ATAS wins Emmy battle with NATAS

Panel decides Spanish-language dispute

By MICHAEL SCHNEIDER

Telenovelas and other programs produced outside the U.S. won't be eligible for a Spanish-language Emmy, an arbitration panel ruled earlier this month.

Any foreign-produced skeins have to be co-produced by a U.S. company, the arbitrators said, ruling in favor of the Los Angeles-based Academy of TV Arts & Sciences.

Ruling was the latest victory by ATAS in its long-running feud with cross-country rival the National Academy of TV Arts & Sciences.

As a result, the panel also ruled that, as the prevailing party in several other American Arbitration Assn. rulings, ATAS can sue NATAS to cover its legal costs from the recent battles.

Both sides have together spent upwards of $3 million over the past year fighting each other. The impact on the already budget-crunched NATAS could be brutal.

NATAS topper Peter Price declined to comment, citing ongoing legal proceedings: Org has filed two appeals in New York Superior Court. One appeal seeks to overturn a ruling last month by a New York judge, who upheld an earlier arbitration verdict in favor of ATAS (which had accused NATAS of trying to launch a broadband Emmy kudo without proper approval).

The second appeal, filed Monday, looks to overturn the prevailing party ruling that allows ATAS to sue for legal costs.

As for the Spanish-language Emmy ruling, NATAS had argued that foreign-produced projects make up the bulk of primetime on U.S. nets and should therefore be included, while ATAS contended that programs produced overseas fell under the domain of the Intl. TV Academy.

The Spanish-language flap repped one of the remaining unresolved issues between ATAS and NATAS, which have been quarreling off and on since their divorce in 1977. Whether this latest resolution will now lead to a long-discussed Spanish Emmycast -- the concept for which both sides had mostly hammered out, save that eligibility sticking point -- still remains to be seen.