Ryan Seacrest To Produce Spanish 'Idol'

Ryan Seacrest’s bilingual approach to announcing his new Spanish singing competition TV show is a sign of merging Hollywood with the Latino community.

“This is big…estoy muy emocionado,” Seacrest tweeted Sunday as he revealed the news. 

The American Idol host will produce a new music series for the Telemundo network that will feature two established artists competing against each other for the audience’s vote.

The format for Superstar Showdown has been successful in other countries. Emilio Romano, president of Telemundo Media, said he’s hoping Seacrest will use his connections and leverage to attract talent. The network hasn’t publicly set a start date for the series.

Telemundo announced several of its programming plans for next season on Sunday. The network usually gets less than half of the audience of the dominant Univision, but has become more aggressive with the backing of corporate parent NBC Universal. Telemundo had its highest ratings ever during the first three months of 2013.

“We’ve been the underdog for so many years and we’ve been given the mission to fight and fight hard,” Romano said.