NATAS Announces Children’s & Family Emmy Awards Competition and Ceremony

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) today announced the Children’s & Family Emmy® Awards, to debut in 2022. The announcement marks the first standalone expansion of the Emmy Award competition since the Sports Emmy Awards and the News & Documentary Emmy Awards were launched in 1979, and establishes a dedicated ceremony separate from the Daytime Emmy Awards, which had been home to children’s and family programming categories.

The announcement comes in response to Children’s and Family content representing the fastest-growing genre that NATAS awards, with a 23% increase in related programming the past two years. In particular, the Individual Achievement in Animation category received the largest number of entries across all NATAS contests, with nearly 300 submissions last year. It also comes a year after the Television Academy and NATAS agreed to consolidate all children’s categories together under the purview of NATAS. In recognition of these trends, NATAS has added seven new categories to accommodate growth in the preschool sector, which will now be among the categories recognized in the new competition.

“NATAS has always been a leader in recognizing and celebrating excellence in our industry, and nothing is excelling and expanding more dramatically than the children’s and family community. Recent years have seen explosive growth in the quantity and quality of children’s and family programming, and now is the perfect time to acknowledge and honor this impactful content with a dedicated competition and celebration,” said Adam Sharp, President and CEO, NATAS.

In addition to the now standalone Children’s & Family Emmys®, NATAS celebrates achievements in News & Documentary, Sports, and Daytime television programming, as well as achievements in television Technology & Engineering. NATAS provides extensive educational programs including regional and national scholarships and Student Production Awards through its Foundation, which, in partnership with The Coca-Cola Company, recently announced the call for entries for the Coca-Cola HBCU Student Production Grant. The grant is awarded to historically black college or university (HBCU) students enrolled in an HBCU’s journalism or media production program with a focus on sports broadcasting.

NATAS membership consists of more than 18,000 broadcast and media professionals represented in 19 regional chapters across the United States.

Categories, eligibility rules and the call for entries for the Children’s & Family Emmys will be announced separately in 2022.