Speaker 1: Welcome to Strictly Business Varieties, weekly podcast featuring conversations with
Speaker 1: industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Speaker 1: Cynthia Littleton, business editor of Variety Today. My guest in
Speaker 1: New York is Adam Sharp. Adam is President and CEO
Speaker 1: of the National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences. Adam
Speaker 1: runs the New York based institution that administers Emmy Awards
Speaker 1: for daytime shows, news and documentary productions, sports, and for
Speaker 1: local TV produced in markets that are organized into twenty
Speaker 1: regional chapters across the country. Basically, nati's hands out Emmy's
Speaker 1: everywhere but Hollywood, which remains the province of the North
Speaker 1: Hollywood based Television Academy. In our conversation, Sharp discusses in
Speaker 1: detail how NATAS had to adapt to changing times after
Speaker 1: challenges were raised in two thousand eighteen to the fairness
Speaker 1: of the Daytime Emmy Awards submission and judging process. How
Speaker 1: NATAS responded meant coming up with clear definitions for things
Speaker 1: that never had to be defined before the era of
Speaker 1: technology changing television, and it also forced the Academy to
Speaker 1: come up with uniform standards across its various awards groups.
Speaker 1: He also talks about warming relations between NATAS and its
Speaker 1: West Coast counterpart. Adam Sharp, President and CEO of the
Speaker 1: National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for stopping by. Of course, thank you for having
Speaker 1: me tell us a little bit about what NATAS does.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's profile in the broader television community
Speaker 1: is as big as the West Coast counterpart, now called
Speaker 1: just the Television Academy. Give us a sense of kind
Speaker 1: of what your charter ad mission is. So the core
Speaker 1: mission is to foster and recognize excellence in television in
Speaker 1: all its forms, and for us, in our alignment with
Speaker 1: our two sister academy, as you mentioned, the Television Academy
Speaker 1: and on the West Coast that does the Primetime Emmys,
Speaker 1: we have another sister academy, the International Academy of that
Speaker 1: does the International Emmys. And then our Academy recognizes excellence
Speaker 1: in daytime programming, sports, news and documentary programming, technology and engineering.
Speaker 1: And then we also have nineteen regional chapters around the
Speaker 1: country who honor excellence in local and regional programming. So
Speaker 1: your local newscast coverage of local sporting events and so on,
Speaker 1: and so it's a pretty big mandate. But between the
Speaker 1: three academies, we try to cast a wide net to
Speaker 1: recognize all the talent that's being produced and all their
Speaker 1: creativity in our industry. Let's talk a little more specifically
Speaker 1: about the Daytime Emmys. I know that you had there
Speaker 1: was a controversy. There was some conflict in the two thousand.
Speaker 1: After the two eighteen competition, some competitors raised some concerns
Speaker 1: about eligibility issues, the the application and implementation of rules
Speaker 1: for submissions. I don't want to go onto the rabbit
Speaker 1: hole of down how much of six seconds of content
Speaker 1: needed to be on screen? I know it got very
Speaker 1: very specific, But tell me about and that was a
Speaker 1: kind of a test for you as a leader because
Speaker 1: you were the interim head at that time. Clearly you
Speaker 1: passed the test because you're you got the permanent job.
Speaker 1: But tell me when you had people were being sent
Speaker 1: home with a toaster so um, when you had people
Speaker 1: raising issues that you know could very clearly damage the
Speaker 1: integrity of the award, how did what was kind of
Speaker 1: your first response? I think concern certainly when I look
Speaker 1: at our competition and I look at our award, in
Speaker 1: particular UM, It's value in the marketplace and to us
Speaker 1: as an organization far outstrips this in pound lump of
Speaker 1: mixed alloys dipped in a very thin coat of gold. UM.
Speaker 1: And the reason why people will spend the money to
Speaker 1: enter our competition, to attend our shows, to watch our shows,
Speaker 1: and so on is not because of the object so
Speaker 1: much as what it represents. And for that value to
Speaker 1: be protected, the integrity of the process has to be
Speaker 1: sacrisind And so there is a big perception dynamic, and
Speaker 1: whether concerns are wanted or not doesn't even matter if
Speaker 1: people have concerns that devalues the brand. And so that
Speaker 1: means every question that comes up has to be treated
Speaker 1: with equal seriousness uh and not dismissed out of hand.
