Television's Spatial Capital

Location, Relocation, Dislocation

Myles McNutt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000515688
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Unterhaltungsindustrie

This book launches a comprehensive detailing of the dramatic expansion of the geography of television production into new cities, states, provinces, and countries, and how those responsible for shaping the "landscape" of television have been forced to adapt, taking established strategies for engaging with space and place through mediated representation and renegotiating them to account for the new map of television production.

Modeling media studies research that considers the intersection of production, textuality, distribution, and reception, Myles McNutt identifies how the expansion of where television is produced has intersected with the kinds of places represented on television, and how shifts in the production, distribution, and consumption of television content have shifted the burden of representing cities and countries both locally and internationally. Through a combination of industry interviews, textual analysis, and in-depth consideration of industry and audience discourse, the book argues that where television takes place matters more today than it ever has, but that the current system of spatial capital remains constrained by traditional industry logics that limit the depth of engagement with place identity even as the expectation of authenticity grows significantly.

Representing a cross section of media industry studies, television studies, and cultural geography, this book will appeal to scholars and students within multiple areas of media studies, including production studies and audience studies, in addition to television studies broadly.

1 Spatial capital in the era of mobile production

Here, there, and everywhere

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224693-2

Why does a television series shoot in one location as opposed to another?

This chapter outlines a comprehensive understanding of the stakeholders within the process of deciding where a television series is produced, a decision that becomes the primary contingency on which a text’s ability to generate spatial capital is determined. The ongoing, collaborative nature of television production creates a distinct production culture that maps onto shifting political and economic circumstances differently from film, necessitating a focused framework that pulls together multiple lines of inquiry and adapts to changing dynamics at local and national levels. Although the chapter will not argue against the thesis that production incentives are a significant factor in enabling a state or province to lay claim to media capital, and in convincing a production studio to make the commitment to produce a television series in that location, I am primarily interested in the cultural negotiations—and negotiators—that emerge from such decisions, which are at times obscured in scholarly, trade, and industry discourse. In other words, while hierarchies of economic capital may be the most visible and at times dominant reason why a television series films in one location rather than another, they cannot be separated from other dimensions of spatial capital being negotiated by the stakeholders involved.

In the spring of 2012, independent production company Gaumont International Television was in preproduction of Hemlock Grove (2013–2015), a supernatural drama series from producer Eli Roth that was set to debut on Netflix in 2013. The series is based on a novel by Brian McGreevy set in the fictional town of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania, with McGreevy serving as a producer on the adaptation, a role that gave him input into the decision of where the series would be filmed. Having grown up in Pennsylvania, and having set his novel there, McGreevy’s goal was clear: speaking with The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Rob Owen, McGreevy explained how

in our first meeting [with] … Gaumont, they presented us with options for Vancouver and Pittsburgh, and I made a very long argument for why it had to be Pittsburgh. And it turned out I was completely wasting my breath. They said, “Cool, it’s Pittsburgh. Moving on.”

(“Author… ” 2012a)

On its surface, this seems logical: with a novel and series both set near Pittsburgh, shooting in the city is common sense.

However, the decision meant that Hemlock Grove would be the first television series to film in Pittsburgh since the introduction of Pennsylvania’s film tax credit program in 2004. Although numerous feature films had filmed in and around Pittsburgh to take advantage of the incentives offered, Hemlock Grove signaled a major turning point in Pennsylvania’s efforts to establish itself as an emergent media capital. As Pittsburgh Film Office director Dawn Keezer told the Post-Gazette, Hemlock Grove

illustrates everything we’ve been working toward since the beginning of the film tax credit program. We’ve always wanted a series. Series mean long-term employment opportunities, and the icing on the cake for this one is it’s written by a local Pittsburgher. He gets his first deal and brings it home. We’re extremely grateful to Gaumont and Brian McGreevy.

