The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) today announced the dates, locations and Lifetime Achievement honorees for the 2022 Daytime, Daytime Creative Arts & Lifestyle, News & Documentary, and Children’s & Family Emmy® Award ceremonies. The Academy had previously announced Lifetime Achievement honorees in Sports and Technology & Engineering but had postponed the presentation of those honors due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All NATAS events are scheduled to return to being in-person this year following virtual ceremonies in 2020 and 2021.
2022 will also see the launch of the Children’s & Family Emmy Award competition and ceremony — the first competition expansion since 1979 — as part of a previously announced realignment of the Daytime and Primetime Emmys. These moves recognize a marked increase in children’s & family programming and submissions, and respond to changing viewer habits by prioritizing content genre over program scheduling.
The 2022 Lifetime Achievement honorees are:
Yvette Kanouff (Television Technology & Engineering) A technology entrepreneur who has been involved in digital transformation worldwide for 25 years, Yvette Kanouff is an entrepreneur who has received numerous industry honors and awards throughout her career. In addition, she holds numerous patents andis an an active participant in industry organizations, standards bodies, and leading industry technology efforts.
This Old House (Daytime Television) - The venerable home improvement series joins Sesame Street and 60 Minutes as the only programs — rather than individuals — to receive Lifetime Achievement awards from NATAS. Like its peers in receiving this honor, This Old House has defined its genre and has become a television mainstay over the course of its 43-year run.
John Aniston (Daytime Television) - John Aniston, who received a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in 2017, has been a regular on the “Days of Our Lives” for more than 35 years, portraying the nefarious Victor Kiriakis. Throughout the years, he has also amassed a robust theater resume both on-and-off-Broadway.
Sir David Attenborough (Documentary Television) - One of the world’s preeminent natural history documentarians, Sir David Attenborough is a multiple-time Emmy and BAFTA Award winner. Attenborough’s Life collection, created with the BBC’s Natural History Unit, is an unparalleled look into the plants and animals of our planet.
LeVar Burton (Children’s & Family Television) - The longtime literacy advocate and host of “Reading Rainbow,” who taught a generation about the joys of reading, has won more than 20 Emmy Awards. Burton currently hosts his own podcast, ‘LeVar Burton Reads,’ and has a YouTube Series ‘This Is My Story’ which highlights racism in America.
Lesley Visser (Sports Television) - Trailblazing sports journalist Lesley Visser, who is enshrined in six different halls of fame, is the most highly acclaimed female sportscaster of all time. She is the only sportscaster, male or female, to have worked on the network broadcasts of the Final Four, the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the Olympics, the World Series, the Triple Crown, the World Figure Skating Championship and the US Open Tennis.
Judy Woodruff (News Television) - A news and political journalist for more than five decades, Judy Woodruff is the anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour. She has served as Washington correspondent for NBC News and PBS and a senior correspondent for both CNN and PBS, and reported on every national political convention and presidential campaign since 1976.
“We look forward to honoring this year’s unparalleled class of Lifetime Achievement honorees — each an icon in their craft — and couldn’t be more excited to award the first-ever Children’s & Family Emmys,” said Adam Sharp, President & CEO, NATAS. “After two years of virtual ceremonies, we’re overjoyed to once again be together, in-person, to celebrate the best of television.”
The 2022 NATAS awards calendar is as follows:
The 73rd Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards
Held Monday, April 25 at the Wynn Encore, Las Vegas
Lifetime Achievement in Television Technology: Yvette Kanouff
Yvette Kanouff is a technology entrepreneur who has been actively involved in digital transformation worldwide for the past 25 years. Currently, she is a partner at JC2 Ventures, helping global startups scale, grow, and create inclusive jobs for the digital future. She has held CTO and President roles at various companies in the cable and media industry and has focused on transformational technologies including video on demand, cloud DVR, CDN, virtualization and NFV, digital and on-demand advertising, streaming security and privacy, and new network architectures such as 5G.
