies" does not air in Canada.

UPDATE: Centric provided this statement, which isn't very specific why the network made the move. At best, it sounds like BET Networks is trying to deepen its relationship with unnamed "production partners" and apparently moving this show to Canada must be a way to ingratiate themselves to them, for whatever reason:

A couple of years ago, BET had as many as five productions in Atlanta at one time. With "The Game" about to end its run, that drops to just one fully committed production: "Sunday Best."

BET is owned by Viacom, which also owns MTV, VH1, CMT, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Spike and TV Land, among other networks. So there might be some sort of Viacom-wide deal going on here.