DAYTIME EMMY OVERHAUL
The 2017 Daytime Emmy Awards drew negative publicity after Patrika Darbo’s (Shirley, B&B) award for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Digital Daytime Drama as THE BAY’S Mickey was revoked when her submission was determined to be in violation of two rules governing the category, and the category’s second-highest vote-getter, Jennifer Bassey (ex-marian, ALL MY CHILDREN), who was nominated for her work on ANACOSTIA, was also disqualified from a victory over rule violations.
In July, higher-ups at all four soaps signed a letter to NATAS alleging concerns of “bias, perceived collusion, and personal agendas” afoot in the competition, threatening a boycott of the awards “until these important issues are resolved.” The letter triggered NATAS’S decision to contract an independent firm to review the Daytime Emmys’ procedures and rules. The final report, written by Kevin M. Goldberg and Robert M. Winteringham from the law firm of Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, was delivered to NATAS in early November, and in response to its findings and recommendations, NATAS is promising big changes to the Daytime Emmys in 2019 and beyond.
“Representatives of several shows in the daytime community raised concerns with how the 45th Daytime Emmys were managed, and with some of the broader policies and procedures of our academy,” Adam Sharp, interim President of NATAS, tells Digest. “Recognizing that the pre-eminence of the Emmy as a symbol of excellence is dependent on the faith and confidence of those in the community, we saw a need to make sure that each of those concerns were thoroughly and properly addressed. We moved quickly to task an independent firm to look into our operations and to do so with no limitations on what they looked into, who they questioned — they had full access to our email system, and [left] no stone unturned in seeking answers to some of these questions and providing recommendations for how best to move forward.”
Sharp says that “there were certainly areas of the report that, in noting errors
and mistakes that were made, were painful to read, but necessary to read and to be responsive to. I think the report was exceedingly fair and the criticism it makes is where criticism was due. We do need to do much better as an organization, and I think the steps we’re putting in place to substantially adopt these recommendations put us on the path toward that.”
The areas of concern the report addresses include inconsistent rule enforcement, the potential appearance of favoritism, vote tabulation and competition judging, and the changes yielded by its recommendations will include updates and clarifications to the Daytime Emmy submission rule book (“If something is not a rule you have a way of enforcing, it probably shouldn’t be a rule,” Sharp notes of the ambiguity in the 2018 Daytime Emmy rule book about what constitutes an “episode”, particularly where web series are concerned); the hiring of additional staff to manage submissions and voting (Sharp says, “From 2017 to 2018, we saw more than a 30 percent increase in the number of entries; we simply did not scale our operations internally to meet that growth and as a result, the resources were stretched thin and created an environment where some balls could be dropped”); and a redistribution of executive duties.
On that front, explains Sharp, “David Michaels, who is our senior vice president of daytime and the executive producer of the shows for the last several years, will focus his energies most thoroughly on the production of the event itself, and Brent Stanton, the executive director of the Daytime Emmys on our team, will take more independent leadership and oversight of the competition.”
In the end, Sharp says, “We are hopeful and optimistic that all members of the daytime community will have the confidence and faith in our process to compete next year. It is somewhat unprecedented for an organization like ours to conduct such a deep introspection into how our awards process works. We are being responsive to every single recommendation in that report. Through this process we’ve had productive conversations with some of the dramas. Several of them were interviewed in the course of the investigation and we hope that by involving them in the process and by being responsive to their concerns, they will join us for the 2019 competition and the show.”
“We are being responsive to every single recommendation in that report.”