NEW YORK—The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the “Excellence in Production Technology” Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leighton, co-founder of Akamai, received Lifetime Achievement Honors at the 76th Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards held on Dec. 4th at the Prince George Ballroom in New York.

During the ceremony, hosted by David Pogue, Dr. Leighton’s Lifetime Achievement Honors reflected a career where he patented more than 50 developments surrounding content delivery, internet protocols, algorithms for networks, cryptography and digital rights management, and he created the largest distributed computing platform, which today delivers and secures tens of millions of requests per second to billions of users around the world.

Prior to the ceremony, Adam Sharp, president & CEO, of NATAS shared: “It is a privilege to celebrate the individuals and companies who continue to redefine how technology can deliver communications to consumers around the world. I applaud Dr. Leighton’s many years of development and leadership, plus the countless technological achievements he has realized as co-founder and now CEO of Akamai.”

Joe Inzerillo, Chair of the NATAS Technology & Engineering Committee said: “As the technological landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, the pioneering work that has come from this year’s class of honorees is astounding. Congratulations to all this year’s Technology & Engineering Emmys winners.”

“Every time you stream content to your viewers, every time you shop online or check your bank balance, or hold a virtual meeting with colleagues at work, chances are very good that you’re using Akamai or the technology that Akamai employees pioneered,” added Dr. Leighton. “Our goal today is the same as it was in the beginning - to power and protect life online by making the internet fast, reliable, and secure today, for billions of people a trillion times a day.”

NASA+ won the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy for its “2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of NASA”. This was a live broadcast and streaming event for the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, featuring expert commentary, multiple telescope feeds (including a dedicated one for the corona), and coverage from across North America, offering science, stunning visuals, and citizen science opportunities like Eclipse Soundscapes, allowing everyone to experience this rare cosmic event even if not in the path of totality.

Other 2025 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards Honorees at the Dec. 4 ceremony included:

• Pioneering Standardization of VOD Asset Metadata Distribution Specifications: CableLabs
• 360 Degree Consumer Video Capture, Editing and Presentation Technologies: GoPro; Insta360; Google; Adobe; Apple; ByteDance
• Specification for AV1: Alliance for Open Media
• SMPTE ST 2067 — Standardization of Interoperable Master Format (IMF): SMPTE/IMF USER GROUP; Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA); Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI); University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center (USC-ETC)
• Pioneering Mastering HDR Display: Dolby Labs
• AI Image/Video Enhancement for High Quality TV Catalog Restoration: MTI Films; Topaz Labs
• Standardization of Common Media Application Format (CMAF): MPEG Systems (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 3)

Also celebrated at the December 4th ceremony are the following Technology Pioneers:

• For the pioneering concepts of the light valve: Michael Faraday and John Kerr
• For the pioneering development of the photocell: Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel, Julius Johann, Phillipp Ludwig Elster, and Hans Friedrich Karl Geitel
• For the pioneering development of optical-input facsimile transmission, Carlo Mario Perosino, Édouard Belin, and Arthur Korn

For more information, please visit the website at http://www.theemmys.tv/

The Television Academy has announced the recipients of the 75th Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy Awards honoring an individual, company or organization for developments in broadcast technology. The award ceremony will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023.

"Advancements in technology are a fundamental part of television production and greatly contribute to the elevation of the storytelling process," said Frank Scherma, chair of the Television Academy. "We are honored to recognize these distinguished and talented engineers, scientists and technologists who are at the forefront of pioneering fundamental advancements in television and storytelling."

"The Engineering, Science & Technology Emmys have always recognized domestic ingenuity as well as major innovators from around the world," said committee co-chair Barry Zegel.

"Half of this year's recipients are headquartered outside of North America," added Co-Chair Wendy Aylsworth, "and it's exciting to see how they are changing the television industry."

The Academy said that the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors a living individual whose ongoing contributions have significantly affected the state of television technology and engineering, will be given to Birney Dayton. 

Television technology pioneer, Birney Dayton, was one of the founders as well as CEO and CTO of NVISION, which he ran for 20 years. With the goal of building products to support and drive the development of high-definition television, NVISION has been lauded for their innovative products in digital audio, HDTV routing and other broadcast facility products. Prior to NVISION, Dayton was vice president of engineering for Grass Valley Group leading the development of digital products that streamlined the routing of digital signals through production and operations centers. An innovator in bringing fiber optics to the world of television, he built the first fiber-optic transmission system for over-the-air television, used for the opening ceremonies of the 1980 Olympics. In the late 1980s, Dayton chaired the systems analysis working party of the ACATS (Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service), which tested and selected the best-of-breed technologies to establish the digital television distribution standard that continues to operate throughout North America. In addition, he helped develop the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) analog and digital component video standards, was co-chair of the SMPTE high-definition electronic-production working group and was awarded the SMPTE Progress Medal for his numerous industry-changing digital audio products and technologies. Dayton has authored numerous industry papers and currently holds 15 patents.