Speaker 1: And when we dug into some of the questions that
Speaker 1: had been raised, UM, I think we found that many
Speaker 1: aspects of our internal processes were flawed and in part
Speaker 1: had been established at a very different time in television,
Speaker 1: and that with the growing competition, with the higher number
Speaker 1: of entries coming in, with the different types of media
Speaker 1: and different ways of storytelling coming in, that those process
Speaker 1: didn't scale well to that. And so now I look
Speaker 1: back on that experience, which the stories broke my first
Speaker 1: week as the interim CEO, so it was sort of
Speaker 1: a be careful what you wish for or welcome to
Speaker 1: the new job. Now I look back on that time
Speaker 1: with some degree of gratitude because it gave us an
Speaker 1: opportunity to really peel back the curtain and dig really
Speaker 1: deep into how we operate, asked serious questions, and and
Speaker 1: make fundamental changes in a much quicker, more aggressive way
Speaker 1: than perhaps we would have if we didn't have that spark,
Speaker 1: that catalyst kicking it off. I had the this from
Speaker 1: people questioning the validity of the process. And but even
Speaker 1: to to your point, and without going down the rabbit
Speaker 1: hole on one of the issues, one of the critical
Speaker 1: questions of eligibility in one case came down to how
Speaker 1: you define the word episode, because one of our rules
Speaker 1: hinged on that question the number of episodes, and for
Speaker 1: our forty five year history leading up to that point,
Speaker 1: that probably was never in doubt. But now when you
Speaker 1: have these different distribution mechanisms, and you have contempting package
Speaker 1: differently for mobile versus the big screen, for the subscription
Speaker 1: distribution versus the transactional distribution, and so on. It now
Speaker 1: actually becomes a debatable point in in some cases. And
Speaker 1: while we UH didn't want to UH in subsequent year,
Speaker 1: this year we made a much clearer definition that was
Speaker 1: more in line with the current industry. I think we
Speaker 1: looked at that and said, well, there there is room
Speaker 1: to disagree because this definition is not necessarily the same
Speaker 1: as it was ten years ago, twenty years ago. And
Speaker 1: you said that that the process for Daytime also kind
Speaker 1: of made you take a hard look at your other
Speaker 1: awards books, you know, the very phone book books. I'm
Speaker 1: sure the rules and procedures, but kind of made you
Speaker 1: look at all those in a nineteen if not lens
Speaker 1: for how to how to interpret these things exactly. And
Speaker 1: so what we found were, um, these initial questions that
Speaker 1: were raised were obviously very specific to one entry in
Speaker 1: one category in one competition, but once we started digging
Speaker 1: into the foundational issues behind them, we started seeing opportunities
Speaker 1: for change across the organization. And so we have now
Speaker 1: made a consolidated rule books so that we have a
Speaker 1: certain number of core rules that are same across Daytime
Speaker 1: Sports and News and doc whereas they were all independent before.
Speaker 1: We have realigned our team so instead of having these
Speaker 1: units where one team would manage both the competition and
Speaker 1: the production of the show UM, where that created challenges
Speaker 1: that you either were getting a late start on getting
Speaker 1: ready for the show, or you're taking your eye off
Speaker 1: the ball during a certain point in the competition to
Speaker 1: go focus on the show, neither of which is a
Speaker 1: good choice. We've now moved to a model where we
Speaker 1: have awards administration teams for each competition and then a
Speaker 1: separate production team responsible for all the shows that is
Speaker 1: not involved in the awards judication. UM. We've gone through
Speaker 1: and added a far more detailed glossary to all our
Speaker 1: rules trying to get to those definitional points. We've created
Speaker 1: more engagement with the community to get their feedback and involvement.
Speaker 1: We've started doing webinars during the competition process so people
Speaker 1: can ask questions, and then at the end of it.
Speaker 1: We are the only awards competition, at least at our level,
Speaker 1: that now publishes at the end of each competition a
Speaker 1: transparency report UH and in that report we identify every
Speaker 1: bump in the road, every time someone along the way
Speaker 1: asked for an exception to the rules or we had
Speaker 1: to reinterpret something because someone says, Okay, I have this
Speaker 1: show that's a little different that doesn't fall neatly into
Speaker 1: one of these boxes, or we had to break a
Speaker 1: tie or disqualified balance because of irregularities. Um. All these
Speaker 1: types of things that used to take place completely behind
Speaker 1: the curtain. UM, we now actually published so people can
Speaker 1: see how these decisions happened and understand those underlying discussions
Speaker 1: that led to them. Did you and so earlier this
Speaker 1: year in the spring, was was you rolled out this process?
