YouTube will partner with the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to stream next week’s Sports and News and Documentary Emmys.
The Sports Emmys will stream live on May 26, and the News and Documentary Emmys will be shown on May 27 and 28 on the NATAS YouTube channel, starting at 7 p.m. ET each evening.
Adam Sharp, president and CEO of NATAS, said in an interview that YouTube’s sponsorship reflects its focus on the growth of creators in the journalism space, which has included linear TV veterans and upstarts tapping into high-quality production tools and wide platform distribution.
Those trends “have sort of collided to now bring us a great stable of incredible journalism being produced by independent creators on the YouTube platform,” Sharp said. “Because the Emmys are … platform independent, there is no requirement anywhere in the rules that the programming has to air on that piece of furniture in the corner of the living room.”
He said that “YouTube approached us and said we want to be part of celebrating this,” with two of their high profile journalists, Jorge Ramos and Johnny Harris, among the nominees.
Ramos and Harris will be among the presenters at the news ceremony on May 27, along with Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowicz, Scripps’ Jason Bellini, The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore, CNN’s Jeremy Diamond, Telemundo’s Vanessa Hauc, NBC News’ Hallie Jackson, The Special Report‘s Areva Martin, CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez, former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens, Spectrum Noticias’ Maria Rozman and NewsNation’s Natasha Zouves. Amber Ruffin will host, and Suzanne Kianpour will serve as the special red carpet correspondent. ABC’s Debra OConnell will present lifetime achievement honors to Martha Raddatz.
Presenters for the documentary categories on May 28 will include director Serena Davies, producer Stephanie Jenkins, Cynthia Lopez, Tiler Peck and Simon Schama. Michael Ian Black will host, and Sam Pollard will receive a lifetime achievement honor.
Sharp also addressed changes with the growth in adoption of AI. A couple of years ago, the Academy adopted a rule that if artificial intelligence is being used in the production of content being judged, it has to be disclosed. AI itself cannot be awarded an Emmy for a human task, “so an AI-generated performer cannot win a performer Emmy,” Sharp noted.
The use of AI in a program “is not going to disqualify the entire program from consideration if it is disclosed,” he said. “If it’s disclosed, the judges are able to consider how to balance that use of AI in their consideration of the overall work.”
That said, AI also stands to be recognized for technical achievements, in the same way that the Emmys have recognized shifts in computer animation and other changes.
“There’s going to be this element of AI touching everything, and how do you separate between where it’s just adding an unwanted taint and where it’s adding value, and that’s where the disclosure piece is really the most important layer of our policy for now,” Sharp said. “And then, as this evolves, then it becomes easier to work with our peer groups in each of those disciplines and add more precise rules.”
As with a number of other journalism ceremonies, this year’s News Emmys also is likely to feature mention of attacks on the media. NATAS also is partnering with the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press for this year’s news ceremony.
“Certainly we live in a challenging time for our industry and for the First Amendment, and we’ve lived through challenging times before,” Sharp said.
Sharp pointed to the 250th anniversary of the United States, and noted that when the nation’s founders “established that the right to publish against the powerful, against the government, was a cornerstone principle of American liberty. But throughout our history we have also demonstrated that that is a muscle that needs to be exercised. And this is not a partisan issue. Right now, a lot of the focus on media freedom has been on the Trump administration, and certainly their restrictions on access, their weaponization of credentialing, on their attacks and tone toward toward the media. But it was not that long ago we were talking about Obama-era leak investigations and overreach there.”
“The reality is the tension between the press and the White House, and the press and and the government transcends party. It’s a natural tension between power and sunlight that has been there as long as our nation has been here, and it is a tension that is baked into the definition of America, and so it is something where we intend to speak to.”
Sports Emmy presenters include Ian Eagle, Rich Eisen, Dwight Howard, Brian Kenny, Pedro Martinez, Colleen Wolfe, Nick Wright, Andrés Cantor and Pablo Torre. Roy Wood Jr. returns to host, and sports media executive Steve Bornstein will receive the lifetime achievement award.
Each ceremony will be held at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall.
