Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S9E06 - Set Jetting: Film Locations As Tourism Marketing

Episode Date: February 6, 2020

This week, we look at the phenomenon of Set Jetting. That’s when tourists flock to a city to see the sets and locations where their favourite TV shows and movies are filmed. Some towns have embraced set jetting as new-found tourism marketing. Other towns absolutely resent it. It’s a fascinating love/hate relationship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. We'll see you next time. new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. This is an apostrophe podcast production. You're not you when you're hungry.

You're in good hands with all things. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Riley. It all began in 1953. C.A. Swanson & Sons was a Nebraska-based frozen food business, and it had just made a colossal mistake. The company had massively overestimated the demand for frozen turkeys that Thanksgiving. As a matter of fact, Swanson still had 260 tons of frozen turkeys sitting in refrigerated boxcars the day after Thanksgiving. Since the compressors only worked when the train was moving, Swanson

had to keep the rail cars going back and forth between the headquarters in Nebraska and the East Coast. The turkeys crisscrossed the country over and over again. It was a race against time to figure out how to save all that turkey. Then, one of Swanson's salesmen had an idea. He had just flown on American Airlines and noticed the airline served food in a three-compartment aluminum tray. He sent the sample tray to headquarters and suggested they sell the surplus turkey as a frozen dinner. One compartment for sweet potatoes, one for peas, and another for

turkey and gravy. The tray could serve as both a cooking pan and a dinner plate. This wasn't the first frozen food on the market. Various companies had been selling frozen food products since the 1940s. But what would make Swanson so hugely successful was the fact it was a complete dinner. And it came with some very innovative marketing, because they called it a TV dinner. The Swanson TV dinner package itself was novel. It was designed to look like an actual TV set, with wood paneling, a screen, and tuning knobs. And it was small enough to fit comfortably on someone's lap. The timing was perfect.

In 1954, America was gaga over a brand new piece of technology called the television set. 33 million TVs were purchased that year, and soon 56% of the population owned one. Then Swanson made its second big mistake. They were skeptical about the idea of frozen dinners, but were desperate. So they hedged their bets by only ordering 5,000 trays and recruited a small assembly line of women with spatulas and ice cream scoops. Their TV dinners hit the grocery shelves priced at 98 cents. It was a slight miscalculation.

Families would gobble up over 25 million TV dinners by the end of that first year alone. Full-color print ads showed stylish moms pulling Swanson TV dinners out of a shopping bag with the headline, I'm late, but dinner won't be. And it only made sense to advertise Swanson TV dinners on TV. I can be early, I can be late, I can bring pals to dinner anytime I please. And get this, my wife never panics. She just takes Swanson TV turkey dinners from the freezing compartment of our refrigerator

when I'm a little off schedule. As soon as all that surplus turkey problem was gone, Swanson expanded to include fried chicken, Salisbury steak, and meatloaf. Attaching a food product to a hot new entertainment medium was genius. Families heated up their Swanson TV dinners, then sat down to watch the Jackie Gleason show

and I Love Lucy. All that success due to an innovative idea and the fact Swanson understood the public's deep love of television could be leveraged as marketing. Tourism marketing. Today, millions of people choose to vacation in countries and cities where their favorite TV shows or movies are filmed. They explore the locations and they gobble up the set tours.

These tourists are called not jet-setters, but set-jetters, and they're generating millions, and in some cases, billions of tourism dollars. For some cities, it's been a financial windfall, and for others, it's been a pain in the asset. You're under the influence. When you talk about film and TV tourism, there is one television series that tops them all, Game of Thrones. The series has won over 300 awards,

including an astonishing 47 Emmys. This sprawling fantasy drama tells the story of nine powerful families locked in a battle for the Iron Throne. There is duplicity, treachery, honor, conquest, and triumph. There is also filming in a number of countries. A large chunk of the filming was done in Northern Ireland. That fact has drawn tens of thousands of tourists to the sets and locations. 30 busloads of fans a week travel from Dublin and Belfast

and 30,000 fans book tours every year. Tourism Ireland has also negotiated a license agreement with HBO recognizing Northern Ireland as the official Game of Thrones territory. The tourism agency cites a direct economic

benefit of 82 million million from the series. The draw of tourists to the TV series locations has become known as the Game of Thrones effect. In Iceland, for example, where other scenes are shot, that effect has ignited an astounding 386% increase in tourism over the past eight years. Scenes from Season 5 shot in Spain boosted local tourism there by 15% within weeks. Croatia is another Game of Thrones filming location, and a village called Klis saw a staggering 579% surge in search traffic on TripAdvisor. There is so much Game of Thrones interest in Croatia, it is actually causing problems.

