Spanish-language television studios breaking the language barrier

By DOUGLAS HANKS

The Miami Herald

What would make Nickelodeon film a teen series in Miami? A Spanish-language script.

Every character on Nickelodeon's popular new show, "Every Witch Way," speaks English, even when rookie witch Emma Alonso casts a spell to help her through the latest drama at Iridium High. But despite the English dialogue, the roots of the kids show were in the more familiar language of Miami's television industry.

Nickelodeon's Latin American arm landed a Spanish-language hit in 2011 with "Grachi," the teen telenovela named after a young witch and filmed in rented studio space in Doral. "Grachi" lasted three seasons before ending late last year with a two-hour movie special. A few months later, Nickelodeon is touting the high ratings for the debut season of its "Witch" show, this one based on the "Grachi" script but filmed in English.

"The story lines translate completely," said Catharina Ledeboer, the bilingual head writer of both "Grachi" and "Every Witch Way." "Good versus evil, finding yourself - it's all universal."

Not that Ledeboer didn't have to write through the scripts for the light-hearted series. "The jokes didn't work the same at all," she said. "American kids are savvy. We had to work a little harder at the jokes."

The tale of two witches (and the languages they speak) hints at one of the better long-term hopes for new English-language television productions in South Florida at a time when local film offices fret about a coming drought of interest from Hollywood. With Florida's subsidy program for incentives winding down, industry advocates warn that traditional series and movies will head elsewhere without the government dollars used to reduce costs.

Miami's well-established industry of Spanish-language television producers also routinely dip into Florida's subsidy pot, including payouts for both "Grachi" and "Every Witch Way." But the sector is seen as far more likely to keep filming locally given its heavy investment in South Florida, its long-standing ties to the region and its penchant for lean production budgets.

"Every Witch Way" "has been a huge success in the U.S.," said J.C. Acosta, the top production executive in the Americas office for Viacom, parent company of Nickelodeon. "We're really excited this might open the door for a combination of producing Spanish-language and English-language content in Miami."

Last fall, Univision captured global attention with the launch of Fusion, its first English-language venture.

Despite the challenges, Fusion's Oct. 28 launch represented the largest bet on a South Florida television venture in at least a generation, and it has drawn significant national attention to the Doral, Fla., complex it shares with Univision's news division.

The cable-news channel faced a slow and wobbly start, with Univision and partner ABC dropping their initial plan to focus on English-speaking Hispanics and instead position Fusion as the news home for all news viewers below the age of 35. But even if the announced target isn't the Hispanic market, Fusion executives say that demographic remains their baseline audience.

Jorge Ramos, one of Univision's two star anchors, serves as the face of Fusion, too. Each afternoon, after finishing his Fusion program, "America," he has only a short walk across the newsroom to record his Spanish-language show for Univision, "Noticiero Univision." And while Ramos delivers the news with a loose button on his shirt for the youth-leaning Fusion, it's not just the suit and tie that differentiate his approach to the day's events for Univision.

"I have a completely different mental map when I'm doing both shows," Ramos said. "When I'm doing the show in Spanish, I'm seeing Venezuela, I'm seeing Cuba, I'm seeing the recession in Argentina, the drug traffickers in Mexico.

"When I'm doing Fusion," he continued, "I'm thinking Syria, I'm thinking Sochi, I'm thinking Israelis and Palestinians."

About five miles away, at the U.S. headquarters of the beIN Sports cable channels, a team of soccer enthusiasts is leveraging the rest of the world's futbol fever into niche programming for the English-speaking U.S. market.

BeIN, part of a global network that used to be the Al Jazeera sports division, launched its U.S. arm in 2012. It picked production space off the Palmetto Expressway for its home base, two floors of studios, offices, sets and editing facilities.

From there, beIN manages a Spanish-language channel and an English-language channel for the U.S. market. The programming revolves around soccer matches played abroad, with beIN having the rights to popular La Liga games in Spain.

Every Monday, beIN's signature show in both languages features the same format, the same set and even the same name, "The Locker Room." The weekly round-up has two sets of writers and hosts, but shares an executive producer and the bulk of the control-room staff that manage the rapid-fire stream of sports commentary each in two languages.

"It's the day after the big game," host Jeremy St. Louis said during a taping after Seattle crushed Denver in the Super Bowl. "I am, of course, referring to the Derby D'Italia."

