One Nación leverages technology to deliver live bilingual, subtitled show tonight
MIAMI – Tonight, for the third consecutive year, the special Hispanic Heritage Month production One Nación returns to ESPN and ESPN Deportes. This year, the live show will showcase the Latino influence and pride in some of the most popular sports in the U.S. while navigating across English and Spanish languages.
In addition, for the first time, the show will be jointly produced with Fusion, the media network partly owned by Disney (which also owns ESPN), from their studios in Miami with live hits from the iconic Clevelander in South Beach.
One Nación airs tonight at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN and ESPN Deportes followed by an additional 30 minutes exclusively airing on Fusion and live streaming via ESPN.com and ESPNDeportes.com, at 8 p.m.
One Nación airs live from Fusion’s studios in Miami, featuring segments from the iconic Clevelander Hotel in South Beach, with a live audience of South Florida’s most avid sports fans. Co-hosted by ESPN’s Max Bretos, Antonietta “Toni” Collins and Freddy Lomeli, alongside Fusion’s soccer expert Fernando Vila, the Hispanic Heritage Month special will feature four segments showcasing in-depth profiles of renowned Hispanic athletes.
Hugo Balta, senior director of multicultural content for ESPN, who oversees the One Nación brand is leading the content of the show and the logistics behind producing the live show in Spanish and English language.
“ESPN’s One Nación is a reflection of the U.S. Hispanic experience intertwining English and Spanish language in storytelling. The show is unique in that it simulcasts live on ESPN and ESPN Deportes. In order to be inclusive of all audiences ESPN is leveraging technology like never before in order to translate live with subtitles on both networks,” said Balta.
“Once the decision was made to produce the program from Miami we quickly looked to leverage the best practices of the collaborative work established between ESPN and the Fusion Network in realizing the show.”
The live translation will be managed like never before at ESPN to better serve all audiences tuning in on the three networks that might not necessarily be bilingual. The production team, along with operations development and technology, had to come up with a unique solution of setting up teams to simultaneously subtitle the show in two separate languages.
Alex Tyner, coordinating director of operations development explains: “The live subtitling of a show airing on three different networks will essentially involve two PD rooms in Bristol [small control rooms], a two-person team for each language from a closed captioning provider, the translation of the closed captioning protocol into a graphic presentation, and then the coordination of a program delay to make it all synch up.”
The production of One Nación includes a team of more than 20 ESPN and ESPN Deportes staff – and 15 more from Fusion – working from Miami and ESPN’s Bristol, Conn. headquarters to deliver the 90-minute celebration.
