CRIME DOES PAY: “Detroit 1-8-7” is the first primetime series filmed on location in Detroit—and Motor City couldn’t be happier, Detroit Metro CVB’s Chris Baum said, because the show is “giving us the same big-city exposure that cop shows have given other places for years.”
became the first primetime series to be filmed on location in Motor City. And “Memphis Beat,” yet another cop show, this onemarinating in the bluesmusic forwhich its host city isworld famous, debuted on TNT. Like bad publicity, when it comes to destination marketing,
it seems there’s no such thing as a bad TV show, regardless of the subject matter. Although sometimes syndication can turn around and bite you. “The good news for us is that no matter where you go in the world, peopleknowDallas the city and ‘Dal- las’ the television show,” said Phillip Jones, president andCEO of the Dallas Convention&Visitors Bureau. “The bad news is they’re familiar with Dallas 30 years ago. It’s something of a double-edged sword. It’s a negative if they haven’t been to your city in recent years.” But mostly, it’s a very good thing to have a TV series set in your destination. Which is why Lucy Steffens, director of travel
COMPANYTOWN:The setting of this year’s new“Law & Order: Los Angeles,” L.A. can draw on “all the prop houses and all these great people who work for the entertainment industry,” LA INC.’s Carol Martinez said, to stage innovative meetings and events.
media and film commissioner for the Sacramento Convention &Visitors Bureau, has worked eagerly with the production team behind “TheMentalist” since before the hit police procedural — which is set in Sacramento but filmed in Los Angeles — debuted in 2008. “They called before the first season started filming,” Steffens said. “They sent the production designer up here, and they just took some photographs.” Steffens stayed in touch with the show’s producer, visited him
and a director atWarner Bros. studio in Los Angeles, hosted themfor a site visit during the summer of 2009, and that August welcomed the production team to Sacramento to film an episode. Stars Simon Baker and Robin Tunney, whose characters work for the fictional California Bureau of Investigation, appeared in front of the California State Capitol, and also filmed a scene in a stage-set restaurant overlooking Old Town Sacramento, right downtown. “If people know ‘The Mentalist’ is set in Sacra-
“If I had a choice, I’d rather people think of New York City fromwatching ‘Sex and the City’ rather than‘Law& Order,’ but you can’t control that. They see the city on television and in the movies, and they’re drawn to it.”