What followed was a Super Bowl analysis only a soccer fan could love: futbol veterans Bodo Illgner, Cory Gibbs and Ruud Gullit taking about three minutes to marvel over how seldom most football players touched the ball in the championship before diving into the evening's main topic: recent trades in European soccer leagues.

Inside the control room, line producer Andres Johnson urged the crew to keep the taping rolling, given the time squeeze of filming two shows back to back. "We have to finish this show by 7 to give Spanish time to clear," Johnson reported into his headset. "Let's keep the breaks as short as possible if we can."

Both shows share sets, staff and the same schedule of soccer games to dissect every seven days. But beIN sees no value in the savings that would come with recruiting bilingual hosts or combining the writing teams. When it comes to soccer, executives don't think a Spanish-language approach would always translate well into English.

"I don't want to say my colleagues on the English side don't have more passion ... " said Jose Hernandez, one of the Spanish-speaking panelists on "The Locker Room." "But we really get into the debate."

Univision's launch of Fusion was seen as a hedge against a new generation of Hispanics drifting away from Spanish-language content and watching more television in English. Even so, Spanish remains the overwhelming profit center for Univision, which last year beat out all English-language networks for the top ratings during the summer rerun season.

With advertisers putting more dollars into the Spanish-speaking market, Latin media outlets see English as a side venture.

Univsion's partner in Fusion, ABC, has been slow to get the channel picked up by cable operators, with Comcast, Dish and Time Warner still not airing the buzzed-about network. Tr3s, the MTV spin-off with a mix of Spanish and English programming, is scaling back its Miami operation, ditching expensive scripted series for a nearly all-music format.

"I do believe there is an opportunity there" in English, said Alan Sokol, once the chief operating officer at Telemundo and now CEO of Hemisphere Media Group, a Miami company that owns Spanish-language TV operations. "But I think it's a difficult challenge."

Hollywood routinely crosses language barriers in seeking out new projects, with popular television and movie scripts in foreign markets retrofitted to work for an English-language audience. ABC scored a hit with "Ugly Betty" in 2006 after picking up the concept from a Colombian telenovela, "Yo Soy Betty, La Fea."

South Florida benefits from the reverse in Spanish-language television, with Univision using local studios for its Latin version of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." Telemundo used Miami for the first season of its kids version of "The Voice," a hit for its parent network, NBC.

One of the advantages in swapping out one language for another is the savings that come with inheriting a show's infrastructure.

When Telemundo wanted to air a Spanish version of Bravo's "Top Chef" series, producers sent a Spanish-speaking cast to take over once the English season wrapped. The producer, Magical Elves, leaned on its roster of bilingual producers and writers, including Miami native Alex Davies, a longtime Magical Elves executive tapped to help run the "Top Chef Estrellas" series.

New Orleans may not be the natural launching pad for a Spanish-speaking cooking show. Its Cajun and French culinary traditions left producers scrambling to find the aji amarillo, guava paste, and tamarindo needed as pantry staples for the Latin version, Davies said. But the ability to walk into a turn-key television set made the arrangement particularly attractive.

"It was really high production value and high quality," said Casey Kriley, senior vice president at Magical Elves and co-producer, with Davies, of "Estrellas." "By doing it in New Orleans, we were able to use the existing set and utilize the entire production staff."

Similar economics are driving Nickelodeon's use of Miami for English-language productions. The ability to recycle "Grachi" sets, wardrobe, crew and creative staff for "Every Witch Way" meant some lower costs. Two bilingual cast members even landed starring roles in the English version, which aired its season finale last month and is now awaiting a renewal decision by Nickelodeon.

Meanwhile, executives hope to create significant savings with its next Spanish-to-English production: another teen series, this one based on a talented young chef prodigy.

"There are a lot of economies of scale. Once we wrap the Spanish show," Acosta said, "we can start filming the English-language version."

Maria the Mexican use their Mariachi roots to create their own sound

By TIMOTHY FINN

The Kansas City Star

The sisters who founded Maria the Mexican call their music a mix of Americana soul and Mexicana blues, but much of its heart comes from the traditions they learned from their grandmother.

Tess and Maria Cuevas are the granddaughters of the late Teresa Cuevas, who died in December at the age of 93.

