Page 50 - AIB | The Chanel | Issue 1 2013

Andy Williams is Managing
Director at ITN Source,
overseeing all strategy,
management, sales, editorial
and operational development of
the content licensing division of
ITN. Last year, speaking about
the challenges ITN had overcome
to digitise its archive and the
prospects for return on
investment and new routes to
market, he said his mantra was
“digitise or be left on the shelf”.
Business is looking good now, as
archive content is finding a
vibrant new lease of life in new
media markets such as
smartphones and e-books
he development, production and
consumption of a diverse range of
digital content has continued to grow
at an exponential rate, and the impact
on the use of video across multiple
platforms has been phenomenal. I’m
sure that analysing these trends and
gazing into a digital crystal ball will be front of mind at
the Mobile World Congress and FT Digital Media
Broadcasting conferences happening in Barcelona and
London this spring.
Specifically in my field of video archive footage, the
routes to market for licensing material have increased
significantly in recent years. Proliferation of digital is
certainly a main driver, but there are other factors as
well. A few years ago the vast majority of content
licensing from a video archive such as those managed
by ITN Source would have been in factual and history
programming. Other TV genres such as drama would
also feature some archive footage to depict real events
or add a contemporaneous feel to the production – but
these opportunities were generally limited and just a
small part of our business.
FOOTAGE EVERYWHERE
Now, it seems that almost wherever you go, whatever
you watch, there can be an element of archive footage
incorporated. At ITN Source we license archive content
on behalf of partners such as Reuters, ITV Studios and
Fox Movietone as well as all 57 years of ITN footage,
working with a wide range of clients outside of the TV
landscape. For a start, there’s the feature film industry
T
ARCHIVE GOES e-