Kanouff has received numerous industry awards and honors including winning an Emmy for her work in Video on Demand with SeaChange,has been named one of the 11 most influential women in the Television industry and is consistently ranked as one of the top 100 industry executives.
Kanouff holds several patents, and is an active participant in industry organizations, standards bodies, and leading industry technology efforts including 5G, digitization, cloud, cybersecurity, media, and artificial intelligence. She began her career in digital signal processing and has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Mathematics from UCF.
The 43rd Annual Sports Emmy Awards
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, New York
Lifetime Achievement in Sports Television: Lesley Visser
Lesley Visser is the most highly acclaimed female sportscaster of all time. In six Halls of Fame, she is often recognized as the “First” – the first woman enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame; the first woman to report from a Super Bowl sideline; the first woman to cover the NFL as a beat; the first and only woman to present the Championship Lombardi Trophy at the Super Bowl; the first female sportscaster to carry the Olympic Torch, the first woman on “Monday Night Football” and the first female NFL analyst in both Radio and TV. She is the only sportscaster, male or female, to have worked on the network broadcasts of the Final Four, the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the Olympics, the World Series, the Triple Crown, the World Figure Skating Championship and the US Open Tennis.
Visser’s career began at the Boston Globe in 1974 after she won a Carnegie Foundation Grant, given to only 20 women in the country who wanted to go into jobs that were 95% male. Last Fall, In her 45th year in the business - 32nd at CBS - she launched "In Conversation with Lesley Visser" on SiriusXM.
A graduate of Boston College, which awarded her an Honorary Doctorate in 2007, she served on the board of the V Foundation for Cancer Research for more than 20 years, while also serving on the board of NYU’s “Sports and Society”. Visser has mentored young women for decades, while speaking at colleges and businesses around the world.
The 49th Annual Daytime Creative Arts & Lifestyle Emmy Awards
Saturday, June 18, 2022
Pasadena Convention Center, Pasadena
Lifetime Achievement in Daytime Television: “This Old House”
When “This Old House” first premiered in 1979 as a one-time, 13-part local public television series, it wasn’t just a new show. It represented a new idea of what television could be. The premise was radically simple: to show viewers the entire process of renovating a home, preserving its heritage and giving it new life. On this new show, expert tradespeople spoke for themselves, teaching viewers the tricks of their trade. The series was an immediate hit and it soon produced spin-offs such as The New Yankee Workshop and its current sister show, Ask This Old House.
What started as a home renovation project ultimately launched a new television genre. Now in its 43rd season, the mission of This Old House remains unchanged and it continues to be one of the highest-rated home improvement programs on television.
The 49th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards
Friday, June 24, 2022
Pasadena Civic Auditorium, Pasadena, CA
Lifetime Achievement in Daytime Television: John Aniston
John Aniston, who received a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in 2017, has been a regular on the “Days of Our Lives” for more than 35 years, portraying the nefarious Victor Kiriakis.
Prior to becoming one of the most prolific actors in Daytime, Aniston was born on the island of Crete, Greece and came to America at the age of two, He graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a bachelor’s degree in theater arts before serving in the US Navy as an intelligence officer on active duty in Panama. He later attained the rank of lieutenant commander before transitioning to acting in 1962.
Aniston’s acting career started on the New York stage in the original production of the hit musical Little Mary Sunshine. He has since appeared in many theatrical productions both on and off-Broadway, as well as in regional and stock productions, including Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
The 43rd Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards
Wednesday, September 28, 2022 (News)
Thursday, September 29, 2022 (Documentary)
Palladium Times Square, New York
Lifetime Achievement in Television News: Judy Woodruff
Broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff is the anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour. She has covered politics and other news for five decades at NBC, CNN and PBS.
Woodruff began her career in 1970 as a local TV news reporter at WAGA in Atlanta. She has served as Washington correspondent for NBC News and PBS and a senior correspondent for both CNN and PBS. In addition, she has reported on every national political convention and presidential campaign since 1976, moderated numerous presidential primary debates and one vice presidential debate, and has interviewed countless politicians and heads of state.
