» One advantage we have throughout the region is a lot of technical skill «
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hen we ask ourselves about the latest in broadcast, our first reflex is to think about the big US networks, the European stalwarts underpinned by powerful public broadcasters or the big streamers and tech companies hailing from California. Occasionally, we’ll even think about Asia – Japan’s NHK or China’s CCTV. What all these have in common is a location above the equator. Northerners forget that there’s a whole broadcast world just over the horizon. Latin America stretches from Mexico in the north to Chile’s Cape Horn in the south, across 33 countries where the language is primarily Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil) and, in a few cases, French. There is no other region on Earth with so many countries in it bound by a common language, and yet Latin America is also home to over 500 different indigenous languages. The Latin American media sector is a mantle of shared communication over vast differences in geography, culture, technology and access. Pristine production Vivaro Video is a top technical provider for live broadcast in Latin America. Headquartered in Santiago, Chile, the company’s customers include broadcasters from the southern tip of Chile, all the way to Mexico. Starting as a camera rental and OB company, Vivaro’s service expanded further during the pandemic when broadcasters had to scale back the practice of doing all their tech provisions in-house and outsource to third-party providers.
rest of the world,” begins Vivaro director of technology
and operations Gonzalo Jara, “there was an acceleration towards cloud technologies during the pandemic – first for production directly in the cloud, and then for remote productions. Since then, we’ve been doing production from our main hub in Chile for events all throughout Latin America.” The Iberian languages that dominate the region simplify remote production in a way that would make for considerably more friction in a multi-lingual region like Europe. Vivaro recently, for example, produced a show remotely from its Santiago hub of a Major League Rugby match, which took place in Miami, Florida – a city with a strong Spanish-speaking population. The match was captured entirely by local Miami production teams, with live commentary offered by a remote studio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which was then delivered to Disney’s ESPN Latin America. Brazilian Portuguese poses little barrier to this international, continent-spanning production ecosystem. Vivaro completed remote productions of a European football semi-final between Inter Milan and Paris Saint Germain just recently, controlled from its Chile HQ for Vivaro’s customer in Brazil. “One of the advantages we have throughout the region is a lot of technical skill, as well as people who can speak the multiple languages to bridge that gap,” says Jara.
Slow and steady Frequent large- scale technology upgrades, like those seen at organisations such as the BBC or CNN, are the exception rather than the norm globally. This is well exemplified in Latin America, where technology spends among broadcasters are intermittent and ad hoc. This is mostly the result of financial constraints – the majority of Latin America broadcasters are not going to get the same injections of cash that a European public broadcaster is used to. As result, there aren’t the clear switchovers from SD to HD or SDI to IP that are a familiar pattern in the north. “Technology transitions are done over a long time, one format to another,” says Jason Barden, sales director for Latin America and the Caribbean at Riedel. “You end up with a mix of not just today’s and tomorrow’s technology, but past technologies too.” Known for its live communication systems, Riedel provides solutions that can be inserted into any point in a broadcaster’s evolution, allowing them to make the most of what they have for as long as possible. “In Latin America, you don’t just throw everything out and upgrade to something new,” Barden continues. “You end up changing things piece by piece – cameras this year, master
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