With some legal encumbrances cleared away for now, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) has announced the broadband nominees for news and documentary Emmys in four categories, up from only one in 2006.
Arbitrators may have ruled that NATAS can't announce any new broadband award nominees or launch a planned new broadband awards program until a dispute with the West Coast Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is resolved, but NATAS said the ruling Monday paved the way for release of the broadband nominees in previously announced broadband categories.
For the second year in a row, no commercial broadcast network was nominated, according to NATAS spokeswoman Cheryl Daly, though all submitted content (save for Fox, which does not enter). No TV station entered, said Daly. The submissions had to be original-to-broadband rather than repurposed television content, which may explain the dearth of broadcast submissions given that they must fill airtime as well deliver bits and bytes.
Still, PBS.org tied with washingtonpost.com for most nods with four apiece. Others with multiple nominations were freep.com (Detroit Free Press), with three and sfgate.com (San Francisco Chronicle), and mediastorm.org with two apiece.
Four awards will be given out this year, up from one last year.
NATAS planned to announce the nominations this week, but had to wait for the arbitrator's ruling, since ATAS had not wanted NATAS to announce any broadband nominees, said Daly.