This year's Philo T. Farnsworth Corporate Achievement Award, which honors an agency, company or institution whose contributions over time have significantly impacted television technology and engineering, will be given to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB).

The National Association of Broadcasters is the voice for the nation's radio and television broadcasters. As the premier trade association for broadcasters, NAB advances the interests of their members in federal government, industry and public affairs; improves the quality and profitability of broadcasting; encourages content and technology innovation; and spotlights the important and unique ways stations serve their communities.

The Academy also announced that this year’s Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy Awards will be given to: 

• Recipients: Chris Deighton, Richard Mead, Adrian Jeakins, Evangelos Apostolopoulos for the Brompton Technology Tessera SX40 LED video processor. Brompton Technology's Tessera SX40 LED (light-emitting diode) video processor has been a key enabler of the revolution in using LED screens for virtual production. To make LED screen-based virtual production even possible requires high-quality, artifact-free processing. The SX40 has become a significant ingredient in a winning recipe utilized in virtual production studios worldwide. Software upgrades have further improved performance and optimized virtual production workflows, ensuring the greatest possible flexibility for the creative team while delivering the gold standard for color accuracy and on-camera visual performance.
• Recipients: Steve Rosenbluth, Thomas E. Burgess, Konstantin Smola, Glen Winchester for the Concept Overdrive Motion System. Concept Overdrive is a valuable tool for virtual production and augmented reality and has become a professional standard for the control of machines and animatronics in television production worldwide. With an acclaimed user interface, the system implements a streaming motion network, real-time constraints and maximally digital motion control, which make it ideal for interfacing with the real world in modern production environments.
• Recipient: International Telecommunications Union – Radiocommunications – Study Group 6 for the Standardization of High Dynamic Range Television (HDR-TV). Since its first publication in July 2016, Recommendation ITU-R BT.2100 "image-parameter values for high-dynamic range television for use in production and international program exchange," more simply known as HDR-TV, has impacted the entire television industry, from cameras, post-production (especially in color processing), delivery though traditional broadcasting OTT (over-the-top) streaming services, and both professional and consumer display/television products. BT.2100 provided the critically important international specifications that have enabled HDR to become widely practiced and enjoyed by consumers.
• Recipients: Raymond Drewry and Jim Helman for the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR). Created by the technical staff at MovieLabs, the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) unifies the commercial film and television industry around one standardized content ID, one infrastructure for creating and sharing the ID, and one nested data model for describing the relationships between abstract titles, specific edits of each title and their packagings for distribution. EIDR has provided the mission-critical infrastructure that has enabled the explosion in digital distribution of film and television content to an increasing set of consumer devices over the last 10 years.
• Recipient: David Eubank for the pCAM Pro. pCAM Pro is a mobile software application developed for Apple's iOS devices that offers a comprehensive suite of 26 cinematography tools designed for television and film professionals. These tools include calculations to guide decisions on designing camera shots, set design and construction, selecting lenses and camera sensor formats, achieving proper exposure and color balance, creating flicker-free lighting and lighting designs, and functional eye-light and lighting effects, among others. Most notably, it allows for accurate pre-visualization of specific lens and camera pairings, making it an invaluable tool for set crews.
• Recipients: Thomas Riedel, Jake Dodson, Wolfgang Fritz, Jiou-Pahn Lee for the Riedel BOLERO Wireless Intercom. Riedel Bolero's ADR (Advanced DECT Receiver) wireless intercom solution with multi-diversity and anti-reflection technology, delivers greater RF (radio frequency) robustness than ever seen before in the industry. In addition, it offers Touch 'n Go NFC (near-field communication) belt-pack registration and versatile operation as a wireless belt pack, a wireless key panel, or (an industry first) a walkie talkie. It also features bluetooth compatibility for phone connections. It successfully provides clear communications in venues that had previously been difficult or impossible to cover due to physical venue design or competing DECT (digital enhanced cordless telecommunications) systems.
• Recipients: Jeffrey Gray, Russell Hocken, Barrett Phillips, Greg Smokler for the SmallHD Monitor Platform. SmallHD's rugged and daylight-viewable production monitors have become a staple on every production set, from scripted dramas to live broadcasts. SmallHD's hardware platform features an entirely custom electronic architecture that allows for continuous expansion of features and connectivity as well as enabling the unique industry-leading PageOS 5 monitoring software system. From the compact on-camera Smart 5 and Smart 7 series to the 4K production monitor line, SmallHD has created a unified and cohesive series of monitors that allow for accurate and consistent viewing and color reproduction across different cameras and applications, ensuring a consistent creative vision from set to final output.
• Recipients: Meir Shashoua, Yaniv Alon, Shai Fishman for the Waves Clarity Vx Pro. Clarity Vx Pro is a revolutionary noise-reduction plugin that uses the cutting-edge and powerful Neural Networks engine developed by Waves to separate dialogue from ambience at the highest quality without artifacts and in real time, which sets a new standard in post-production. Addressing today's post-production needs, Clarity Vx Pro allows for real-time processing and vastly speeds up and enhances the workflow of dialogue editing and mixing. Clarity works in most DAWs (digital audio workstations) to create immediate, clean results without having to render, bounce, duplicate or consolidate tracks. It allows editors and mixers to listen to the dialog processing as part of the whole mix in context.