Dubrovnik's mayor says the city has been so overwhelmed by tourists, UNESCO warned that the Old Town, a World Heritage Site, can't handle the crush from the crowds who flock there every day. The downside of an incredible upside. One of the more interesting effects of movie and TV-induced tourism is the impact it can have on small towns. For example, there are only 171 residents living in Burkittsville, Maryland. Yet the Blair Witch Project,

filmed there in 1999, continues to be a blessing and a curse. It attracts thousands of witch-hunting fans every year to the tiny town, which is good for the economy. On the other hand,

the town's signs have been stolen repeatedly and the cemetery was vandalized. The city's website tries to welcome tourists by reminding them the legend of Blair Witch is fiction and there is no stick man-child-stealing witch hiding in the woods. Amityville, New York saw an influx of tourists due to a movie. Back in 1974, a man killed six members of his family in a house on Ocean Avenue in the small town.

That same house became the location for a 1979 movie called The Amityville Horror. The film was about ghosts of the victims that haunted the house and its new owners. Several sequels followed. The movies brought thousands of tourists to Amityville, which helped the economy. But souvenir hunters pulled shingles

off the roof of the house and even ripped parts off the neighboring houses. At one point, nearly 5,000 tourists showed up in a single month. The entire population of Amityville is only 9,500. The population of Juliet, Georgia, is just 3,024. But it was suddenly made famous when the box office hit Fried Green Tomatoes was filmed there in 1991. Even all these years later, the annual number of tourists

who come specifically to see the Whistle Stop Cafe tops 100,000. The shops in that small town sell fried green tomato T-shirts, cookbooks, foods, and movie memorabilia. My wife and I were on a driving vacation in the southern states a few years ago, and we made it a point to stop in a pretty little town called Buford, South Carolina. We stopped there because a few of our favorite movies had been filmed there. While on the Buford movie tour, we discovered Forrest Gump was done there. So was G.I. Jane and Platoon. The stately house used in The Big Chill is there, and we learned it was the same house that was used in the wonderful film The Great Santini. And because South Carolina was

the home of author Pat Conroy, the Prince of Tides was also shot there. Not bad for a town of 13,700. A great reason to visit a great little town. Or it could be a great reason to visit Great Britain.

In many ways, Downton Abbey reflected modern times. Although set between the years 1912 and 1926, it is a story of disruption. The aristocratic Crawley family own a beautiful castle and most of the land in their bucolic English countryside. But difficult economic times have begun and the family must figure out a way to save their birthright. A daughter announces she is going to marry a lowly domestic servant. Upstairs falls in love with downstairs. Technology is changing. The telephone arrives. Automobiles begin to take over from horse and buggy. An heir to the family fortune dies in one of the first automobile accidents. The decline of the British aristocracy is in the air. Everything is changing. Everything is upside down. That's what I love most about Downton Abbey. It cleverly paralleled the disruption happening right now

in the early 21st century. The show, which ran from 2010 to 2015, became a phenomenon. It attracted a global audience of over 120 million. The writing was superb, the characters compelling, and the period set pieces gorgeous. As a result, Downton Abbey earned the most nominations at the Primetime Emmy Awards than any other international television series in history. While it generated huge viewing audiences for PBS on this side of the ocean, Downton Abbey also became a very lucrative tourism marketing campaign across the pond for Great Britain. When you log into the visitbritain.com website, you see Downton Abbey series filming locations

featured front and center on the homepage. First and foremost is the iconic High Clear Castle, which stands in for Downton Abbey in the series, located an hour west of London. Over 50,000 tourists visited the 19th century castle in 2011. By 2015, the 300-room manor was hosting over 1,200 tourists a day, generating over 24,000 British pounds, or the equivalent of 40,000 Canadian dollars daily. That alone helped pay for over 12 million pounds in castle repairs

and restoration. There are splendid guided tours of the castle and its estate, an ample gift shop, and you can rent rooms in separate lodges on the grounds for two-night stays. You can also tour Bampton, Oxfordshire, in the Cotswolds, which doubled as Downton Village. Locals can provide you with a map called the Downton Mile that lists the main filming locations in the village. The allure of Downton Abbey wasn't restricted to the castle and village. On the visitlondon.com homepage, you'll find a video hosted by Downton Abbey actor Jim Carter, who played head butler Mr. Carson, extolling the many sights and sounds of London.

