Why New TV Formats Present Challenges for Awards Mavens

of the National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences. Adam runs the New York based institution that administers Emmy Awards for daytime shows, news and documentary productions, sports, and for local TV produced in markets that are organized into twenty regional chapters across the country. Basically, nati's hands out Emmy's everywhere but Hollywood, which remains the province of the North

Hollywood based Television Academy. In our conversation, Sharp discusses in detail how NATAS had to adapt to changing times after challenges were raised in two thousand eighteen to the fairness of the Daytime Emmy Awards submission and judging process. How NATAS responded meant coming up with clear definitions for things that never had to be defined before the era of technology changing television, and it also forced the Academy to come up with uniform standards across its various awards groups.

He also talks about warming relations between NATAS and its West Coast counterpart. Adam Sharp, President and CEO of the National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, Thank you so much for stopping by. Of course, thank you for having me tell us a little bit about what NATAS does. I don't think it's profile in the broader television community is as big as the West Coast counterpart, now called just the Television Academy. Give us a sense of kind

of what your charter ad mission is. So the core mission is to foster and recognize excellence in television in all its forms, and for us, in our alignment with our two sister academy, as you mentioned, the Television Academy and on the West Coast that does the Primetime Emmys, we have another sister academy, the International Academy of that

does the International Emmys. And then our Academy recognizes excellence in daytime programming, sports, news and documentary programming, technology and engineering. And then we also have nineteen regional chapters around the country who honor excellence in local and regional programming. So your local newscast coverage of local sporting events and so on,

and so it's a pretty big mandate. But between the three academies, we try to cast a wide net to recognize all the talent that's being produced and all their creativity in our industry. Let's talk a little more specifically about the Daytime Emmys. I know that you had there was a controversy. There was some conflict in the two thousand. After the two eighteen competition, some competitors raised some concerns about eligibility issues, the the application and implementation of rules

for submissions. I don't want to go onto the rabbit hole of down how much of six seconds of content needed to be on screen? I know it got very very specific, But tell me about and that was a kind of a test for you as a leader because you were the interim head at that time. Clearly you passed the test because you're you got the permanent job.

But tell me when you had people were being sent home with a toaster so um, when you had people raising issues that you know could very clearly damage the integrity of the award, how did what was kind of your first response? I think concern certainly when I look at our competition and I look at our award, in particular UM, It's value in the marketplace and to us as an organization far outstrips this in pound lump of

mixed alloys dipped in a very thin coat of gold. UM. And the reason why people will spend the money to enter our competition, to attend our shows, to watch our shows, and so on is not because of the object so much as what it represents. And for that value to be protected, the integrity of the process has to be sacrisind And so there is a big perception dynamic, and whether concerns are wanted or not doesn't even matter if

people have concerns that devalues the brand. And so that means every question that comes up has to be treated with equal seriousness uh and not dismissed out of hand.

And when we dug into some of the questions that had been raised, UM, I think we found that many aspects of our internal processes were flawed and in part had been established at a very different time in television, and that with the growing competition, with the higher number of entries coming in, with the different types of media and different ways of storytelling coming in, that those process

didn't scale well to that. And so now I look back on that experience, which the stories broke my first week as the interim CEO, so it was sort of a be careful what you wish for or welcome to

the new job. Now I look back on that time with some degree of gratitude because it gave us an opportunity to really peel back the curtain and dig really deep into how we operate, asked serious questions, and and make fundamental changes in a much quicker, more aggressive way than perhaps we would have if we didn't have that spark, that catalyst kicking it off. I had the this from

people questioning the validity of the process. And but even to to your point, and without going down the rabbit hole on one of the issues, one of the critical questions of eligibility in one case came down to how you define the word episode, because one of our rules hinged on that question the number of episodes, and for our forty five year history leading up to that point,

that probably was never in doubt. But now when you have these different distribution mechanisms, and you have contempting package differently for mobile versus the big screen, for the subscription distribution versus the transactional distribution, and so on. It now actually becomes a debatable point in in some cases. And while we UH didn't want to UH in subsequent year, this year we made a much clearer definition that was

more in line with the current industry. I think we looked at that and said, well, there there is room to disagree because this definition is not necessarily the same as it was ten years ago, twenty years ago. And you said that that the process for Daytime also kind of made you take a hard look at your other awards books, you know, the very phone book books. I'm sure the rules and procedures, but kind of made you look at all those in a nineteen if not lens

for how to how to interpret these things exactly. And so what we found were, um, these initial questions that were raised were obviously very specific to one entry in one category in one competition, but once we started digging into the foundational issues behind them, we started seeing opportunities

for change across the organization. And so we have now made a consolidated rule books so that we have a certain number of core rules that are same across Daytime Sports and News and doc whereas they were all independent before.

We have realigned our team so instead of having these units where one team would manage both the competition and the production of the show UM, where that created challenges that you either were getting a late start on getting ready for the show, or you're taking your eye off the ball during a certain point in the competition to go focus on the show, neither of which is a

good choice. We've now moved to a model where we have awards administration teams for each competition and then a separate production team responsible for all the shows that is not involved in the awards judication. UM. We've gone through and added a far more detailed glossary to all our rules trying to get to those definitional points. We've created more engagement with the community to get their feedback and involvement.