The Engineering, Science & Technology Emmys are made possible by Television Academy sponsors Drybar, Franciacorta, JUSTIN Vineyards & Winery, People and United Airlines.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) will be honored with the Philo T. Farnsworth Corporate Achievement Award by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences during the 75th Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy Awards Oct. 18 in Los Angeles.

The award recognizes NAB’s centennial anniversary as the voice of America’s broadcasters. The association has played a part in major technological and engineering milestones throughout television history, including: the development of the digital television standard; the development of the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard and supporting the ongoing NextGen TV transition; stereo audio for analog television; UHF channel allocation; and the inclusion of V-chips in television sets.

NAB was also part of the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s (ATSC) collaborative effort that developed audio level normalization for television commercials, which received a Primetime Emmy Engineering Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 2014.

"For a century, NAB has played a leading role in the development of cutting-edge advancements that have helped the television industry capture stunning pictures and sounds, unlock innovative programming and captivate countless viewers across the globe," said NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt. "We are honored to accept this Emmy award on behalf of the numerous innovators at work over the past hundred years, and we are excited about the new technologies being rolled out that will enhance viewer experiences and help broadcasters better serve their audiences."

The Philo T. Farnsworth Corporate Achievement Award is given to an agency, company or institution whose contributions over time have significantly impacted television technology and engineering. Past recipients include the American Society of Cinematographers, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, NASA, Arri, Dolby, Avid, Sony, Grass Valley and Evertz.

More information is available on the NAB website.

NEW YORK—The winners of the 71st annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards were announced Wednesday, Jan. 15, recognizing innovation and achievement in areas ranging from imaging sensor development to pioneering work on a public cloud-based media supply chain.

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) will honor this year’s recipients in partnership with the National Association of Broadcasters during the 2020 NAB Show at the Wynn Encore Hotel and Spa on April 19.

“The Technology & Engineering Emmy Award was the first Emmy Award issued in 1949, and it laid the groundwork for all the other Emmys to come,” said Adam Sharp, president and CEO of NATAS. “We are especially excited to be honoring Yvette Kanouff with our Lifetime Achievement Award in Technology & Engineering.”

Describing Kanouff as one of the “talented and innovative leaders” who has made “the incredible world of television possible,” Robert Seidel, chairman of the NATAS Technology & Engineering Achievement Committee, pointed out that she spearheaded “transformational technologies,” such as video on-demand, cloud DVR, digital and on-demand ads, streaming security and privacy. “The National academy is happy to be honoring her with our Lifetime Achievement Award in Technology,” he said

Winners of the 2020 Technical/Engineering Achievement Awards include:

• Adobe for a pioneering system for live performance-based animation using facial recognition;
• Apple, Google, LG, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and Samsung for HTML5 development and deployment of a full TV experience on any device;
• AWS, Discovery, Evertz, Fox NE&O (Walt Disney Television) and SDVI for pioneering public cloud-based linear media supply chains;
• Sling TV, Sony PlayStation Vue and Zattoo for pioneering development of large scale, cloud-served, broadcast-quality linear channel transmission to consumers;
• Dell (Isilon), IBM, Masstech and Quantum for early development of HSM systems that create a pivotal improvement in broadcast workflows;
• Cable Labs for pioneering development and deployment of hybrid fiber coax network architecture;
• Bell Labs and Michael Tompsett for pioneering development of the CCD image sensor;
• AVI West, Dejero, LiveU and TVU Networks for VoCIP (video over bonded cellular internet);
• Canon and Flovel for ultra-high sensitivity HDTV camera; and
• ACL NetworX, Audinate, Audio Engineering Society, Keven Gross, QCS, Telos Alliance and Wheatstone for development of synchronized multichannel uncompressed audio transport over IP networks.

The Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards honor a living individual, a company or a scientific or technical organization for developments and/or standardization involved in engineering technologies that either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they materially have affected television.

