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What do James Bond and the Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., area have in common? BMW North America's plant in Spartanburg County is the exclusive manufacturer of the Z3 Roadster, which made its debut in the 1995 Bond flick GoldenEye. The Z3 Coupe, the M Roadster, the M Coupe and the X5 Sport Activity Vehicle are also assembled for worldwide distribution exclusively at BMW's Spartanburg County facility.
BMW is one of the area's largest employers, with 4,100 workers in its manufacturing plant. BMW has invested nearly $2 billion in the facility, which opened in 1994. The German automaker is a major cog in the region's economy, with 39 BMW suppliers employing another 5,000 workers in the Greenville-Spartanburg area.
Other large businesses in the market include Advantica, parent company of the Denny's restaurant chain, which is headquartered in Spartanburg. Milliken & Co., one of the largest privately held textile companies in the world, is also based in Spartanburg and has several plants in Spartanburg County. Textile manufacturing served as the backbone of the local economy for decades. Today, the Greenville-Spartanburg region remains largely working-class and blue-collar. According to Scarborough Research, 54 percent of households in Greenville have total annual income of less than $40,000 (see chart on page 14).
The market is located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in an area known as the Piedmont. In sports, Greenville has an Arena Football League team, the Rhinos, and an East Coast Hockey League team, the Growwl. The preseason training facility of the NFL's Carolina Panthers is in Spartanburg. In the arts, Greenville is home to a major performing arts center.
In broadcast television, Nielsen Media Research's boundaries for the market include Greenville-Spartanburg; Asheville, N.C.; and Anderson, S.C. Greenville and Spartanburg are about 30 miles apart, as are Greenville and Anderson. Asheville is about 75 miles from Greenville. The sizeable geographic breadth of the market spans 28 counties across three states-- South Carolina, North Carolina and a sliver of northern Georgia. The market consists of 14 North Carolina counties, 10 South Carolina counties and four Georgia counties. Madison County in Georgia is a "swing county" and fluctuates in and out of Nielsen's measurements of TV viewership (currently, Madison is not included in Nielsen's database).
About 62 percent of...