The Directors Guild of America has announced the awards schedule for the 66th Annual DGA Awards, the addition of two new awards, the inclusion of programs created for the Internet in eight categories and additional rule changes. These changes will be implemented for the upcoming 66th Annual DGA Awards, to be held Jan. 25 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza.
DGA members can vote online between Dec. 3 and Jan. 6 for feature film nominations; between Dec. 16 and Jan. 7 for television nominations in five categories, and between Jan. 8 and Jan. 24, for the feature film final ballot. As instituted last year, voting will continue to take place online only. The DGA will also continue to allow feature film screeners to be distributed to members for awards consideration.
The two newly-created DGA awards are variety/talk/news/sports – regularly scheduled programming and variety/talk/news/sports – specials.
The variety/talk/news/sports – regularly scheduled programming award includes regularly scheduled variety programs, such as Saturday Night Live, American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance?; talk shows, such as Ellen, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or Late Show with David Letterman; news broadcasts, such as ABC Nightly News, Dateline NBC, or CBS Evening News and sports broadcasts, such as a nationally broadcasted NFL or NBA game, golf tournament or NASCAR race. All entries in this category must be an episode of an ongoing, regularly scheduled program.
The variety/talk/news/sports – specials award includes non-regularly scheduled variety specials, such as the Academy Awards, Emmy Awards or concert specials; news specials, such as a Presidential Inauguration or a Barbara Walters Special as well as sports specials, such as The Super Bowl, Indianapolis 500 or The World Series.
The National Board voted to create these new awards to recognize the important work of directors and their teams in news and sports programming, along with other live and live-to-tape television programming. Because directing a regularly scheduled live television program poses different challenges in time and scale than directing a once-a-year special, the National Board voted to create two separate awards representing live television directing. These two awards replace the previous musical variety award which contained both individual series episodes and specials in the same category.
In recognition of the increasing level of original programming being created by directors and their teams specifically for Internet distribution, the National Board also determined that programs made for Internet distribution in the following eight categories are now eligible for nomination: dramatic series, comedy series, movies for television and mini-series, variety/talk/news/sports – regularly scheduled programming, variety/talk/news/sports – specials, documentary, reality and children’s programming. The Commercials Award category has included commercials specifically made for the Internet since 2007 and will continue to do so. All programs created for the Internet must be covered by a DGA agreement and be directed by a DGA director. All categories except commercials require that a made for the Internet program submitted for awards consideration to be at least a half-hour in length. Exact program length required is determined by the rules in each category.
The National Board has determined that all dramatic scripted programming that is part of a series, including daytime serials, will be incorporated in the Dramatic Series Award category. This decision was made in recognition that scripted dramatic series are now programmed beyond “prime time” and that with the increase in series programming created for Internet distribution without set times for viewing, the definition of what is a dramatic series has fundamentally shifted. In addition, because of the compression of entries over the past few years in the Daytime Serials Award category, the National Board elected to merge this category into Dramatic Series.
These are the first additions to the DGA Awards since the introduction of the Reality Award Category in 2005. The National Board of Directors voted to create the new awards and make the additional rules modifications at its June 22, 2013 National Board meeting.
