Nickelodeon Will Explain ‘Guts’ For The World

If you ask a child in Spain to define guts, he will likely point to his belly and giggle. Guts, as a casual word for derring-do, is, it seems, a strictly American term.

Explaining guts to producers from eight foreign cable and broadcast networks was only the first of innumerable challenges that faced Nickelodeon as it set out to take “Guts,” its popular action-sports show, international.

“We had to go around the table and we had to talk about courage and fortitude and determination,” said Albie Hecht, executive producer. “And we tried to describe it … and each of them found the language to talk about our show.”

Thus began the journey to “Global Guts,” the mini-Olympics of sorts that just concluded in a 22,000-square-foot soundstage at Universal Studios Florida.

Here children ages 11 to 14 from 12 different countries dunked baskets and sprang into long jumps in an emotional contest for gold medals. Nickelodeon itself hurtled over language barriers, cultural differences and varying degrees of production experience to create its most ambitious international undertaking yet.

The children competed in the decidedly unconventional sports events that U.S. kids have enjoyed on “Guts” for three previous seasons. Harnessed to elastic cords, they took gravity-defying leaps over hurdles and high-flying shots at basketball hoops. They also maneuvered through obstacle courses, paddled rough pool waters and ultimately raced time to the top of the hissing, clanging Super Aggro Crag.

Audiences cheered madly, waving team colors and shouting, as they had been instructed, the names of their teams in the preferred pronunciation of the country. “Port-U-Gal!” a group on one side screamed. “Es-Span-Yah,” yelled another.

The players bit their lips, mustering mind and muscle for the best possible performance.

“Global Guts” begins airing this

fall in 12 countries before a potential audience of 320 million viewers, half of those in this country. It debuts Sept. 5 in the United States on the Nickelodeon channel.

Children came to compete in the show from the United Kingdom - including England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - Germany, Israel, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Belarus.

Each international network has its own producer, and with the exception of Great Britain, which also airs the U.S. show with host Mike O’Malley, has its own show host. The only thing that is exactly the same for most of the networks is the video of the kids in competition, which put in Olympic terms is the “world feed.”

During event competitions in the Extreme Arena, as the show’s set is called, show hosts sat in booths overlooking the action. Each called the shots as he or she saw it, and their comments were recorded on separate soundtracks that will eventually be matched with the video. On pretape days, the hosts went down to the floor to record their own introductions of events and competitors.

Each network had the makings of 32 episodes of “Global Guts” by the time production was done.