Speaker 1: How did it? How did it go? Were there any
Speaker 1: hiccups where did people? Were there any bad reactions to
Speaker 1: some of the new procedures. No. I think it was
Speaker 1: largely very well received. I mean certainly. Um, like with
Speaker 1: any other year, we had people who had exceptions they
Speaker 1: wanted that were rejected. They you had people who challenged
Speaker 1: certain nominations and that where we allowed those nominations to
Speaker 1: stand and then they were disappointed. UM. But I think
Speaker 1: when you look through the transparency report and see the
Speaker 1: outline of how we reached those determinations, that actually went
Speaker 1: a long way to building community confidence and understanding in
Speaker 1: it because it did not seem as perhaps arbitrary or
Speaker 1: capricious as in years past, where the same decisions may
Speaker 1: have been reached, but it was just some pronouncement being
Speaker 1: handed down from on high, right, and they weren't articulated
Speaker 1: as to the reason. And so I think by being
Speaker 1: more transparent with the community, even if not everyone agrees
Speaker 1: with us all the time, they at least, we hope,
Speaker 1: have a greater trust in the process and the mechanism
Speaker 1: by which the UH the decision was reached. And I
Speaker 1: think culturally right now there is this greater desire across
Speaker 1: all institutions, not just ours, for transparant serencies, the watch
Speaker 1: words and accountability UH and and so on and and
Speaker 1: perhaps the more insular nation insular form of these awards
Speaker 1: shows in years past, maybe past their time. And I
Speaker 1: think we've adapted quite well in the last year. How
Speaker 1: how do you guys handle the final judging process of
Speaker 1: like say, the daytime Emmy Awards. Is it's people in
Speaker 1: a room watching video or do you do it online?
Speaker 1: Now there's been you know, there's been a big sea
Speaker 1: change in the in the whole process of final judging
Speaker 1: for big awards is in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: And this is an area where we are a little
Speaker 1: bit different than a lot of shows. Um. Every one
Speaker 1: of our categories are done by panels of judges. So unlike,
Speaker 1: for example, the Primetime Emmys or or the Oscars, where
Speaker 1: a ballot will go out to a the entire community
Speaker 1: to vote and you'll see for your consideration campaigns and
Speaker 1: screeners and so and so forth, for us, the termination
Speaker 1: is made by a small group of of judges uh
Speaker 1: usually anywhere from fifty depending on how big the category is,
Speaker 1: who watched the entries online and vote online and are
Speaker 1: required to watch every entry in its entirety. In fact,
Speaker 1: they are not. The button doesn't light up for them
Speaker 1: submit their ballot until the player can detect that they
Speaker 1: have watched it through. And we think that gives a
Speaker 1: real opportunity for new players in the space, in particular
Speaker 1: because a independent producer submitting for the first time going
Speaker 1: up against a industry lion who has been in the
Speaker 1: competition for years, are going to get the same fair
Speaker 1: shake from the judges. Do you use that same process
Speaker 1: for the News and Sports Emmy Awards as well? Yes,
Speaker 1: So our process for all three of our shows is
Speaker 1: the same daytime Sports and News and Documentary, so they
Speaker 1: are all fully online with the exception of a couple
Speaker 1: of categories that do live judging largely for technical reasons.
Speaker 1: So categories that have a large amount of VR or
Speaker 1: are content now will do that in person and invite
Speaker 1: the producers to come in so that they can specify
Speaker 1: the hardware its being ex lancet on and make sure
Speaker 1: that their content is being seen in the best light.
