"Location, location, location" are the call words for success in the real estate world. But the same could be said about the long-running love affair between NBC stalwart series "Law & Order" and its own prime real estate — New York City.
For 20 years and counting, "Law & Order" has made Gotham not just its base of operations, but has given it a starring role in the show — every one of its good, bad and ugly angles. And New York has reciprocated.
"The first time we looked at the ("L&O") pilot, it was clear that New York was a character," recalls former NBC executive Warren Littlefield, who was in on the series' emergence at the network. "The gritty, real feel was as close to anything we had ever seen before in a real cop story."
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Back when the show first wanted to use New York as a backdrop, however, the Big Apple was a bit wormy. The pilot was shot in the late 1980s and didn't air until Sept. 13, 1990 — a period of time when the city was suffering from outdated labor contracts and a high crime rate. That combination meant very little production came to the city, with exceptions such as "The Cosby Show" and "Spin City." It wasn't enough to fuel a thriving production scene.
"Back then, New York was more of a place for comedies than drama," remembers John Johnston, executive director of lobby group the New York Production Alliance. (Comedies didn’t require much on-location shooting.)
Things were about to change, though. Technology was making cameras and post-production equipment smaller, more portable and more affordable, which meant TV shows could rethink how and where they wanted to film.
Beginning of a revolution
Enter "Law & Order" creator Dick Wolf, who wanted to return to his hometown to film a unique new series. "The light in California is different," he told the authors of "Law & Order: The Unofficial Companion." "It doesn't have that same gritty, grainy quality (New York does)."
But he would have to make the case to the network about filming in Gotham based on more than just artistic merit. So Wolf and his cohorts sat down with local unions to hammer out a new kind of television contract, one that ended up serving as a boilerplate for all future New York-based TV shows. The previous one had grown outdated and was based on a feature-film structure — this one better fit with TV schedules.
That was the start of a kind of revolution.
"Dick Wolf is really the one you can point to and say he re-established shooting television in New York," Johnston said. "Producers will always follow the money, and that was the beginning of different types of labor agreements, and unions taking a more cooperative role in negotiating. It was probably one of the first wedges that broke ground on the labor front."
Wolf didn't just plead with the unions — he also took his message to the city itself. "He told them, 'If you won't help me get concessions, we will lose this franchise,' " Littlefield recalled. And that would have cost the city much needed jobs and money. "He gets many stars for his ability to convince local politicians that it would be foolish not to work with him to make this viable."
Julianne Cho, associate commissioner of the mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting, agrees that kicked off a sea change. "When ('Law & Order') started, there was turbulence here economically and in the production field," she said. "Dick Wolf rolled the dice and opened the doors of possibility for other prime-time series. He's proven that it's possible to site a successful prime-time series in New York and produce it affordably year after year — despite prevailing perceptions."
Mining the city
Today, around 160 shows film in and around New York, a number that fluctuates each year. This includes “Law & Order” spin-offs “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (though “SVU” only shoots on location in the city and has studios in New Jersey for interior filming).
With labor costs under control, the series mined other areas the city had to offer, including an acting pool trained in the thriving theater scene. Such "real faces" gave a flavor and verisimilitude to the show that a series filming in Los Angeles could never accomplish.
Today, the numbers continue to tell the real story of the beneficial relationship the city and the show have enjoyed: Back in 1993, production shooting days in NYC hovered around 15,200. By 2006 they had more than doubled.
"Law & Order" currently shoots 170 days of the year — including location and stage days — in the city. Meanwhile, each show in the franchise ("Criminal Intent" and "SVU") provides about six months of steady employment for more than 8,000 New Yorkers.
Today, New York claims a $5 billion direct expenditure from all production. In the early 1990s it was little more than half that sum. Though production had been increasing for some time, in 2004 producers got an extra incentive thanks to city tax credits of 5 percent for productions meeting specific criteria. That 5 percent piggybacked on to New York state’s 30 percent tax credit, which made shooting in New York City and the state that much more attractive to budget-conscious producers.
According to Cho, there's more than just numbers: "Law & Order," she said, has been a "leader in the area of fiscal efficiency," and she points to the active steps it has taken to work well with local community boards (who might decide a noisy TV crew on their streets wasn't welcome). She adds that "L&O" has also taken the lead in participating in the city's production assistant and diversity training programs.
Looming eviction
Certainly many businesses would be suffering without the show around. Johnston recalls when he worked for Kodak, "Law & Order" would order approximately a million feet of film per year as a customer.
"New York has a huge supply chain of camera-rental companies, trucks — everything is here, it's not being brought in from another state," he said. "So it created not only jobs on the show for crew, but also the supply chain for that industry."
Yet, at some point, NBC will give "Law & Order" its eviction notice. Few like to think of how that will affect New York's production scene, but after 20 years, it's likely to happen sooner rather than later.
Cho feels the city is on solid ground, in large part thanks to the foundation "L&O" has helped build. The TV productions left behind, she said, "have been able to learn from the way 'L&O' conducts itself day after day.
"We will be sorry to see them go," she said. "But the show will live on as a model of what the possibilities are in this city."
Randee Dawn is a freelance writer based in New York, and was born with a remote control in her hand. She is the co-author of “The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion,” which was published in 2009.