The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is an organization of global broadcasters, with members from nearly 70 countries and over 400 companies. Sixty percent of the Board of Directors come from countries outside of the United States, and represents the world's largest production, distribution and broadcast companies.
The Academy was founded in 1969 to promote excellence in international television programming and is the organization that presents the International Emmy Award to the best television programmes produced, and initially aired, outside the U.S. There are fifteen programme categories for the International Emmy Awards: Arts Programming; Best Performance by an Actor; Best Performance by an Actress; Children & Young People; Comedy; Current Affairs; Documentary; Drama Series; Interactive Channel; Interactive Program; Interactive TV Service; News; Non-Scripted Entertainment; Telenovela; and TV Movie/Mini-Series.
The awards are presented at the International Emmy Awards Gala, held each year in November at the Hilton Hotel, New York City, which attracts over 1,200 television professionals.
As well as the Gala, the International Academy also produces the International Emmy World Television Festival. The Television Festival screens the current year's International Emmy-nominated programmes and features producers and directors who speak about their work.
The Academy's Foundation also presents the annual Sir Peter Ustinov Television Scriptwriting Award for young television writers.
In 2010 Simon Cowell was presented with an International Emmy Founders Award. Other notable winners include: Sir David Frost, and Steven Spielberg.
Famous quotes containing the words academy, television, arts and/or sciences:
“When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“The well-educated young woman of 1950 will blend art and sciences in a way we do not dream of; the science will steady the art and the art will give charm to the science. This young woman will marry—yes, indeed, but she will take her pick of men, who will by that time have begun to realize what sort of men it behooves them to be.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)