Emmy Awards: Children’s & Family Categories to Get Their Own Ceremony
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced on November 17 that there is a new Emmy Awards ceremony set for 2022: The Children’s & Family Emmy Awards.
Previously, those categories were included in the Daytime Emmys but in a historic shift, the children’s and family sections will land their own event. This is the first standalone Emmy expansion since the Sports Emmy Awards and the News & Documentary Emmy Awards in 1979.
The announcement follows a previous agreement between NATAS and the Television Academy, which administers the Primetime Emmys, to consolidate all children’s programming regardless of daytime or evening air times.
NATAS president and CEO Adam Sharp stated, “This is something we have had in the works for a while. We rolled in those primetime children’s programming categories that had never been in our competition before—awarding children’s programming across all day parts and not being tied to an arbitrary time on the clock. And so working with our counterparts at the Television Academy, we started to really think about how to spin these categories out of the daytime competition and stand on its own two feet.”
According to NATAS, the children’s and family content categories are among the fastest-growing genres across all Emmy awards, with a reported 23% increase in programming over the past two years, per Deadline. NATAS also added seven new categories in the preschool TV sector, which are now part of the Children’s & Family Emmys.
“We had been adding categories over the years to accommodate the changing industry, but we weren’t necessarily trimming in other areas at the same time,” Sharp continued in a statement as to why create a separate Emmys ceremony. “So some steam had to be led out of the kettle. Segmenting these competitions now into these two tracks of daytime and children’s does allow each competition to breathe a bit. And realign the categorization to better serve each community.”
Sharp noted, “Recognizing that this is a growing sector of our industry, no longer limited by just three hours on Saturday morning across three networks, I think really works to the benefit of the whole community and of the awards. And I think you’ll see more from us in the coming months as we build on that to look at how we align all our competitions categories, to best serve the community in that regard.”
The Children’s & Family Emmys categories, eligibility rules, and calls for entries will take place in 2022.
Children’s & Family Emmy Awards, Ceremony, 2022
