Daytime shows to battle it out at the Baftas for the first time after rule changes

A number of changes have been made to the TV awards in a bid to be more representative of the industry
This Morning
Kimberley Bond15 October 2020

The Bafta TV Awards will honour daytime television for the first time in a brand new category.

The prize will recognise the important role that daytime programming plays in the lives of viewers and in providing a pipeline for new and underrepresented talent.

Daytime TV programme This Morning previously won a Bafta special award in 2018 to celebrate 30 years of creativity and innovation in daytime television production.

The awards ceremony has also upped the number of nominees from four to six, with the new rules introduced to address a lack of diversity and better represent the industry.

Virgin Media BAFTA TV Awards 2020 - In pictures

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The changes were suggested following the Bafta 2020 Review, which was introduced to address a lack of diversity across Bafta’s different awards and implement changes.

Hannah Wyatt, chair of Bafta’s television committee, told the PA news agency: “We are expanding the number of nominees for the performance categories and that is largely a reflection of the huge volume of fantastic drama that is being made by British creatives at the moment.

“We have had year-on-year increases in the number of entries and so it seemed to make sense to reflect that by allowing more nominees, which also hopefully will reflect more diversity and a wider range of people who are coming through the industry.”

The BAFTA ceremony is likely to look different next year
PA

She added: “We had a really good year this year, I think if you look at what happened in the last lot of awards we were up by about 22% in our diversity in the performance categories and that’s fantastic.

“I think we want to ensure we keep that going, this is one of the measures.

“We are bringing in other things as well, in terms of unconscious bias training, asking broadcasters to consider diverse entries in the categories where they are entering a performance, it’s part of a range of things we want to do.

This year's BAFTAs took place behind closed doors
BBC

“It’s not targeting anything specifically, a lot of it is about reflecting the fact that we just had lots of entrants, but of course it would be fantastic if that is also part of what we managed to achieve.”

It was previously announced that Bafta will introduce mandatory conscious voting training for all members.

This year’s TV Baftas took place behind closed doors this year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Winners chose to accept their awards virtually.

The British Academy Television Awards will take place on Sunday, June 6 2021.

Additional reporting from PA

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