We've started doing webinars during the competition process so people can ask questions, and then at the end of it.

We are the only awards competition, at least at our level, that now publishes at the end of each competition a transparency report UH and in that report we identify every bump in the road, every time someone along the way asked for an exception to the rules or we had to reinterpret something because someone says, Okay, I have this show that's a little different that doesn't fall neatly into one of these boxes, or we had to break a

tie or disqualified balance because of irregularities. Um. All these types of things that used to take place completely behind the curtain. UM, we now actually published so people can see how these decisions happened and understand those underlying discussions that led to them. Did you and so earlier this year in the spring, was was you rolled out this process? How did it? How did it go? Were there any hiccups where did people? Were there any bad reactions to

some of the new procedures. No. I think it was largely very well received. I mean certainly. Um, like with any other year, we had people who had exceptions they wanted that were rejected. They you had people who challenged certain nominations and that where we allowed those nominations to

stand and then they were disappointed. UM. But I think when you look through the transparency report and see the outline of how we reached those determinations, that actually went a long way to building community confidence and understanding in it because it did not seem as perhaps arbitrary or capricious as in years past, where the same decisions may have been reached, but it was just some pronouncement being handed down from on high, right, and they weren't articulated

as to the reason. And so I think by being more transparent with the community, even if not everyone agrees with us all the time, they at least, we hope, have a greater trust in the process and the mechanism by which the UH the decision was reached. And I think culturally right now there is this greater desire across all institutions, not just ours, for transparant serencies, the watch words and accountability UH and and so on and and perhaps the more insular nation insular form of these awards

shows in years past, maybe past their time. And I think we've adapted quite well in the last year. How how do you guys handle the final judging process of like say, the daytime Emmy Awards. Is it's people in a room watching video or do you do it online? Now there's been you know, there's been a big sea change in the in the whole process of final judging for big awards is in the last couple of years. And this is an area where we are a little bit different than a lot of shows. Um. Every one

of our categories are done by panels of judges. So unlike, for example, the Primetime Emmys or or the Oscars, where a ballot will go out to a the entire community to vote and you'll see for your consideration campaigns and screeners and so and so forth, for us, the termination is made by a small group of of judges uh usually anywhere from fifty depending on how big the category is, who watched the entries online and vote online and are required to watch every entry in its entirety. In fact,

they are not. The button doesn't light up for them submit their ballot until the player can detect that they have watched it through. And we think that gives a real opportunity for new players in the space, in particular because a independent producer submitting for the first time going up against a industry lion who has been in the competition for years, are going to get the same fair shake from the judges. Do you use that same process

for the News and Sports Emmy Awards as well? Yes, So our process for all three of our shows is the same daytime Sports and News and Documentary, so they are all fully online with the exception of a couple of categories that do live judging largely for technical reasons.

So categories that have a large amount of VR or are content now will do that in person and invite the producers to come in so that they can specify the hardware its being ex lancet on and make sure that their content is being seen in the best light. For some animation categories, uh, we let people bring in their story boards and everything else, so there's more of

a tactile part of that. But for the vast majority of our categories, across all the competitions, it is that panel judging online with substantial or hundred percent play through required and how do you how do you assemble the judging panels. So that's probably one of the biggest challenges

of our team. If you look across our three competitions, there's close to two thousand judges recruited every year, and we are looking for expertise in a particular area that they're going to judge, so working professionals who work in that field. So if this is an acting category, other actors,

if it is a editing category, other editors. But then on the flip side, you want to avoid conflicts of interest, so you can be judging something you worked on or your show, and so that winds up sometimes going outside our immediate community. So you'll see people who work in primetime television voting in in daytime, some people in sports voting in news, and vice versa, if that particular craft

is somewhat similar between the disciplines. UH. This year, in some of our daytime categories, we made a partnership with our friends on the West Coast of Television Academy so that those categories will be exclusively judged by Academy members and we'll be working with them to recruit judges for

that gotcha. Um, What for the last couple of years, for a bunch of years, certainly predating your tenure, the Daytime Emmys have been a TV awards show that has not been on old fashioned TV, linear TV anyway in a live format as as we're so used to award shows, and as the Daytime Emmy's aired for years, what is the turtle to getting it to getting a TV deal because it has been a live stream in the last couple of years. Well, I think firstly the historical piece,

and then I'll talk about where we are today. If you look back at the Daytime Emmys in early nineties, you had many more soap operas on the air. That was the main focus of the telecast itself. But more importantly, you had a greater percentage of daytime programming on the networks actually owned by the networks. When a lot of those soaps went away on most stations that time got replaced by syndicated programming, and so Back in the day, the networks were all very motivated to carry the broadcast

because it was promoting their own programming. Now the bulk of the programming that's being honored is not produced by those networks. It's being produced by syndicators and so on, so there's a little bit less of that interest. In the last few years we have I've gone to where the audience has been going, by and large, getting more

and more of their content online. Uh last year in streaming on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, in our website, we had about two million unique viewers, which is still just a fraction of what you would see for the Oscars, the Primetime Emmys, or or Globes, for example, but it also made us the only major awards show to actually be posting audience growth year over year for the last three years, and so we we do see a positive trend in that area where fans do want to tune into it

and are finding it. And I think next year you will see some new investments from us to make the show more accessible and are continuing conversations about if there are aspects of the weekend. We're now a three night event that can get on broadcast television, and so at this point I am very confident that come June, you will be able to watch some, if not all, of the time Emmys on a television set in your living room.