Speaker 1: For some animation categories, uh, we let people bring in
Speaker 1: their story boards and everything else, so there's more of
Speaker 1: a tactile part of that. But for the vast majority
Speaker 1: of our categories, across all the competitions, it is that
Speaker 1: panel judging online with substantial or hundred percent play through
Speaker 1: required and how do you how do you assemble the
Speaker 1: judging panels. So that's probably one of the biggest challenges
Speaker 1: of our team. If you look across our three competitions,
Speaker 1: there's close to two thousand judges recruited every year, and
Speaker 1: we are looking for expertise in a particular area that
Speaker 1: they're going to judge, so working professionals who work in
Speaker 1: that field. So if this is an acting category, other actors,
Speaker 1: if it is a editing category, other editors. But then
Speaker 1: on the flip side, you want to avoid conflicts of interest,
Speaker 1: so you can be judging something you worked on or
Speaker 1: your show, and so that winds up sometimes going outside
Speaker 1: our immediate community. So you'll see people who work in
Speaker 1: primetime television voting in in daytime, some people in sports
Speaker 1: voting in news, and vice versa, if that particular craft
Speaker 1: is somewhat similar between the disciplines. UH. This year, in
Speaker 1: some of our daytime categories, we made a partnership with
Speaker 1: our friends on the West Coast of Television Academy so
Speaker 1: that those categories will be exclusively judged by Academy members
Speaker 1: and we'll be working with them to recruit judges for
Speaker 1: that gotcha. Um, What for the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: for a bunch of years, certainly predating your tenure, the
Speaker 1: Daytime Emmys have been a TV awards show that has
Speaker 1: not been on old fashioned TV, linear TV anyway in
Speaker 1: a live format as as we're so used to award shows,
Speaker 1: and as the Daytime Emmy's aired for years, what is
Speaker 1: the turtle to getting it to getting a TV deal
Speaker 1: because it has been a live stream in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. Well, I think firstly the historical piece,
Speaker 1: and then I'll talk about where we are today. If
Speaker 1: you look back at the Daytime Emmys in early nineties,
Speaker 1: you had many more soap operas on the air. That
Speaker 1: was the main focus of the telecast itself. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: you had a greater percentage of daytime programming on the
Speaker 1: networks actually owned by the networks. When a lot of
Speaker 1: those soaps went away on most stations that time got
Speaker 1: replaced by syndicated programming, and so Back in the day,
Speaker 1: the networks were all very motivated to carry the broadcast
Speaker 1: because it was promoting their own programming. Now the bulk
Speaker 1: of the programming that's being honored is not produced by
Speaker 1: those networks. It's being produced by syndicators and so on,
Speaker 1: so there's a little bit less of that interest. In
Speaker 1: the last few years we have I've gone to where
Speaker 1: the audience has been going, by and large, getting more
Speaker 1: and more of their content online. Uh last year in
Speaker 1: streaming on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, in our website, we had
Speaker 1: about two million unique viewers, which is still just a
Speaker 1: fraction of what you would see for the Oscars, the
Speaker 1: Primetime Emmys, or or Globes, for example, but it also
Speaker 1: made us the only major awards show to actually be
Speaker 1: posting audience growth year over year for the last three years,
Speaker 1: and so we we do see a positive trend in
Speaker 1: that area where fans do want to tune into it
Speaker 1: and are finding it. And I think next year you
Speaker 1: will see some new investments from us to make the
Speaker 1: show more accessible and are continuing conversations about if there
Speaker 1: are aspects of the weekend. We're now a three night
Speaker 1: event that can get on broadcast television, and so at
Speaker 1: this point I am very confident that come June, you
Speaker 1: will be able to watch some, if not all, of
Speaker 1: the time Emmys on a television set in your living room.
Speaker 1: But but it's still still streamed or do you Are
Speaker 1: you saying that you feel like that there's a good
Speaker 1: chance that you will have a more traditional license deal
Speaker 1: with an outlet. We are continuing car stations with networks
Speaker 1: and looking at O T T opportunities. Um, but where
Speaker 1: we said right now, all we can say is that
Speaker 1: by June, we're pretty confident you'll be able to watch
Speaker 1: it on the TV sett in your living room. For
Speaker 1: as long as I have been covering television, which is
Speaker 1: a long time, there has been speculation about an eventual
Speaker 1: reunification of the New York based National Academy of Television
Speaker 1: Arts and Sciences and the North Hollywood based Television Academy.
Speaker 1: Do you see any potential for that on the horizon.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the two organizations are working together more,
Speaker 1: which when I first it was the level of hostility
Speaker 1: between these the two groups was. They didn't even try
Speaker 1: to hide it. It seems like a much more cordial environment.
Speaker 1: But is there anything that would that you see on
Speaker 1: the horizon that could bring you together or do you
Speaker 1: like the set up as it stands now? Well? I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone is talking right now about the reunification
Speaker 1: of the organizations and sort of that corporate sense, but
Speaker 1: there is certainly a reunification of mission and purpose that
Speaker 1: is well underway and something that is a departure from
Speaker 1: some of those troubles of of the past. I was
Speaker 1: just out in l A last week and spent the
Speaker 1: majority of the time with counterparts from the Television Academy.
Speaker 1: We coordinate on this year's Daytime Emmys, in assembling our
Speaker 1: judging panels and so on. We coordinated on some of
Speaker 1: the category adjustments and changes we made in this year's competition,
Speaker 1: even making some tweaks to what programs fall under prime
Speaker 1: time or daytime now that the clock isn't as clear
Speaker 1: a predictor of that as it as it used to be,
Speaker 1: and so I think we still have pre clearly defined
Speaker 1: lanes and news, sports, primetime, daytime, etcetera. And there's certainly
Speaker 1: more than enough work to go around. But the fact
Speaker 1: that we are talking and collaborating and marching forward on
Speaker 1: several different initiatives I think is very positive for the
Speaker 1: relationship and for the community. Well, we will stay tuned
Speaker 1: on that. Thank you, Thank you so much before I
Speaker 1: let you go tell me, because I do want to
Speaker 1: recognize that NATUS does represent a lot of television production
Speaker 1: that happens in local markets from the Midwest to the Southwest.
