NATAS Judging Procedures

PURPOSE:  To recognize outstanding achievements in television and allied media by conferring annual awards of merit in the Chapter’s designated award region.  The presentation of these awards is intended to be an incentive for the continued pursuit of excellence for those working in the television and media industry and to focus public attention on outstanding cultural, educational, technological, entertainment, news, informational programming and craft achievements in television and on-line.

JUDGING PROCEDURE:  Entries made to this Chapter will be judged by panels assembled by other NATAS Chapters.  These panels shall be comprised of no fewer than 6 judges who shall be certified as peers.  No more than 3 judges on a panel may be employed by the same station or company. Judges may not have a conflict of interest, which is described as having a direct involvement in the production of an entry, or having a personal relationship with a member of the production staff of an entry.  Group ownership, by itself, does not necessarily create a conflict of interest.

NON-COMPETITIVE JUDGING: Entries are judged against a standard of excellence and do not compete against each other. There may be one award, more than one award or no award given in each category.  Any exceptions will be noted in the category description.

JUDGING REQUIREMENT:  The success of the Emmy® Awards process depends on the willingness of qualified professionals to serve as judges.  Peers in other NATAS Chapters are serving this Chapter’s entrants.  This Chapter will judge other Chapter’s entries.  By entering, you agree to serve as a judge when asked.

All entries sent to judges for screening are deemed to be eligible by the Chapter whose work is being judged.  For that reason, judges are required to score each entry regardless if they feel it has been placed in the wrong category or might have technical problems.  Forms are available should judges wish to challenge any entry. On challenge entries, judges are asked to score without bias, even if they believe an entry is not in an appropriate category.

INTENTIONAL FALSIFICATION:  The entrant warrants that he/she/they are the party(ies) most responsible for the award-worthiness of the entry.  The intentional falsification of production credits or entry credits may be the basis for disqualification.

ENTRY ERRORS AND OMISSIONS: The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences assumes no responsibility for the acts or omissions of those individuals or entities submitting entries pursuant to this notice.  All submitting entities and/or individuals are advised to review submissions with respect to correct name credits and other information.  NATAS shall accept all submissions that are not in conflict with any of its rules and regulations.

COPYRIGHT:  Each entrant agrees that any form of analog and/or digital recording, whether it be film, tape recording, screenshot or supplemental printed material that is furnished to NATAS in connection with an entry may be retained by the National Academy for file, reference and archival purposes and may be viewed partially or in its entirety for judging purposes. All of, or portions of, said content may be used on or in connection with the awards ceremony, any broadcast/telecast and other exhibition, including internet; as well as with promotional announcements or activities for any of the foregoing. If required, the entrant is further responsible for approval and clearances to the appropriate parties for any use of this copyright content.

PEER JUDGING

A peer judge is defined as any person with a minimum of two years of professional experience in the field of television program production or programming who is directly engaged in or supervises the discipline they’re being asked to judge. Potential judges may also include professionals in allied fields, who by the specific nature of their work are uniquely qualified to make judgmental decisions concerning particular areas of television production. Examples of peer judges include: television writers;  producers; directors; programming, production and news executives; craft persons; advertising agency executives and creative directors involved in programming decisions; print journalists (who have hands-on television production experience); sports professionals; college university educators who represent journalism/film/television; and former broadcast journalists.

To judge, teachers must either teach the specific crafts being judged, or have had professional experience performing the craft being judged.

Writing newspaper or magazine columns and/or articles about television or media does not qualify a person as a peer in any television category. Television critics are not peers.

Whenever a current job title does not obviously qualify a judge as a peer, the judge should list, on the judge’s certification section of the ballot, his/her previous experience, which qualifies him/her as a peer for the programs or crafts being judged.

(Note:  The success of the Emmy® awards process depends on the willingness of qualified professionals to serve as judges. As stipulated by the “Standard Clauses,” those persons entering the competition have agreed to serve as a judge, when asked).

Spanish-Language Entries

By vote of the Board of Trustees (October, 2002), every Spanish-language entry that is submitted for Emmy® consideration must be judged by a qualified panel of Spanish-speaking, peer judges.  It will be necessary for each Chapter to conduct two, distinct award competitions; one competition for English-language entries and another for Spanish-language entries.

English-language entries from a given area will be judged by a panel of English-speaking judges while Spanish-language entries from the same area will be judged by a panel of Spanish-speaking judges.  The scores produced by these two panels must not be combined; instead the scores must be interpreted separately by your CPA firm for final “cut-off” evaluation.

During the Awards Ceremony, it is permissible for the statuettes for the English-language and the Spanish-language recipients of the same category to be presented at the same time.

Each Chapter will arrange with another Chapter separate and distinct judging.  It is recommended that judging panels be assembled by those Chapters that are most able to assemble judging panels, based on the existence of Spanish-held communication companies and the identification of bi-lingual professionals who work in the general television market.  Judges must be peers from the ranks of qualified television professionals, including allied fields such as production, post-production and academia.

In order for a Chapter’s entries to be properly routed for separate judging, the entry form must include a method for designating the entry to be “English” or “Spanish.”

Special Note:

At the discretion of those Chapters who mutually consent to the practice, it is permissible, wherever practical, to enlist the use of a single, all bi-lingual judging panel (per category), to negate the need of conducting separate judging. However, this practice might exclude the largest body of potential judges – television peer professionals who only speak English – from participating in the judging process.  Further, it might over-utilize a considerably smaller body of potential judges – television professionals who speak both English and Spanish – rather quickly.  For these reasons, this practice is not preferred.

All other rules apply.