CBS reviews subtitles after Bad Bunny’s Grammy run

Bad Bunny’s performance of his hit singles “Tití Me Preguntó” and “Despues De La Playa” was one of the most talked about of last Sunday’s (February 5) Grammy night. However, despite the positive reception the performance received, many fans were left frustrated by what appeared to be a technical era.

During the broadcast, the captions that appeared on screen when Bad Bunny performed were: “[SPEAKING NON-ENGLISH]” And “[SINGING IN NON-ENGLISH].” The captions also read “[SPEAKING NON-ENGLISH]’ later that night as Bad Bunny accepted the award for Best Música Urbana Album.

After the show, US Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) wrote a letter to the President and CEO of CBS and George Cheeks, according to CBS diversity. In the letter, Garcia wrote that the mistake. “Shows a lack of sensitivity and foresight. For too many Hispanic Americans, it felt disrespectful of our place in our shared society and our contributions to our shared culture. For the hearing impaired community, this failure has been painful.”

Cheeks has since responded to the letter, noting that CBS is taking steps to ensure similar incidents don’t happen in the future. According to a report by diversityCBS will review its closed captioning practices for live events.

“Regrettably, mistakes were made regarding the captioning of his performance and the acceptance speech that followed,” Cheeks said. “We worked with a subtitle provider that wasn’t running to a standard that we should rightly hold ourselves to. Regardless, we should have monitored the situation more closely. A real-time bilingual (English and Spanish language) subtitle should have been used and the words used on screen were insensitive to many.”

He continued, saying: “Our teams are now re-examining the captioning process for all live entertainment events on the network to ensure we’re properly captioning Spanish language content. We will keep you informed of our efforts on this matter.”