After successfully pulling off the first awards show ever held at Staples Center earlier this year, executives at the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences are facing a whole new set of challenges with the first-ever Latin Grammys not the least of which is that the show is expected to lose money.
With just two months until the Latin Grammy Awards, which on Sept. 13 will honor Spanish- and Portuguese-language recordings, NARAS executives are working overtime with representatives from the Latino community to create a bilingual show that stands up on its own, rather than being just an offshoot of the successful mainstream Grammy awards.
“We’re all losing a lot of money this year, because we have to establish a franchise,” said Michael Greene, president and chief executive of NARAS. “This is a two- or three-year building process by which we have to validate the importance of this telecast and institutionalize it into something that becomes an annual success.”
Production costs are expected to reach $4 million, a bit less than the mainstream show. But the Latin show is not expected to generate anywhere near the enormous licensing fees NARAS rakes in for selling the mainstream Grammys and related clips to international television and radio networks.
Taking a few years to build the show is a small sacrifice, Greene said, given that NARAS executives have spent the last decade bolstering their relationships with the Latin music industry, including founding the Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1997.
“How to make this show important is probably, at the end of the day, what I use as my template for success,” Greene said.
Pleasing a diverse crowd
For the show to make it big in the Latino community, it must speak to residents of 40 Latino countries, in addition to generating interest in the United States a tough promotional challenge.
Latin music is the fastest-growing segment in the music industry. Over the past three years, five new Latin music categories have been added to the mainstream Grammys, for a total of seven such awards. At this year’s Grammy Awards show at Staples Center, a number of Latino artists were tapped as presenters, and an entire segment of the show was devoted to Latin music.
In news reports following the February show, some industry insiders criticized the Latin segment, saying it was a form of segregation. Similar criticism has surrounded the Latin Grammy Awards show.
“They just need to wait to understand that it has nothing to do with segregation; it has to do with recognition of an incredible and diverse style of music,” said Mauricio Abaroa, executive director of the Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (LARAS). “This is not to divide, this is to integrate.”
While nominees include mainstream artists who have helped bolster interest in Latin music, such as Grammy sweepers Carlos Santana and Ricky Martin, the vast majority of Latin Grammy nominees are names that wouldn’t be recognized in most American households.
NARAS can’t rely solely on its network of domestic relationships to develop a Latin Grammy performance roster, as it does every year with the mainstream music show. The staff at NARAS is counting on members of LARAS, and related Latino advisory councils and committees, to help them select performers who will be representative of different communities, as well as compelling to a widespread audience.
Meanwhile, NARAS executives are working out logistics for pulling off the bilingual aspects of the show.
Songs at the Latin Grammys will be performed in their original language, either Spanish or Portuguese. In a new move that poses many challenges, award presentations will be filmed in both English and Spanish.
As in any awards show, award presenters will walk to a podium, where they will introduce the category, read the nominations and announce the winner. At the Latin show, presenters will read the nominations in English, and then the camera will cut away to the audience to show the winner getting up to accept the award. After the winner arrives on stage, the presenters will walk backstage to a specially constructed set where they will film the exact same presentation in Spanish.
The English-language version will be broadcast live to U.S. audiences, while the Spanish-language version will be slightly delayed so the presenters’ backstage presentations can be spliced in and then uploaded to a satellite feed.
Broadcasters will have the option to take either the English or Spanish version of the show from the satellite feed. The Spanish version will be used on a Latin Grammy Web site being created in conjunction with a Spanish-language Internet portal. NARAS will also hire a trilingual team of freelancers to create three Latin Grammy Awards Web sites, in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Eye on the audience
Executives at Staples Center, for their part, plan to keep the show’s audience in mind when staffing the event.
“Since it’s the Latin Grammys, we’ll definitely request (bilingual staff members to work it),” said Brenda Tinnen, vice president of event and guest services for Staples Center.
While concerns about the arena’s much-panned acoustics were at the forefront of planners’ minds before the mainstream show, that’s not the case for the Latin show. Following complaints just a few months earlier, permanent changes were made to Staples Center’s sound system and significant additional improvements were made by the show’s production staff before the February awards. Similar improvements will be made for the Latin show.
