While some of you probably don’t care one whit if TNT's reboot of the television series Dallas actually gets shot in Dallas or not, I can personally assure you that our governor does. (More on that in a sec.)

Once again, news has come that the iconic show will return to TV and once again, we don’t know where its production will take place.

According to Variety, Ted Turner has “big plans” for a new go at the popular series that ran from 1978 until 1991 and was, indeed, filmed mostly up the road in Big D. Turner’s TNT-TBS programming chief Michael Wright believes writer Cynthia Cidre has scripted “a compelling updated scenario” that will enthrall the audiences of today (many of whom weren’t even born when the show was practically a national pastime). He says she “found something authentic to business and to Dallas that allows them to trade on the same dynamic of the super wealthy.”

So … will it really be authentic and be shot in the show’s namesake town once again?

Though this latest announcement came just days ago, Janis Burklund, film commissioner for Dallas, says she is still waiting (and waiting and waiting) on word whether or not the production will come her way. She’s been playing this game with the basic cable network for a long time, and yet they say production will begin “in only a few months.”

What it really boils down to is how cost effective can the real city be as the production location (or will it ultimately be cheaper to let some other city stand-in for Dallas — God forbid it be Shreveport. No kidding. That’s a possibility.) Location is a budgetary decision.

Having a TV series (or feature film for that matter) produced in your city has a whopping economic impact and competition to land a production is fierce. That’s why so many states have created incentive packages to draw those lucrative shows to their backyards. Texas has motion picture production incentives too; however, they were only passed by the legislature a few years ago.

They are modest compared to more aggressive states like Louisiana and New Mexico, but at least we’re back in the ballgame after almost totally losing our Texas production industry to states like Louisiana and New Mexico (are you seeing the pattern here?).

With the state of Texas facing a serious budget shortfall our incentives could be in jeopardy. And if they go, I can’t imagine Dallas would be shot in Dallas. If it hasn’t been a slam dunk now, it sure as hell isn’t likely to be with no incentives. (I previously reported that native Texan John Lee Hancock told me he shot The Blind Side in Georgia because the Peach State made it $4 million cheaper to do than his home state.)

If it wasn't snowing in Atlanta, they’d probably still be dancing in the streets over how much money that production brought in.

Improbable location stand-ins happen all the time. Think the 2006 movie Annapolis was shot in Maryland at the U.S. Naval Academy? Nope, it was shot in Pennsylvania at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

The old saying “you’ve got to spend money to make money” is so true in the case of TV and film production, but it took us years and years to convince Texas lawmakers of that.

Our Texas incentives are simply state grants given to production companies after they have completed production and only after audits prove they hired the required number of Texans, shot the required number of days in state and met all other legal qualifiers that ensure they don’t get a dime until they have invested heavily in our economy.

Incentive grants are not a “hand out to Hollywood” but a hand up for jobs for Texans and the myriad businesses, whether Mom-and-Pop or large chains, that will continue to be in business because more productions come to town.

Governor Perry, for one, gets it. While we might not see eye to eye on all things political, this is one where we’ve shaken hands and agreed eye to eye in both Austin and Houston. Let’s hope the majority our legislators continue to get it as well. Not only should our incentives be retained, they should be increased so that more production business and jobs come our way. We should continue to build in order to continue to gain.

Maybe then Dallas really can be shot in Dallas.

Cynthia Neely is a veteran of the Texas motion picture industry who helped found the Texas Motion Picture Alliance.