TV groups mend rift, will meet

Three decades of hostilities between the West Coast and East Coast organizations that hand out Emmy awards have ended, but the two groups say they will remain separate branches under separate leadership.

Following the death last year of John Cannon, the longtime president of the New York-based National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), leaders from that organization and its North Hollywood counterpart, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), began meeting in the hope of establishing an alliance.

Six months later, Dick Askin, chairman and chief executive of ATAS, and his NATAS counterpart, Dennis Swanson, say the groups’ adversarial relationship has ended and the two branches will meet with the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in June in Los Angeles to work on changes the collaboration might prompt.

Under terms arranged in 1977, ATAS presides over the prime-time and Los Angeles-area Emmys, while supervision of Emmys for daytime, sports, news and documentary programming -- along with chapters in 18 other cities and international awards -- fall to NATAS. Under the new alliance, the International Academy will become a division of ATAS.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do yet,” Swanson said Thursday. “We’ve clearly taken a giant step forward. There’s a trust that has developed.”

Askin and Swanson said they have not discussed reunification of the two organizations, which split amid a power struggle in the 1970s. But Swanson said he could see both branches working collaboratively on marketing, sponsorships and Internet sites.

“We’re both very well defined in our areas,” Askin said. “There’s always been a difference in our two missions. To try to get it all under one organization is not a goal we’re working toward.”