A recipient of more than 25 honorary degrees, Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation, dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in journalism and communication industries worldwide. She serves on the boards of trustee of the Freedom Forum, The Duke Endowment and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and is a director of Public Radio International and the National Association to End Homelessness. She is a former member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a former director of the National Museum of American History and a former trustee of the Urban Institute.
Lifetime Achievement in Documentary Television: Sir David Attenborough
For more than 60 years, David Attenborough has been one of the world’s leading natural history filmmakers, making landmark series including Life on Earth, The Blue Planet and Planet Earth, seen by billions of people across the world. His extraordinary career has spanned black and white, colour, HD, AR, 3D formats, and his films have won multiple Emmys and BAFTA awards.
Attenborough joined the BBC in 1952 and, within several years, created his acclaimed Zoo Quest series - filming wild animals in their natural habitat. By 1965, he became Controller of BBC2 and responsible for the introduction of color television into Britain. In 1973, he left BBC senior management to return to program-making. The internationally acclaimed, thirteen-part series Life On Earth was the most ambitious series that had ever been produced by the BBC’s Natural History Unit, and created the famous ‘landmark’ format that continues to make the Natural History Unit world renowned to this day.
Attenborough won the Emmy for Outstanding Narration for both Seven Worlds and Our Planet. Additionally, he narrated The Year the Earth Changed for Apple TV+, its highest-rated unscripted show for 2021, and will be narrating the platform's upcoming series Prehistoric Planet. Other narrations include The Mating Game, Dynasties II and Frozen Planet II.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000’s, Attenborough presented natural history series to huge global audiences, including The Trials of Life (1990), The Private Life of Plants (1995), and The Life of Birds (1998), The Blue Planet (2000), Planet Earth (2006), Life (2009), Africa (2013) and Life Story (2014). Attenborough has presented the four-time BAFTA and two-time Emmy award-winning series Planet Earth II (2016) along with Emmy award winning series Blue Planet II, (2017). In November 2021, he appeared in Glasgow at the COP26 climate summit for the premiere of The Green Planet and to address world leaders on the need to address climate change in his role as "People's Advocate."
In April 2022, Attenborough was named as ‘Champion of the Earth’ by the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP) which is the highest recognition from the United Nations for his commitment to telling stories about climate change and the natural world.
The 1st Annual Children’s & Family Emmy Awards
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Wilshire Ebell Theater, Los Angeles
Lifetime Achievement for Children’s & Family: LeVar Burton
Actor, director and educator LeVar Burton has taught multiple generations of children about the joys of reading. Burton, whose decades-long body of work includes Roots, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Reading Rainbow, was recently cast in Season 3 of Star Trek: Picard (Paramount+). LeVar has been honored with 13 Emmy Awards, 3 NAACP Awards, a Grammy Award for Spoken Word Album, a Peabody Award, the Fred Rogers Award, the Inamori Prize for Ethics in Entertainment, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The City of Sacramento dedicated LeVar Burton Park in his honor and President Bill Clinton appointed LeVar as Commissioner of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Sciences. LeVar is the award-winning author of The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm, A Kids Book About Imagination, and his Grammy Nominated book, Aftermath. His podcast, LeVar Burton Reads, has been downloaded more than 25 million times. Most recently, LeVar launched the LeVar Burton Book Club via the Fable app, who are currently reading Roots in honor of the 45th anniversary.
About NATAS
The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) is a service organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of television and the promotion of creative leadership for artistic, educational, and technical achievements within the television industry. It recognizes excellence in television with the coveted Emmy Awards for News & Documentary, Sports, Daytime, and Children’s & Family programming, as well as achievements in television Technology & Engineering.
NATAS membership consists of more than 18,000 broadcast and media professionals represented in 19 regional chapters across the country. Beyond awards, NATAS has extensive educational programs including regional student television and its Student Award for Excellence and the National Student Production Awards for outstanding journalistic work by high school students, as well as scholarships, publications, and major activities for both industry professionals and the viewing public.
