NO REUNIFICATION FOR TV ACADEMIES

The Los Angeles-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has scuttled plans to reunite with the New York-based National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

The West Coast organization voted to withdraw from an ongoing move toward reunification, spokesmen said, because of a breakdown in “understandings of how a new constitution would be drafted.”

The reversal jeopardizes future telecasts of the Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony, which ATAS has administered for two years at NATAS’ request. ATAS’ efforts on behalf of the daytime Emmys, which had not been broadcast before its commitment, had been seen as demonstrating that the two academies could work together.

The academy split into two groups in 1976 because of the Hollywood creative community’s disenchantment with the organization’s political structure. ATAS was formed at that time and given jurisdiction over the prime-time Emmy Awards, for which it instituted more stringent voting requirements.