A large chunk of the Los Angeles-based Television Academy members are about to automatically become members of the New York-based National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences as well.

Under a partnership between the two (formerly warring, but now friendly) TV academies, the qualifications required for membership in the peer groups that exist in both organizations — Children’s Animation, Children’s Live Action, Daytime, and Documentary — will be identical. That means that members will automatically be enrolled in both organizations, and existing members of the TV Academy’s Children’s, Daytime, Documentary and Science & Technology peer groups will retain those memberships while automatically becoming members of NATAS as well.

That shared membership comes as part of NATAS’ major governance makeover, as NATAS is preparing to recruit and add national members for the first time. Having switched to a new board of directors this year, NATAS is now moving forward with a plan to establish “peer groups” similar to how the Los Angeles-based Television Academy is organized.

NATAS will launch seven national peer groups that are organized around the Emmy competitions that it administers: Children’s Animation, Children’s Live Action, Daytime, Documentary, News, Sports, and Technology & Engineering.

Pre-registration for charter members of those peer groups will open this month, and the plan is for NATAS’ national membership to officially launch in 2025. (NATAS had previously been governed by a “Board of Trustees” elected by its 19 regional directors. This new move means that reps from those various peer groups will finally be represented on the NATAS board.)

“We share a common goal of ensuring that the Emmy remains our industry’s ‘gold standard’,” said NATAS executive committee chairperson Terry O’Reilly. “While our respective academies recognize different genres of work, we believe that bringing our memberships together in this way will allow us to better recognize the breadth of television professionals working today, and to open doors to even more emerging artists who seek to join their peers and predecessors in the art of compelling storytelling.”

The move is the latest example of cooperation between the two TV academies, which have in recent years healed a rift that split them into two in 1977. After that, the rivals spent decades battling each other (including in court) over which has jurisdiction of the Emmy Awards.

But in recent years, the two sides have worked closely closely as they realign awards to better fit the different Emmy ceremonies. For example, the L.A. TV Academy sent all of its children’s categories from the Primetime Emmys over to NATAS, which then combined them with the kids categories in the Daytime competition to create the Children’s & Family Emmys. On the flip side, NATAS sent its Daytime Emmy game show categories over to Los Angeles, where gamers are now a part of the Primetime ceremony, regardless of time slot.

Said TV Academy chair Cris Abrego: “The Television Academy’s Board of Governors enthusiastically embraced the creation of dual/national membership. This shift enhances the membership experience for Television Academy members whose work is recognized in the NATAS administered Daytime Emmys and Children’s and Family Emmys, and unifies members from both academies who are committed to advancing excellence in documentary programming and promoting the technical and scientific evolution of our field.”