The 2020-2021 Daytime Emmy Awards processes have been highlighted in a new Transparency Report released by NATAS. The report sheds light on how the organization handled difficult decisions, such as which category to include Days of our Lives' digital spinoffs.
Today the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) released its 2020-2021 Transparency Report, which provides context, insight, and visibility into the processes for submissions, judging, and dispute adjudication and resolution for the Daytime Emmy Award competition.
The report, which consolidates data from two years of Emmy Awards competitions administered by NATAS in 2020 and 2021, "strives to provide a comprehensive, under-the-hood look at the myriad calculations, discussions -- and in some cases -- difficult decisions that precede the ultimate presentation of the television industry's highest honor."
The document gives a detailed look into how NATAS determines award winners and how judging irregularities are handled. For example, it states how it handled the ten of the 1,010 judges in the 2020 competition that were identified for review after their votes were flagged as irregular. It also highlights changes made in 2021, after NATAS rolled out an additional, automated methodology by which to identify potential judge impropriety; the automated methodology uses algorithms to identify potential outliers that may indicate improper behavior such as coordination, bias, or manipulation. Using this new method, 2021 saw nine of the 866 judges in the competition being identified for Committee review, and the report gives a detailed look at how it handled each of these cases.
The report also includes information as to how NATAS handled various eligibility issues. While many of the entrants are anonymously listed, some are mentioned by name, such as Days of our Lives, which faced eligibility questions in 2020 regarding its digital properties that premiered on the series' DOOL app.
According to the report, the Days of Our Lives digital properties petitioned to go into the Digital Drama Series category as opposed to the Short-Form category, even though the average runtime was eight minutes and the minimum for Digital Drama was ten minutes. The Awards Committee accepted the petition based on reasonableness and a policy of discouraging switching genres. Both digital shows were therefore considered spin-offs of Drama Series Days of Our Lives, which put the digitals squarely into Digital Drama Series.
Meanwhile, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, shows produced many fewer episodes than in a traditional year, which created questions for the 2021 competition. According to the report, one nominated Drama chose to keep a full complement of directors in rotation to guarantee continued employment during the slowdown. As a result, none of its directorial staff reached the required threshold of 19% of season episodes to be deemed eligible for submission in the Directing category. The Awards Committee ruled that an exception was warranted whereby the minimum was lowered to 10%. All other programming nominated in the category was notified of this change and given the opportunity to add to their submissions any new individuals who thereby qualified under the lower threshold.
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To view NATAS full 2020-2021 Transparency Report, which also includes the organization's first-ever Demographic Survey of the NATAS Judging Pool, click here.
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