Judging Current Affairs Programs for International Emmys

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(ABU DHABI, UAE) -- On June 28 I spent eight hours in a conference room watching current affairs TV programs from five countries as a judge during the semi final round of the International Emmys. Back home in the US, I grew up watching the annual Emmy Awards ceremony on television, but never knew anything about how the winners were selected. Being involved in the process was a new experience.

Three weeks earlier I had been contacted by Pyramedia, one of the largest and most successful private production companies in the Middle East. Founded in 1999 by Nashua Al Ruwaini, a prominent TV personality and producer in the UAE, Pyramedia was host of the semi final judging in Abu Dhabi. The email invited me to clear my schedule from 10 am to 7 pm and to report to twofour54.

Twofour5 bills itself as "the Arab world's center of excellence for content creation" and includes training for media personnel of all kinds, incubation and financial support for media company startups, and rental of studio and other production spaces and equipment. Its buildings are identified by color. I was to go to the building detailed in lime green.

Gathered on the mezzanine having coffee, tea, and pastries, were some 15 people, some of whom I knew, others whom I recognized, considerably more women than men. Those I knew were producers or talent on local or locally originating TV programs or involved with the visual arts in some way. When I spoke with them, the others turned out to have the same kind of credentials.

I think I was the only full time academic, but since I have been supplying student interns to media companies for several years, they know me and my background with ABC News as well as my writings for Real Estate Channel , Cityscape, and the magazine Abu Dhabi Tempo. 

Circulating and meeting everyone was Nathaniel Brendel who is Director, Emmy Judging, for International Emmys. He explained that we were at one of 20 sites around the world - excluding the US - where judging for the semi final round was happening. In Abu Dhabi we were judging two categories, each with its own group of judges. I was in Current Affairs. The other category was Drama. Meanwhile, in Dubai, two sets of judges were tackling entries in other categories, hosted by Dubai Studio City and production company The Frame.

Back in the late 1960s  some members of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) in New York decided it was time to honor - and thereby promote excellence - in international broadcasting. Up  to that time, NATAS focused exclusively on US programs and gave Emmy Awards to them. The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences was founded in 1969 and began awarding International Emmys to programs produced and initially broadcast outside the US.

Today the number of categories has grown to 15. To manage the entries, four regions were established: Latin America, non English-speaking Europe, English-speaking which includes Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia, Africa, Middle East. Programs can be made in any language, but they need English subtitles to enter the competition.

Given that Asia includes three of the most populous countries in the world, one might expect that this region would provide the most entries. However, that isn't the case this year and has never been. My panel of 10 judges, nine of them women, screened 11 current affairs programs. They were the only entries in the semi final stage from the huge Asia, Africa, Middle East region. Our task was to evaluate them and assign each 1-10 points for concept and 1-10 points for production. We added the two numbers for each entry and entered the total on the evaluation sheet.

 Although we saw programs together, we did not discuss them and made our individual evaluations. We were told to view programs in their entirety from 20 to 47 minutes. We did see all of 10 programs. However, one documentary featured elements so gruesome that when one of our group said, "I've seen enough," the rest of us agreed, and the screening stopped, more than halfway through.

Our totals for each documentary would be added, and from the 11, only the one with the top score would go into the final round. None of us judges would be involved. It is a rule of the selection process  that no one can judge the same program twice.

Obviously, I can't give details, and I don't know which program our panel selected. I can say that out of all the countries in this enormous region, much bigger by population and territory than any other, only five countries were represented among semi finalists in the Current Affairs category. One of the five is in the Middle East.

In the region, most countries are developing or emerging or still at the beginning of economic development. Good current affairs programs seldom come from less developed countries where governments tend to censor the media, a sure way to keep media operating at an undistinguished level. News programs produced by censored media seldom make it to the semi final round of a fair awards process.

The programs we saw came from developing countries. Their news coverage skills have a way to go before they can hope to beat programs from countries with media freedom for decades. I would be surprised if our  panel's choice wins the Current Affairs category at the International Emmy Awards, but I hope to be in New York on November 22 to applaud whichever program wins.  

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