Speaker 1: And again, as I said, basically, there's maybe a thirty
Speaker 1: mile radius around North Hollywood where you are not allowed
Speaker 1: to give an award. But beyond that, what is in
Speaker 1: the last year, So what what is one of the
Speaker 1: coolest pieces of content, whether it was a news report
Speaker 1: or sports or entertainment, something really that impressed you, that
Speaker 1: came out of the truly grassroots, the local local market.
Speaker 1: Anything stand out to you. Oh wow, there is so
Speaker 1: much to to pick from, and I get to go
Speaker 1: to a lot of the chapter galas and their award shows,
Speaker 1: and every time I go to one, I come away saying,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, that was better than the last and
Speaker 1: look at that that segment. I think, rather than one
Speaker 1: specific piece, what I will say I continue to be
Speaker 1: reminded of and impressed by is the role our TV
Speaker 1: stations and TV producers. And this is not just local
Speaker 1: but nationalists will play in our communities and day the
Speaker 1: life and on the national level that is the evening
Speaker 1: news and having the soap on during the day, and
Speaker 1: the programming we honor is rather intimate because for the
Speaker 1: most part we're honoring is not that lean back with
Speaker 1: the bucket of popcorn on the couch, but it is
Speaker 1: what you have on at the dinner table. It is
Speaker 1: what you have on on the kitchen counter. It's when
Speaker 1: in the morning when you're trying to decide what to
Speaker 1: wear exactly, it's telling you are you going to need
Speaker 1: an umbrella? Are you going to have to evacuate? Are
Speaker 1: your kids going to a good school. Most Americans start
Speaker 1: their day watching one of our members and end their
Speaker 1: day watching one of our our members. And so when
Speaker 1: I go to our regional Galas. What always impresses me
Speaker 1: is the deep community connection of our members there and
Speaker 1: of these local news organizations where particularly in times of
Speaker 1: christ Us when you see a hurricane or a tornado,
Speaker 1: or not too long ago, I was at our Northwest
Speaker 1: Chapter Emmy's and one of their Golden Silver Circle honorees
Speaker 1: who this is essentially our hall of fame. The Golden
Speaker 1: Slover Circle are for recognizing fifty or twenty five years
Speaker 1: respectively of work in our industry. And one of the
Speaker 1: honorees was an anchor from Alaska who had really been
Speaker 1: a clear source of comfort and leadership in the community
Speaker 1: in the wake of horrible earthquake up there last year
Speaker 1: that had hit while he and his co anchors were
Speaker 1: on the air. Um and this was an anchor I
Speaker 1: had known as a reporter early in my career down
Speaker 1: in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and we that night
Speaker 1: had this conversation about now is being through now two
Speaker 1: of these experiences of the role of the local broadcaster
Speaker 1: in being that voice of both comfort and factual life
Speaker 1: SA saving information in times of crisis. And so, while
Speaker 1: not one piece specifically, I think that is a theme
Speaker 1: that every time I go to one of our chapters,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded by how important that connection to the viewer
Speaker 1: in the community is, and the importance of that urgency
Speaker 1: cannot be overstated. That the importance of people turning to
Speaker 1: television when the weather is going crazy, when you don't
Speaker 1: know why sirens are going off on the black the
Speaker 1: fact that people turn to broadcast TV or even radio
Speaker 1: nowadays is still it's still got that that that that
Speaker 1: bond that you have just grown up with. You would
Speaker 1: never turn to Netflix to try to know what you know,
Speaker 1: to know what is blowing through your neighborhood in a
Speaker 1: in a hurricane exactly. And in the world of fake news, disinformation, misinformation,
Speaker 1: so and so far um, there is a lot of
Speaker 1: click bait out there that can be fun to click on,
Speaker 1: fund to read, so on and so forth. But when
Speaker 1: you need to know do I need to grab the
Speaker 1: go bag and get out of my house or pick
Speaker 1: up the kids because something horrible has happened, you know
Speaker 1: you want that person who is standing out there on
Speaker 1: your street on the cell phone to the mayor's office
Speaker 1: with FEMA on hold to get you that information you
Speaker 1: need in real real time. A very distinguished gim once
Speaker 1: told me that all television is local, and I think
Speaker 1: that is true. Adam Sharp, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your time, Thank you, thanks for listening. Be sure to
Speaker 1: tune in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.