I'd love to be able to look at London through the eyes of a foreign tourist, through the eyes of someone who hadn't seen it before, because I think we, living here, we might get a bit blasé about it, but actually we're spoiled for choice. Fantastic museums, probably the best theatre in the world. The pull of the TV series also persuaded tourists to explore outside of London. So hotels and pubs in the English countryside also saw an upsurge in visitors and revenue. What does all this mean for British tourism? It is estimated the devotion to Downton

Abbey attracted over 5 billion additional pounds, or over 8 billion Canadian dollars, in the first five years alone, from both foreign tourists and British vacationers. And the release of the Downton Abbey full-length movie keeps the flame alive. There is no doubt about it. Britain has embraced the crawly historical saga. But what happens when a movie becomes a big hit, but the host town doesn't want anything to do with it. And we'll be right back.

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This is one of the strangest stories we'll tell today. When big movies are filmed in small communities, it can put them on the map. Then again, sometimes, the towns don't like being on that particular map. Almost 50 years ago, the movie Deliverance was filmed in and around the Chattuga River in Rabun County, Georgia. In the film, the local power company is about to dam up a beautiful river, so four Atlanta City businessmen decide to canoe it to get one last look at the magnificent wilderness. Their peaceful trip turns into a dramatic and treacherous nightmare, and the film contains one very disturbing and infamous scene.

In that scene, one of the men is sexually assaulted and degraded by ruthless backwoods hillbillies. I remember watching the film on television in the late 70s, and the local TV station actually ran a big countdown clock on screen so people knew when to turn away or leave the room. Prior to the film, the number of people who visited the Chituga was in the hundreds. And remarkably, after the disturbing film, it was in the tens of thousands. The film got so much attention, thenor Jimmy Carter established the Georgia Film Commission. That resulted in Georgia becoming one of the top five film production destinations in the country even today. Deliverance had a dueling banjo effect on the area. On the plus side was all

the tourism dollars. And a $20 million whitewater rafting industry sprang up to become the area's number one source of revenue. On the minus side, residents were passed up for jobs in other cities when it was discovered they came from Rabun County. There have been 48 years of deliverance jokes to withstand, and bumper stickers that said, Paddle faster, I hear banjos. It was, without a doubt, the most influential film in the shaping of a perception that Southern Mountain people were toothless, ignorant, deviant hicks. A lot of people in Rabun County would be happy if they never heard the word deliverance again. Yet, others are okay with it, including Billy Redden, who played the banjo boy in the film.

He now works at the local Walmart and doesn't understand why the film bothers people. As he says, it's just a movie. The Rabin County Convention and Visitors Bureau points out that the resulting tourism still brings in about $42 million per year, which is substantial considering the county's operating budget was about $17 million at the time. Remarkable when you consider the movie was made almost 50 years ago. And Rabun County isn't the only southern locale that has a love-hate relationship with set-jetting. When the TV show Cops began filming in Albuquerque, the mayor wasn't pleased. At all.

While the police force came off well in the show, the weekly raids on dilapidated, drug-infested motels or flop houses made the city look bad. People around the world sat in front of their TV sets wondering, how much crime can there be in that town? So the mayor banned cops from filming in Albuquerque. Then, a few years later, in 2008, another TV show began filming in the New Mexico City. It was called Breaking Bad and starred Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a middle-aged high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal cancer. In order to secure his family's financial future, he teams up with one of his students, Jesse Pinkman, to begin manufacturing meth.

Because he's a brilliant chemistry teacher, he creates the country's best crystal meth, with a distinctive blue tint. Then we watch his transformation from a mild-mannered everyman to feared drug lord. Breaking Bad became a huge hit with rave reviews from fans and critics alike. It would go on to win over 140 awards, including 16 Emmys and 7 Golden Globes. It brought a lot of attention to the city of Albuquerque, which didn't make the mayor a happy guy. The drug trafficking, addiction and violence themes was a continuation of the mayor's very issues with the Cops TV show. So, the local government did not support or encourage Breaking Bad.