But but it's still still streamed or do you Are you saying that you feel like that there's a good chance that you will have a more traditional license deal with an outlet. We are continuing car stations with networks and looking at O T T opportunities. Um, but where we said right now, all we can say is that by June, we're pretty confident you'll be able to watch

it on the TV sett in your living room. For as long as I have been covering television, which is a long time, there has been speculation about an eventual reunification of the New York based National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the North Hollywood based Television Academy. Do you see any potential for that on the horizon. It sounds like the two organizations are working together more, which when I first it was the level of hostility

between these the two groups was. They didn't even try to hide it. It seems like a much more cordial environment. But is there anything that would that you see on the horizon that could bring you together or do you like the set up as it stands now? Well? I don't think anyone is talking right now about the reunification of the organizations and sort of that corporate sense, but there is certainly a reunification of mission and purpose that is well underway and something that is a departure from

some of those troubles of of the past. I was just out in l A last week and spent the majority of the time with counterparts from the Television Academy. We coordinate on this year's Daytime Emmys, in assembling our

judging panels and so on. We coordinated on some of the category adjustments and changes we made in this year's competition, even making some tweaks to what programs fall under prime time or daytime now that the clock isn't as clear a predictor of that as it as it used to be, and so I think we still have pre clearly defined lanes and news, sports, primetime, daytime, etcetera. And there's certainly

more than enough work to go around. But the fact that we are talking and collaborating and marching forward on several different initiatives I think is very positive for the relationship and for the community. Well, we will stay tuned on that. Thank you, Thank you so much before I let you go tell me, because I do want to recognize that NATUS does represent a lot of television production that happens in local markets from the Midwest to the Southwest.

And again, as I said, basically, there's maybe a thirty mile radius around North Hollywood where you are not allowed to give an award. But beyond that, what is in the last year, So what what is one of the coolest pieces of content, whether it was a news report or sports or entertainment, something really that impressed you, that came out of the truly grassroots, the local local market.

Anything stand out to you. Oh wow, there is so much to to pick from, and I get to go to a lot of the chapter galas and their award shows, and every time I go to one, I come away saying, oh my goodness, that was better than the last and look at that that segment. I think, rather than one specific piece, what I will say I continue to be reminded of and impressed by is the role our TV

stations and TV producers. And this is not just local but nationalists will play in our communities and day the life and on the national level that is the evening news and having the soap on during the day, and the programming we honor is rather intimate because for the most part we're honoring is not that lean back with the bucket of popcorn on the couch, but it is what you have on at the dinner table. It is

what you have on on the kitchen counter. It's when in the morning when you're trying to decide what to wear exactly, it's telling you are you going to need an umbrella? Are you going to have to evacuate? Are your kids going to a good school. Most Americans start their day watching one of our members and end their day watching one of our our members. And so when

I go to our regional Galas. What always impresses me is the deep community connection of our members there and of these local news organizations where particularly in times of christ Us when you see a hurricane or a tornado, or not too long ago, I was at our Northwest Chapter Emmy's and one of their Golden Silver Circle honorees who this is essentially our hall of fame. The Golden Slover Circle are for recognizing fifty or twenty five years

respectively of work in our industry. And one of the honorees was an anchor from Alaska who had really been a clear source of comfort and leadership in the community in the wake of horrible earthquake up there last year that had hit while he and his co anchors were

on the air. Um and this was an anchor I had known as a reporter early in my career down in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and we that night had this conversation about now is being through now two of these experiences of the role of the local broadcaster in being that voice of both comfort and factual life

SA saving information in times of crisis. And so, while not one piece specifically, I think that is a theme that every time I go to one of our chapters, I'm reminded by how important that connection to the viewer in the community is, and the importance of that urgency

cannot be overstated. That the importance of people turning to television when the weather is going crazy, when you don't know why sirens are going off on the black the fact that people turn to broadcast TV or even radio nowadays is still it's still got that that that that bond that you have just grown up with. You would never turn to Netflix to try to know what you know, to know what is blowing through your neighborhood in a

in a hurricane exactly. And in the world of fake news, disinformation, misinformation, so and so far um, there is a lot of click bait out there that can be fun to click on,

fund to read, so on and so forth. But when you need to know do I need to grab the go bag and get out of my house or pick up the kids because something horrible has happened, you know you want that person who is standing out there on your street on the cell phone to the mayor's office with FEMA on hold to get you that information you need in real real time. A very distinguished gim once told me that all television is local, and I think that is true. Adam Sharp, thank you so much for

your time, Thank you, thanks for listening. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.