More from Cleveland: Crittercasting

After posting a maybe less-than-flattering video about Cleveland a few days ago, I'm pleased to say there is positive placecasting going on in the Forest City, too (seriously, that's an actual Cleveland nickname).

The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo just announced its new cell phone audio tour is live and ready to take your call as you wait for that critter over there to wake up. Like most museum tours, it's not really a tour at all, just a series of sign posts telling you which number to punch into your phone. There are 33 stops at the moment (according to this press release), though the medium is inherently expandable.

Though I'm not in Cleveland at the moment, I dialed the number while watching my own cat sleep. After a quick welcome and not-so-quick advertisement for a local cell phone company, I was asked to entering a stop number. I chose the numbers at random because I can't find a list of the stops anywhere -- including the zoo Web site, which makes no mention of the audio tour at all (but why should it if its meant to be listened to on-site?). The items I heard were interesting, brief and specific to the animal or building at that location. Each tells a story -- why the animal is endangered, or how it is cared for by vets -- that was concise and didn't seem likely to duplicate the signs around the exhibit. One stop I heard even featured a zoo employee talking about her favorite memory of a given zoo building -- a nice, genuine touch. My cat, by the way, remained asleep throughout.

The main presenter is a voice actor who is full of energy. But my main beef with this project is that he seems to make up a new cartoonish voice for each stop along the way. I found most of these phony accents to be over-the-top and distracting from what were otherwise decent scripts with good information. Maybe these voices are meant to engage kids...but without any sort of character development (and who has time for that?), they just seem random and unnecessary.

Fortunately, most tracks invite feedback from the listener, telling them to press a button to leave just this kind of comment. This acknowledges the new and experimental nature of the project, and also made use of the dynamic possibilities of the cell phone medium, which got me thinking...

Cell phone tours have the obvious disadvantage of poor audio quality (compared to podcasts delivered on mp3 players) and air-time charges. But they hold a distinct advantage in their ability to be updated quickly and universally. Indeed, the zoo's marketing manager, SueAllen, told the Plain Dealer newspaper, "these can change on a daily basis." And you can understand why this is important to a zoo, where exhibits are changing all the time based on the weather and the health of the animals (this isn't so much a problem in art museums where the sculptures rarely have to visit the vet). A change to any stop on cell phone tour will be realized by every single visitor who calls the number after the change is made. In contrast, any site trying to dynamically update podcasts that users download ahead of time will face problems with all the "stale" versions already downloaded.

Another very slick feature of the Cleveland zoo cell phone tour is the option to see behind-the-scenes video. At stop number three, the narrator (in an inexplicably German accent) told me to press the * button to receive a text message link to a video of a gorilla getting an ultra sound. It worked like a charm. A few seconds later, I was watching a YouTube video of this remarkable procedure on my iPhone. This is truly value-added content and the possibilities for placecasting are magnificent.

While I still think clear-crafted audio is the key to placecasting success, optional video can allow visitors into places they'd never get to see otherwise. Guide By Cell is the production company behind this project. It caters to non-profits and seems to have a lot of tricks up its sleeve.

If you know of other zoo audio tours, please let me know.

Placecasting battlefields

At it's most basic, I describe placecasting to people as having your own personal park ranger whispering in your ear as you walk around a place.

I found the most literal application of that description so far when I started previewing the audio tour podcasts at CivilWarTraveler.com.  This company has partnered with the National Park Service at Gettysburg, Harpers Ferry, Antietam, Appomattox Court House and other sites in and near Virginia to make audio tours of certain important parts of the vast battlefields (think the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg or the Burnside Bridge at Antietam).


The free podcasts on this site feature on-site recordings of real rangers and historians talking about the very spot where you are standing.  They point out features if the land around you, and off in the distance.  They describe how the battle progressed around this point and then they tell you (roughly) how to get to the next tour stop.  A printable map is available -- and essential -- for each tour.    


I love that these are real rangers steeped in the history of the place, and I really love the way they point out the physical features around you.  The ranger at Gettysburg's Peach orchard talks about this peach trees the National Park Service just planted there, and then he directs your eyes to the important Little Round Top hill off in the distance.  If you visited here and only had interpretive signs to read, you would miss so much. 

Civil War buffs will love these podcasts for the specific value they add to each location they cover.  People NOT already into battle history, however, could have a hard time listening to a whole tour (they range from 20 to 60 minutes, though most run about half an hour).  This is because compelling storytelling is not necessarily the strength of rangers and historians.  In the couple of tours I previewed, the tour guides throw a LOT of facts about distances, geography, casualties and regiment numbers at the listener without necessarily couching them in an immersive narrative about how the battle progressed.  But being live and off-the-cuff helps keep the energy up (as opposed to scripted podcasts read in a studio).


The audio production is also only so-so.  They're recorded outdoors on-site, where wind noise is always a problem.  Some of the tour guides also pop a lot of p's as they talk into the microphone.  Both of these things can be hard on listeners after a while, especially when listening in headphones.  The rangers also sometimes gloss right past the instructions for getting to the next location, so the printed map is a must. 

Next week marks the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862), and there will be a lot of rangers, historians and other interpreters on the battlefield.  There's no substitute for that kind of personal contact.  But if you have to walk the hallowed ground on your own, these are some of the most effective place-centered audio tours I have found yet.  

(Photos from National Park Service)

Walking and listening in Washington, DC

It's hard to make a good walking tour.

As I try to explain the placecasting concept to people, the easiest example to use is a walking tour.  The audio tells you where to go and then explains some of what you're seeing there.  It uncovers hidden history and makes sense of the current landscape for you.  Maybe more importantly, it connects different locations together.

I've listened to several examples of audio walking tours and Cultural Tourism DC has one of my favorites so far. Sure, finding history in DC is like shooting fish in a barrel, but it's still easy to make history very very boring. A lot of the walking tours I've heard are simply people reading the text of a written walking tour. A lot sound like they're lifted from guide books.  Few have more than one voice in them.  In short, most of what's out there doesn't engage the ear.

That's why part of my thesis is that good placecasting must use the tools of good storytelling.  Assuming the medium is audio, this means crisp, conversational writing, spare and careful use of numbers and dates, and compelling voice or voices. And, because we're talking about narrow-casting, you can use a one-on-one speaking style, too.  

Cultural Tourism DC gets it right, using a first-person writing style, hints of humor, (mostly) unobtrusive sound effects and a great voice talent (NPR newscaster Korva Coleman).  Most importantly, the narrator doesn't sound like she's reading.  She's telling a story, as if she was talking to you in a conversation.  It's hard to write this way, but when it's done right, it unlocks the door to a listener's memory and imagination.

Personally, I would love to hear the voices of some actual experts (obviously historians in this case) revealing the information to us, but that's simply a different style of documentary storytelling.  These podcasts are highly-polished and excellent.  They're available in iTunes and through CTDC's Web site, which offers a LOT more text-based tours of DC, too, though the site a little clunky to navigate.

P.S. -- One other slick feature of the audio walking tours is the downloadable, printable PDF map they somehow make available through iTunes. (I didn't know iTunes could handle documents)  My gut tells me a good physical map is critical to a successful walking tour.  Even though I think the narrator should tell you where to go next, people will easily forget or change course.  It's easier to consult a map than to rewind the tape (so to speak).