More information is available on the NATAS website.

NEW YORK—Now in its 64th year, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is embracing the digital realities of its industry and has created a new logo and branding reflecting that.

“The Emmy Awards are stronger than ever, with new distribution platforms driving record-breaking entry levels in each of our competitions,” said Adam Sharp, NATAS president and CEO. “The new NATAS branding captures the long history of the iconic Emmy Award, now right at home in the digital age.”

The new identity package will be implemented across each of NATAS’ competitions, programs and properties, as well as the academy’s 19 regional chapters. It includes variations to accommodate a myriad of platforms, screen sizes and products.

NATAS also announced that it is working with Switzerland-based Frontify as its brand management platform, which will provide a cloud-based platform for maintaining up-to-date style guides, shared media libraries and in-depth collaboration for stakeholders across brand, design, marketing and front-end developers.

NEW YORK—The original YouTube stars, founders Chad Hurley and Shin Chen, are being recognized for their creation by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with the Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Hurley, 42, and Chen, 40, first met when they were employees at PayPal. They would create the video-sharing website YouTube in February 2005, which would go on to be ranked as the 10th most popular website a year after its launch. Google purchased YouTube in November 2006, making it one of its subsidiaries.

Today, 1.3 billion people use YouTube; 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute; and almost five billion videos are watched on YouTube every day.

“YouTube is one of this generation’s masterpieces of scale and simplicity,” said NATAS Technology & Engineering Committee Chairman Emeritus Charles Jablonski in the announcement. “It succeeded because of the extraordinary work it took to make the site easy to use, fast and capable of never-thought-of amounts of video. Television now has the ability to create, store and distribute material without the need of an intermediate party to gate-keep material to consumers.”

“The success of YouTube and the way it has revolutionized the way the average consumer can view, create and engage with an audience of millions is extraordinary,” added Adam Sharp, president & CEO of NATAS. “Hurley and Chen are a testament to the story of the American technology entrepreneur who imagine something and through hard work and perseverance makes that dream a reality, not only creating a new method of media distribution for a wide audience, but enabling the true democratization of television.”

Hurley and Chen will receive their awards during the 70th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards, which will take place at the Wynn Encore Resort & Spa in Las Vegas on Sunday, April 7, in cooperation with the 2019 NAB Show.

NEW YORK—A new website launched by the Television Academy Foundation gives TV fans an opportunity to go behind the scenes of television’s most famous moments.

More than two decades in the making, “The Interviews: An Oral History of Television” (televisionacademy.com/interviews) features nearly 900 interviews of noted television actors, producers and creators throughout the 70+ years of television in the U.S. Features cover a wide swath of television’s rich history—from Carol Burnett’s description of the origin of her show’s “Went with the Wind” parody to Robert Adler explaining how he co-invented the TV remote control, to Walter Cronkite’s views on Watergate.

The online archive—which features more than 4,000 hours of video was the brainchild of Dean Valentine and Thomas W. Sarnoff more than 20 years ago. Some of the interviews were previously available online at Emmy TV Legends, but all of them are being aggregated on the new site.

The Foundation is the charitable arm of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which runs the prime time Emmy Awards. 

Phys.org has the story. 

NEW YORK—A group of companies already know they are going to go home winners as the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences have announced the recipients of the 68th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards.

One of the winners includes Tony Werner, president of technology and product for Comcast Cable, who will receive NATAS’ Lifetime Achievement Award. Werner joined Comcast in 2006 and has overseen developments like DOCSIS 3.0 and the X1 platform. Prior to joining Comcast he was senior vice president and chief technology officer at Liberty Global. He also currently serves as president and chairman of the Board of Directors of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Foundation.
Here are the other winners for the 2016 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards:
Live Production Technology Beyond HD to Achieve Non-Interpolated Video for Instant Replay:

• Evertz
• EVS
• For-A

Concept of Opto-Electric Transduction:

• Telcon (Alcatel Lucent-Submarine Networks)
• Society of Telegraph Engineers (Institute of Engineering and Technology)
• Siemens

Development and Standardization of Media Object Server (MOS) Protocol:

• Media Object Server (MOS) Group

System for Executing Targeted Household Advertising on Linear Television:

• Invidi Technologies
• Visible World

Pioneering Invention and Deployment of Fiber Optic Cable:

• Corning
• Bell Labs/Western Electric (OFS)

Pioneering Technology to Automate the Digital On-Line Assembly of Broadcast Content:

• IBM Corporation
• Laser Pacific/SCAA (Technicolor)

The ceremony recognizing all winners will take place on Jan. 7, 2017 in Las Vegas during CES 2017.