ATSC, The Broadcast Standards Association, is being honoured with a 2026 Technology and Engineering Emmy Award by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) for ATSC’s pioneering development of NextGen TV broadcasting standards that establish the industry’s first fully IP-based broadcast standard to reach commercial scale.
The announcement from NATAS notes the collaborative effort that created the ATSC 3.0 standard, which gives TV broadcasters the capability of transmitting ultra-high-definition programming with High Dynamic Range and other significant improvements.
“Through a multiyear, consensus-based engineering, drafting and balloting process led by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), the standard has enabled new capabilities, including UHD, HDR, immersive audio and interactive services. ATSC 3.0 is now commercially deployed across the United States and internationally, reaching millions of households and driving significant changes across the broadcast equipment, consumer electronics and regulatory landscape,” says a statement from Emmy Award organisers.
“This Emmy belongs to the entire ATSC community,” said Madeleine Noland, President of ATSC. “ATSC 3.0 is the result of extraordinary collaboration among hundreds of experts and organisations, past and present, who contributed their ideas, technical expertise, time and leadership over many years. This recognition from NATAS celebrates not simply a standard, but what our members can accomplish when an industry comes together around a shared vision for the future of broadcasting.”
Developed through ATSC’s open, consensus-driven standards process, ATSC 3.0 fundamentally reimagines terrestrial broadcasting around an Internet Protocol-based architecture. Its flexible and extensible design provides broadcasters with a platform for enhanced television services while creating a foundation for continued innovation as broadcast, broadband and other communications technologies evolve.
ATSC will be honoured at the Engineering, Science and Technology Emmy Awards ceremony on Wednesday, 14 October 2026, at the Television Academy’s Saban Media Center in North Hollywood, California.
Fourth Emmy Recognition for ATSC
The 2026 honour marks the fourth Emmy Award recognising ATSC and its standards work, continuing a history of industry recognition for technical advances that have helped shape the evolution of television:
2009 – ATSC Digital Television Standard: ATSC received a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for the standardisation of the ATSC Digital Television Standard, sharing the recognition with organisations that played key roles in the development and evaluation of advanced digital television.
2012 – Active Format Description (AFD): ATSC received its second Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for pioneering development and deployment of Active Format Description technology and systems, which help optimise the presentation of programming with different aspect ratios across television displays.
2015 – A/85 Audio Loudness: ATSC received its third Emmy, an Engineering Emmy Award recognising its A/85 Recommended Practice, Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television. The work provided an important technical foundation for addressing variations in television audio loudness and implementation of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act.
2026 – ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV: ATSC’s fourth Emmy recognises the standardisation of ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV for Digital Broadcasting and the collaborative engineering effort that created a flexible, IP-based foundation for the future of terrestrial broadcasting.
“For ATSC, this latest Emmy represents both recognition of what the broadcast industry has achieved together and encouragement for the work ahead. ATSC and its members continue to advance standards and explore new capabilities, applications and markets as broadcasting evolves within an increasingly connected communications ecosystem,” Noland added.
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