Until the fourth season. Breaking Bad received 13 primetime Emmy nominations. Critics declared it the best show on television. There was no denying Breaking Bad was a revered and respected breakout hit, and TV tourists started coming to Albuquerque. That's when the Albuquerque Convention and Visitors Bureau began to promote the series on its website. With the awards and the praise and the resulting tourism dollars, the new mayor eventually came around,

saying he felt viewers had no difficulty distinguishing fiction from reality. Because of famous Route 66, New Mexico had a higher pass-through rate than most other states. But since Breaking Bad, a much higher proportion of tourists are stopping for overnight trips. The average age of tourists also dropped, suggesting the TV show is attracting a younger demographic to the state. And people are pulling off the highway because the series has launched a Breaking Bad economy in town. For example, a fast food burrito chain called Twisters in Albuquerque has become an

international tourist attraction. In Breaking Bad, it is the film location for fast food chicken restaurant Los Polos Hermanos that ruthless drug lord Gus Fring uses as a front for his drug cartel operation. The restaurant has a guest book on the counter signed by tourists from the UK, France, Germany, Australia, South Korea, China, and from states all over the country. Curio stores sell Walter White t-shirts. There is a local candy store that features blue-tinted rock candy meth treats in little drug dealer plastic bags. The store supplied the candy as meth props for the actual TV show. Another store sells crystal blue bath salts called Breaking Bath in 8-ounce plastic bags.

There are several Breaking Bad tour companies operating in Albuquerque that are usually sold out when tickets become available online. One offers tours in a Winnebago, similar to the one Walter White used as a meth kitchen in the first season. Another Breaking Bad trolley tour serenades its guests with Tommy James and the Shondells' Crystal Blue Persuasion. The three-hour tour includes the car wash that was used as a money laundering operation by Walter White, a rundown motel that was used as a recurring meth site, the Los Polos restaurant, character Jesse Pinkman's house, and Saul Goodman's law office, which has now spun off a sequel titled Better Call Saul. The tours also feature a stop at the house used as Walter White's home.

As fans of the show will remember, there was a memorable scene where Walter comes home with a pizza but his wife won't let him in the house. So, he throws the pizza up on the roof. Well, that became a favorite pastime for tourists and turned into such a problem for the actual owners of the home, they erected a six-foot fence around their property to discourage pizza pitchers. The TV show has not only attracted tourists to Albuquerque,

but it also has attracted more film and TV shoots. As a matter of fact, the state has passed a film and TV tax credit called the Breaking Bad Bill that can give productions up to a 30% tax break. Even though it's been over 10 years since the launch of Breaking Bad, it's still breaking pretty good for the city of Albuquerque. Because before that, Albuquerque's main claim to TV fame was this. I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque's main claim to TV fame was this. I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered.

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That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. In 2014, a tourism research firm found that over 45 million international tourists chose a destination primarily because they saw a movie or TV show filmed in that country. Which means TV shows and movies are doubling as tourism advertising campaigns. Film tourism as destination marketing is powerful for one important reason. People become more emotionally connected to a location in a movie or television show than they would through a traditional tourism ad. Advertising tries to manufacture emotion. Movies and TV shows have emotion baked right in. There is also another powerful element at work these days

that didn't exist in prior eras. Binge-watching. TV shows and movies don't go away anymore. Binge-watching ensures that new audiences are constantly groomed and old fans constantly return. It's also remarkable that some of the movies still attracting tourists were shot 25 and 48 years ago, which means more financial staying power for locations that host film shoots

and free international marketing for those cities and towns. Every local government wants TV or movie productions to roll into town. Not only does the production itself bring revenue and jobs into the community, but the resulting set jetters can bring huge tourism dollars if the show is a hit.

Most cross their fingers and hope for a Downton Abbey. Some grit their teeth and try to embrace a Breaking Bad or a deliverance. But as Swanson once learned, sometimes you just get left with a lot of turkeys when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Tearstream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly.

Sound Engineer, Keith Ullman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Research, Abby Forsyth. If you liked this episode, you might also enjoy Geography as Branding, Season 4, Episode 9. You'll find it in our archives wherever you download your podcasts.

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