Two coasts, one open call
The founding seasons ran from one unbroken Hollywood address. Then New Jersey entered the record, Pasadena got one solitary year, and the pandemic even renamed the address itself before Hollywood finally won for good. This ranks all twenty seasons by how much that shifting production geography actually mattered.
No spoilers · reviewed
The 20, in order.
- #01
The address drops Hollywood entirely, for the first time
Season eight's live rounds trade five straight years of Hollywood billing for New Jersey and New York City outright, with no Hollywood credit anywhere on the record. The clearest single-season proof that this format's geography was never as fixed as it looked. - #02
The one season that answers to neither established coast
Season fourteen relocates to Pasadena, California, skipping both the founding Hollywood address and the New Jersey stretch that came right before it. A genuinely new production home the format never repeats before or after. - #03
Five seasons of one address end here
Nothing changes at the judging table this year, but season six marks the first time New Jersey joins the record alongside Hollywood, closing out five consecutive seasons filmed at a single California address. The geography stops being a given. - #04
Even the billing changes in the pandemic year
Season fifteen swaps the show's usual Hollywood credit for a plainer Los Angeles listing, production limits reshaping choices at every level, down to how the location itself gets recorded. A geography change nobody would call a choice. - #05
The East Coast stretch holds for a second year
The Golden Buzzer's debut gives a settled four-judge panel something new to do, while the location record still reads New Jersey and New York City only, Hollywood absent for a second straight year. The format changes; the address doesn't. - #06
An anniversary season closes out the East Coast run
Season ten's tenth-anniversary framing lands in the third and final year with no Hollywood credit on record at all — New Jersey and New York City carry the milestone before the format heads back west the following year. - #07
Hollywood re-enters the record after three years away
Simon Cowell's arrival shares the season with a quieter shift: Hollywood returns to the location credit for the first time since season seven, now paired with New Jersey instead of standing alone. The geography splits rather than resets clean. - #08
Hollywood becomes the only address again
Season sixteen drops New Jersey from the record and returns to a Hollywood-only credit for the first time since season five. The geography settles back into its founding shape just as the panel settles into its own post-pandemic one. - #09
The first coast-split holds for a second year
Season seven keeps the New Jersey and Hollywood pairing season six introduced. Two years in, splitting production across coasts reads less like a one-off experiment and more like how this format actually runs. - #10
A second coast-split settles into its second year
Tyra Banks's first season as host shares the record with a New Jersey / Hollywood pairing running its second consecutive year — the same two-coast arrangement season six introduced, now an established pattern rather than a new one. - #11
The second coast-split closes out its run
Season thirteen carries the New Jersey / Hollywood pairing into a third and final year, right before season fourteen abandons both for Pasadena. The last entry in a configuration that had, by now, run six of the prior eight seasons. - #12
Before the address was ever a question
The debut season's location record reads Hollywood, California — plain, singular, unremarkable, because the format hadn't built a history yet for that to be a departure from. Every later coast switch on this list quietly answers to this baseline. - #13
The restored Hollywood run holds for a second year
Season seventeen keeps the Hollywood-only credit season sixteen re-established, the panel's second full year together running alongside a location record that, for once, isn't asking anything of the geography at all. - #14
A third year, and the address still hasn't moved
Season eighteen's location record matches the two seasons before it exactly — Hollywood, California, unbroken. By now the geography has gone as quiet as a panel running its third consecutive year with the same four chairs. - #15
The fourth straight year the record doesn't change
The judging panel's final season together still films at the same Hollywood address as the three years before it — the longest unbroken geography stretch since the founding era, closing a chapter without the location needing to say so. - #16
Five straight years at the same address, milestone included
The twentieth-anniversary season keeps the Hollywood credit unbroken for a fifth straight year, the longest single-location run the format has held since its first five seasons. The milestone gets the attention; the geography just keeps holding. - #17
A new host, the same unquestioned address
Jerry Springer takes over as host, but the location record doesn't move an inch — Hollywood, California, same as the debut. The show's first real transition happens entirely inside a geography question nobody was asking yet. - #18
A third season, still no reason to leave
Season three's location record is identical to the two before it. The founding era's growing confidence shows up in the judging table and the audition pool, not in any pressure to film the show anywhere but where it started. - #19
The panel resets; the record stays put
Nick Cannon and Howie Mandel arrive and reshape the judging table, but the location credit reads exactly as it did in 2006. Whatever this format was about to become, it wasn't yet a question about where it happened. - #20
The founding era closes without ever moving
Season five closes out five straight years filmed at a single Hollywood address, a stretch the modern era doesn't match again until a decade later. Before Howard Stern's arrival forces the first coast question, this is the format at its most geographically settled.
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