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Associated Press Television News, known as either Associated Press TV News or APTN, is a global video news agency.
APTN captures video images of many major events happening around the world. APTN is known as the video arm of the Associated Press. Associated Press Television News Ltd is a UK corporation owned and controlled by the Associated Press.
APTN was founded in 1994 as Associated Press Television. In 1998, it merged with Worldwide TV News (WTN) to form APTN.
APTN distributes video to its client broadcasters around the world. Many major broadcasters and networks rely upon APTN for major breaking world news events. The company also provides broadcast services, such as editing, crewing or satellite feeds from news and sports events. Historical footage is also made available from its extensive film and video archives, which date back to 1895.
APTN is based in London (in a former railway warehouse on the Grand Union Canal called the Interchange) with bureaux in 85 cities and 79 nations, including New York, Washington DC, Paris and Moscow; as well as conflict areas like Iraq and Afghanistan. It uses fibre and satellite-based distribution networks to relay video footage to TV networks and newsrooms.
Video news agencies like APTN (and Reuters TV) typically do not produce programmes that TV owners could watch. Rather, they provide footage of an event with only natural sound and very loose editing. However, APTN does also produce a range of entertainment and special interest programmes that are provided "white label" for client use. Agency customers, who are local and national TV stations, documentary producers, cable news channels, and the like, edit the agency footage to suit their style, and add their own graphics and voice-overs before transmission.
The premise for a video news agency is simple: very few TV stations devote enough money to newsgathering to put hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of camera, editing, and satellite transmission equipment everywhere news might happen. Video news agencies provide rapid response coverage and international reach for those TV stations.
The agencies obtain footage through a mixture of their own camera crews, arrangements with local TV broadcasters to redistribute their material, material shot by freelancers who sell their footage to the agencies, and on rare occasions footage shot by the public (such as the famous footage of the Concorde that crashed in Paris in 2000.) Footage shot with broadcast-quality cameras is obviously preferred, but quality can sometimes come second to content or immediacy for an exclusive story.
The maintenance of a network of local bureaux by the agencies means that local staff with expert knowledge are on hand to capture footage in places where western camera crews could be in danger. An example of this is the Kosovo War when most journalists left the country prior to NATO bombing. In addition, TV reporters who do find themselves unable to carry a full satellite uplink are able to use the local agency bureaux. APTN managed to get a satellite dish and transmission gear into Banda Aceh following the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake before the region was closed to air traffic. This became just about the only live video feed possible for the world's media, and was used extensively by network reporters.
Wherever you see the same footage on more than one news station, the chances are that it came either from or via a video news agency.
APTN's contributions to world news coverage include live coverage of the Beslan school hostage crisis for which it won the 2005 International Emmy for TV News Coverage, and coverage of French nuclear tests in the Pacific, foiled suicide bombings in Israel, the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, and of the death of Pope John Paul II.
External links
"Associated Press Television News"