A native Topekan and the daughter of parents who fled Mexico during the revolution, Teresa Cuevas started her own all-female mariachi band, the seven-piece Mariachi Estrella, one of the first of its kind in the United States. The band was booked for a show at the Hyatt Regency on July 17, 1981, the night of the skywalk collapse. Four band members died in the collapse. Teresa Cuevas was among the injured.

After she recovered, she kept the name Mariachi Estrella but turned her focus to teaching mariachi music to students, including her granddaughters.

“We both joined the band when we turned 11,” said Tess, a 2003 graduate of Topeka High School. “A few of our cousins did it. We did it for 12 or 13 years, into our early 20s. The height of it was during high school. We performed at a lot of wedding parties, Masses, Mexican fiestas in Topeka, Kansas City and Lawrence.”

Tess played violin; Maria, who is three years younger, played vihuela, the five-string guitar that is elemental to the mariachi sound. They left Mariachi Estrella behind while in college but continued playing and performing.

“We experimented with Maria and I playing together, and she played with some blues bands,” Tess said. “Then I moved to Chicago.”

That turned out to be a fortuitous move. In May 2011, she signed on to perform a Cinco de Mayo show at the Mexican restaurant where she worked. She enlisted her sister, who by then had met Garrett Nordstrom, a songwriter, guitarist and founder of the rock/funk band the Garrett Nordstrom Situation. He got a crash course in mariachi music and accompanied Maria to Chicago, where the three played that restaurant gig.

“We rented a van and a P.A., set up in her restaurant and played like a four-hour show,” Maria said. “We taught Garrett all the traditional Mexican tunes. He’d never played any of them and hadn’t rehearsed with Tess.”

That Chicago gig was intended to be a one-off, but it inspired more music after Tess moved back to Topeka.

“It was supposed to be just for fun,” Tess said, “but when I moved back here, we got together and started practicing.”

And they formed Maria the Mexican. For live shows, they hired a drummer and a bass player and became more of a rock band. In May 2012, they booked a Cinco de Mayo gig at Knuckleheads as part of MerleJam, the annual fundraiser for heart-transplant patients. It was their first Kansas City show.

Shortly after that, the band went into the studio and recorded a single, “Ruler.” For that they hired Jason Riley on guitar, who has since joined the band. That autumn, they prepared to record an EP but ended up with more than enough material for a full-length album. Going in, they thought they knew what sound they were shooting for.

“We thought it was going to be a real Southwestern album,” Tess said. “But each of the songs ended up growing into something else. So that’s not what we call our music anymore.”

“Some of the songs we picked are real poppy and not so Southwestern style,” Maria said. “Then there were of course the traditional songs we wanted to do but not traditionally. We would come in with an idea, then Garrett and Jason and our engineer, Matthew Russo, would all put in their own flair.

“It took us awhile to come up with the right words to describe the music because it’s so broad and encompasses quite a few sounds. So we came up with Americana soul and Mexicana blues.”

The album they recorded is “Moon Colored Jade,” 12 tracks that fuse rock, soul, blues and funk with Mexican folk accents. The album was released in October

They enlisted an array of top-shelf talent to record with them, including Lester Estelle Jr. on drums, Craig Kew on bass, Ken Lovern on Hammond B3, Hermon Mehari on trumpet, Christine Grossman on viola and violin. (Kew and Lovern are also part of the live band.)

Some of the tracks are re-arrangements of Nordstrom’s songs-in-waiting, some are songs he co-wrote with Maria and some are their versions of traditional Mexican songs like “El Cascabel” and “Besame Mucho.” Nordstrom said it was somewhat of a challenge to give those songs more of a rock feel.

“We want to push them to more of a rock feel, more 6/8, so they have more of a groove and they roll along better,” he said.

“We have played them in traditional form for so long, it’s fun to take those traditional songs and put them with drums and bass and see how they sound,” Maria said. “Some of them really work electrified.”

They incorporate those songs into their live performances. And sometimes they play them in the traditional manner, as they did in June when they opened for Los Lobos, Los Lonely Boys and Alejandro Escovedo at Knuckleheads. Their grandmother was there that night to hear how they had mixed their Mexican traditions with American roots.

“She was just beaming listening to us play ‘El Cascabel,’ ” Tess said. “I know it made her so happy to see what we had taken from the mariachi and made new and different.”

“She prepared us to carry on our traditional Mexican roots expressed through music by teaching us how to interpret mariachi music and to express emotions through that music,” Maria said. “She encouraged us to carry on those songs and the emotions they evoke.”