(“Author… ” 2012a)

It was as close to a home run as you could imagine for the intersection of production studio, creator, and local film commission. Gaumont praised Keezer and the Pittsburgh Film Office, with head of production Andy House admitting, “I’ve always found big state and federal applications to be daunting to say the least and Dawn explained the process and held our hand to guide us through” (Owen “More… ” 2012b). In the same article, Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development press secretary Steven Kratz touted the importance of his government’s role, pointing out, “It’s safe to say without tools like the film tax credit, it would have been difficult to have a project like this.” Meanwhile, after suggesting that “to film in Vancouver would not convey the notion of place as a character,” McGreevy gets his wish of shooting a series in his hometown and maintaining the sense of place established in his novel. In the Post-Gazette coverage of the news, all parties were already looking forward to the show filming in Pittsburgh for multiple seasons, imagining the impact it could have on the city’s local workers and its capacity to compete with other locations like Louisiana, Georgia, and North Carolina. A production office opened in late April, McGreevy and Roth were scheduled for a local reading from McGreevy’s book in mid-May, and Hemlock Grove was set to help put Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania on the map as a prime location for television production.

There is just one small problem: Hemlock Grove never filmed in Pittsburgh. In mid-May, the production office was closed, the local reading was canceled, and Gaumont packed up production and moved to Toronto, Ontario (“Pittsburgh-set” 2012c). Keezer, the individual praised for walking Gaumont through the tax incentive system, wrote in a letter to the Pittsburgh Film Office board of directors that the change was the result of Gaumont simply not understanding how the Pennsylvania Film Tax Credit program worked—specifically, Gaumont did not realize that the transferable tax credits would not be available until each episode of the series was actually aired. This conflicted with Netflix’s plan to hold all episodes until they could be released at once for binge viewing, thus delaying their ability to transfer the tax credits and recoup that portion of their investment. Although McGreevy had convinced Gaumont on the merits of Pittsburgh, it was at a time when the production company saw the state’s incentives as comparable to those in cities like Toronto or Vancouver (where no such delays would exist); when their misunderstanding was revealed, McGreevy’s argument no longer carried significant capital in their decision-making. McGreevy called the decision “heartbreaking” but told the Post-Gazette that “it just comes down to economics. There were complications that, frankly, I don’t completely understand” (“Pittsburgh-set”).

These economic complications have often been identified as the primary answer to the question of why a television series shoots in one location as opposed to another. In trade journal conversations about the rise of media capitals like Pittsburgh, incentive programs are the dominant narrative in how states like Louisiana or Georgia emerged as competitors to Los Angeles and New York, dating back to Vancouver’s emergence in the early 1990s. In preparing to interview industry professionals regarding this project, I was forewarned by an executive that decisions of where to film a series “ultimately come down to money.” At the 2014 Association of Film Commissioners International Locations show in Los Angeles, where film commissions from around the world gather to pitch themselves as a media capital, nearly every city, state, or country with a booth had their percentage incentive prominently displayed, and industry professionals speaking on organized panels knew those percentages to the point where accountants had detailed spreadsheets that could run comparisons between different locations at a moment’s notice.

However, the case of Hemlock Grove reinforces that such decisions are not wholly economic in nature. The decision to film Hemlock Grove in Toronto may have been the result of economic considerations, and the decision not to film in Pittsburgh was the result of political confusion surrounding the state’s film tax credit program. But critically, at stake in that decision was the cultural capital associated with a locally set series created by a “local boy” being filmed in the state of Pennsylvania. Moreover, the estimated 150 jobs provided by the production were a foundation for what the community hoped would become an established production culture sustained by multiple seasons of one-hour drama production, which Keezer characterizes as the “Holy Grail” of local film production (“Author… ” 2012). Although these may be direct consequences of political–economic dimensions of the television industry’s relationship with geography, there are cultural dimensions to this negotiation that reverberate throughout the production chain, from above-the-line creatives like McGreevy—whose goal of being true to his local roots was valued until it was financially infeasible—to below-the-line laborers who would make up the vast majority of the 150 local jobs lost in Pittsburgh (and the 150 jobs that were subsequently gained in Toronto, and in many cases likely maintained when Gaumont moved forward with second and third seasons of the series in 2013 and 2014).

This chapter outlines a comprehensive understanding of the stakeholders within the process of deciding where a television series is produced, a decision that becomes the primary contingency on which a text’s ability to generate spatial capital is determined. The ongoing, collaborative nature of television production creates a distinct production culture that maps onto shifting political and economic circumstances differently from film, necessitating a focused framework that pulls together multiple lines of inquiry and adapts to changing dynamics at local and national levels. Although the chapter will not argue against the thesis that production incentives are a significant factor in enabling a state or province to lay claim to media capital, and in convincing a production studio to make the commitment to produce a television series in that location, I am primarily interested in the cultural negotiations—and negotiators—that emerge from such decisions, which are at times obscured in scholarly, trade, and industry discourse. In other words, while hierarchies of economic capital may be the most visible and at times dominant reason why a television series films in one location rather than another, they cannot be separated from other dimensions of spatial capital being negotiated by the stakeholders involved.

