Live From FIFA Women's World Cup: Telemundo's Chris Suarez-Meyers on Leveraging Live Production Though benefiting from lessons learned in Qatar, the effort relies more on remote operation By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, August 8, 2023 - 8:44 am
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The presence Telemundo Deportes has in Australia and New Zealand for the FIFA Women's World Cup is focused on covering all angles of the event, following Team USA while capturing the diverse storylines throughout the host countries. For this tournament, Telemundo's model is a departure from the large-scale studio and production operations it deployed for the 2022 Men's World Cup in Qatar last December. By leveraging live-production capabilities, virtual studios, and personnel back home at Telemundo Center in Miami, the team here is focused on giving its viewers in the U.S. a greater understanding and broader exposure of not only Sydney but all nine host cities that make up the 2023 Women's World Cup.
We are fanned out and have a presence in all nine cities and 10 stadiums, says Chris Suarez-Meyers, SVP, content operations, Telemundo Deportes. We're about a hundred strong in both New Zealand and Australia, rotating around key matchups and national-team movements. By the final week, we'll all converge in Sydney to cover the second Semifinal and Final. The approach puts the emphasis on five ENG crews that don't have reporters attached to them but have hosts.
Chris Suarez-Meyers in Telemundo's area at the World Cup IBC
Telemundo is using LiveU LU800 field units, allowing multiple cameras to be connected in the field to one backpack and sending live content directly to Miami PCRs.
Our teams are jumping around and covering matches but, at the same time, are performing their hosting duties from different cities across both countries, explains Suarez-Meyers. It gives us a little bit more variety in our coverage and a different background every night. But then, at the same time, on match day, they can go in there and perform the normal game-day coverage of both hosting and newsgathering.
All of our ENG crews have a B camera, he continues. If we're not filming a two-camera shoot with multiple talent, we'll point the camera in a different direction and get a scenic shot. It gives us a built-in bump shot from each of our live hits.
The run-and-gun approach and parachuting in an ENG team definitely pushes the limits, given the cadence of Group Stage, distances (and time-zone differences), Suarez-Meyers says, but things are going well, and the plan is going off according to script.
That's in part due to our partners at HBS and FIFA as well as the fact that both countries have hosted major international events before, he adds. They've got the experience, got the expertise, and they know what it's like to deal with visiting media. We're getting a lot of support, which helps make the plan go smoother.
With so much of the operation being back home in Miami (where more than 250 employees are working on it), the broadcaster's presence at the IBC has been scaled back to just engineering.
We worked with BSI in Canada on the design and integration of our facility, which is focused on quality control, the routing of the multi-lateral-feed packages and isos back to Miami, says Suarez-Meyers. In addition to our fiber lines, we use cell-bonded LiveU when we're out on the street and over IP when we're at the stadiums and point it back to Miami.
The Telemundo linear-channel pre-/post-match coverage is not as extensive as it was in Qatar; however, the new FAST Channel recently launched on Peacock is supplementing content leveraging the FIFA Max service.
The FAST Channel requires a constant refresh of content, notes Suarez-Meyers, and that's where we dip into FIFA Max. The number of film crews that HBS has [deployed] to feed that beast acts as a force multiplier for us in terms of manpower. Otherwise, we would have needed an additional 10-12 crews just to cover the teams.
The FIFA Max server helps out even when Telemundo has an ENG team in a city for a match. It's hard to move a crew from, say, their city position in Dunedin to the airport to cover a team arrival or departure, notes Suarez-Meyers. That is where the FIFA Max server helps fill the gap for us.
As the tournament progresses and the match calendar winds down, the Telemundo crews will begin to collaborate more, expand their color assignments, and have the opportunity to cover the excitement and the buildup to the Final. Currently, one team is based in Sydney, two are roving New Zealand, and two are traveling across Australia.
We'll have a little bit of breathing room towards the end, and the crews can go out and get more color and cover the fanfests and other fan events, says Suarez-Meyers. Embedded with our ENG crews are social producers, whose original content complements our broadcast offering.
Telemundo also has one announce team on the ground passing through Australia and New Zealand. Seven-time Emmy Award-winner and the broadcaster's star announcer Andres Cantor leads the in-venue announce team, with analysis by former Mexican National Team and Chivas player Manuel Sol and former U.S. Soccer coach Natalia Astrain. Through Group Stage, the team has announced seven games from venue and will call a total of 12 games by the end of the tournament. Other announcer teams will feature Sammy Sadovnik, Cop n lvarez, Daniella L pez-Guajaro, and Jorge Calvo calling games from Miami.
Telemundo worked with HBS on a special service providing the broadcaster IP access at pitch-side standup positions and at the commentary tribune. This allowed us to create a unilateral comcam, which typically isn't seen at the Women&
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Live From FIFA Women's World Cup: Telemundo's Chris Suarez-Meyers on Leveraging Live Production Though benefiting from lessons learned in Qatar, the effort relies more on remote operation By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
