Netflix’s Reed Hastings Receives Engineering Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award

Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings has been given the Television Academy‘s Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award, one of several Engineering Emmys that the org announced on Thursday.

The Charles F. Jenkins honor recognizes “a living individual whose ongoing contributions have significantly affected the state of television technology and engineering.” In the case of Hastings, he was singled out for coming up with the idea of Netflix in 1997 as a subscription-based movie-rental service, and eventually evolving it into internet TV and developing “game-changing algorithms that recommended programming to subscribers that track and reflect their viewing preferences.”

Netflix already received an Engineering Emmy in 2012. Now, “the major patent portfolio that Netflix has developed, combined with the scale of service delivery, widespread market use of the services and the validation of an alternative business model for television distribution is changing the television industry in fundamental ways,” the org said. “With these and other innovations in the way television content is conceived, produced, packaged, distributed and marketed, Mr. Hastings has positioned Netflix to significantly alter and to continue to affect the state of television technology and engineering.”

The 73rd Engineering Emmy Awards, which honor individuals, companies and organizations for developments in broadcast technology, will take place on Thursday, Oct. 21, at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Los Angeles’ LA Live complex. Kirsten Vangsness (“Criminal Minds”) will host for the sixth consecutive year.

“Engineers, scientists and technologists are a vital part of our industry and are key to the continuing evolution of television,” said TV Academy chairman/CEO Frank Scherma. “These extraordinary pioneers and groundbreaking companies we are honoring have advanced the medium and elevate storytelling to a worldwide audience.”

Besides Hastings’ award, here are this year’s other Engineering Emmy honorees:

The Philo T. Farnsworth Corporate Achievement Award

(Honors an agency, company or institution whose contributions over time have substantially impacted television technology and engineering.)

Recipient: Dolby Laboratories
“Since its founding in 1965 by Ray Dolby, Dolby Laboratories has been a significant innovator and contributor to the television industry in audio and imaging technology.”

Engineering Emmys

(Presented to an individual, company or organization for engineering developments that considerably improve existing methods or innovations that materially affect the transmission, recording or reception of television.)

This year’s eight recipients:

Arnold Global Illumination Rendering System – Marcos Fajardo, Alan King, Thiago Ize
“Arnold is a photo-realistic, stochastic, ray-tracing renderer widely used by visual effects and animation studios around the world.”

ARRI SkyPanel – ARRI
“The ARRI SkyPanel is a family of ultra-bright LED soft lights. These fixtures have optimized the production lighting workflow and have been widely adopted throughout the television industry.”

Cedar Studio – Cedar Audio Ltd.
“Cedar Studio was developed specifically to meet the needs of audio professionals in the field of film and television post-production.”

Golaem Crowd – Golaem
“Golaem Crowd helps artists to populate television shows, films and game cinematics in minutes by procedurally animating thousands of characters with advanced behaviors in real-time and with complete artistic control.”

Massive – Stephen Regelous
“Massive is a pioneering software package that first gave artists the ability to simulate crowds using an artificial intelligence-based approach.”

Scriptation – Steve Vitolo, Felipe A. Mendez P., Franco Zuccar
“Scriptation automates the tedious process of transferring handwritten notes, annotations and verbal comments to a script and redistributing to all departments.”

Teradek Bolt 4K – Nicolaas Verheem, Marius van der Watt, Dennis Scheftner, Zvi Reznic
“Teradek Bolt 4K is a zero-delay, wireless video transmission system for on-set monitoring, offering high-quality wireless video integrated into the workflow.”

V-Ray – Chaos
“Chaos’ V-Ray is a physically based rendering and adaptive ray tracing solution used to create photo-realistic visual effects in episodic production since 2003.”

“It has been a challenging year for the television production community; but despite the pandemic, production has come back and with it a host of new technologies that are being used to help the storytelling process,” said committee chair John Leverence. “This year a wide range of technologies are being recognized. They run the gamut from high-end, computer-generated special effects to lighting enhancements; audio tools; script-note technology; and systems that help maintain distancing protocols.”