Electronic Media Organizations

Academy of Television Arts and Sciences

As its website URL indicates (http://www.emmys.tv), this is the organization that awards television's Emmy honor each year. Syd Cassyd formed the Television Academy in Los Angeles on November 14, 1946, long before most homes [Page 502]owned a television set. The first Emmy Awards, which were devoted solely to local Los Angeles programming, were held on January 25, 1949. Spurred by the success of the Emmys, columnist and television host Ed Sullivan organized a group of East Coast television professionals and established a New York–based Television Academy in 1955. Two years later, the Los Angeles and New York groups united to form a new entity, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. After two decades of growing tension, and much legal wrangling, however, the two groups agreed to divide again in 1977. Both retained “national” status, with the group in Los Angeles retaining its original name, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the New York body retaining the name of National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The latter retained the Emmy awards given for the news, documentary and sports program categories, as well as jurisdiction over the 19 American chapters that produce their own local Emmy events.

Association of Maximum Service Television

MSTV (http://www.mstv.org) was launched in 1956 with a stated mission to “assist the appropriate government authorities in assuring the maximum television service for the people of the United States.” In practice that has meant protecting the concerns (especially freedom from interference) of full-power commercial television stations, often to the detriment of potential competitors such as low power television outlets or other services whose transmissions might interfere with broadcast signals. For the past decade AMST has been an industry advocate for initiating over-the-air digital television in the United States.

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