By applying this framework to a series of case studies not unlike that of Hemlock Grove’s aborted production in Pittsburgh, the chapter will outline how the U.S. television industry has become defined by what I have previously identified as a state of mobile production (McNutt 2015), a reality that has dramatically expanded the number of locations where television can be produced while simultaneously destabilizing productions and the workers employed by them. This reality has fundamentally transformed how we understand television’s spatial capital. The basic question of where television is produced and the issue of who within the decision-making process does or does not carry agency over the spatial realities of producing television becomes a key concern in this complex landscape. Through a consideration of location professionals, this chapter outlines the labor crucial to negotiating spatial capital and the circumstances in which other forms of capital—economic or otherwise—outweigh their contributions and make their jobs inherently precarious in an ever-changing television landscape.

The spatial capital exchange

When exploring why television is produced in one location or another, my research brought me to the aforementioned 2014 AFCI Locations Show. Held in a Los Angeles-area hotel, the event draws attendees—who range from top-level industry executives to minor producers—looking for more information about where to film their next projects; they are presented with myriad options. In the registration area, large ads for the state of Illinois cover the sign-in desks, while Hawaii and Iceland sponsored a coffee and snack bar, respectively. The swag bags available at the registration desk are emblazoned with a logo for one state/province/country or another, while every attendee is carrying some form of paraphernalia that they have picked up from one of the dozens of booths scattered across two large rooms. The UK brought the Iron Throne from Northern Ireland-filmed Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011–2019), while Utah hired a caricaturist to help keep people at their booth for a longer period.¹ On industry panels, producers and executives spoke to attendees about broad shifts in the dynamics of where film and television series are produced, after which Q&A periods often devolved into representatives from different locations taking over the microphone to ask why there was not more discussion of the great local incentives offered by, for example, their own state of Massachusetts.²

Walking through the show floor as a researcher, I saw television’s spatial capital come to life. The AFCI Locations Show is far from the only place where decisions are made regarding where a particular film or television series will film, given that the internet has made most of the information available in pamphlets or printed onto signage readily accessible without needing to travel halfway across the country or the world to be in attendance. However, the event offers a rare opportunity to see these stakeholders sharing one space, engaging in networking that forms the foundation for how these decisions are made. We could think of it as the Spatial Capital Exchange, a shared space for companies like Hilton Hotels, the studios that make decisions, the producers who work within those decisions, the state/provincial film commissions that govern incentive programs, the smaller film commissions that help facilitate local production, and even specific locations like warehouses, universities (Yale and Penn State shared a table), and the Battleship Iowa, located on the Los Angeles waterfront.

This book primarily frames spatial capital as a value attached to a particular text, but activating that capital depends on it being accessible within a specific production location, which requires a range of resources that each of the localities at the AFCI Locations Show highlighted in their respective booths (see Figure 1.1). For some, attending the Locations Show is a long-standing ritual that reinforces the spatial capital available in their region and reaffirms their place in the conversation of where media is produced; for others like Canada’s Northwest Territories or the Battleship Iowa, 2014 was the first time announcing their presence, hoping to get noticed by industry professionals and articulate the spatial capital available if one were to choose to produce media content—which would include films, television shows, commercials, music videos, and so on—there in the future.³

However, by the time the event concluded, I was no closer to a definitive or simple answer to my question regarding where television is filmed. Not unlike the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, there was almost too much information to interpret in order to get a clear read on the spatial capital being exchanged on the show floor. Was the absence of major players like Georgia and Puerto Rico a simple concern regarding the budget necessary to attend the event or a broader sign of the Location Show’s irrelevance to certain groups in an era of easy online communication? Although individual cities and communities within Louisiana chose to attend, the absence of the overarching Louisiana Film Commission meant those communities were scattered throughout the exhibition areas, whereas the Texas and North Carolina Film Commissions were in attendance and brought each of the local groups together in one larger booth space. During the formal presentations, representatives from Film Commissions spoke out against claims by producers that it was their job to make production cheaper, arguing that their responsibility to taxpayers outweighed the ease with which studios were ab...