Associated Press Television News (APTN) is one of broadcastings unsung heroes. Although very well known to the broadcasting industry itself, it has almost no visibility to the general public, even though it is frequently APTNs (or arch-rival Reuters) images that make up many of the reports the public sees during their evening news telecasts. AP is now well along on an 18-month, multi-million dollar planned endeavor to convert all of its operations from standard definition (SD) to high-definition (HD) video. APs London bureau has just been fully converted to ingest and playout HD. New Yorks conversion is happening now, while Los Angeles, Paris and Johannesburgs HD work has been completed. During 2011, a total of eight AP locations were converted, with another 25 to be completed by next year. The decision to convert to HD embraces all aspects of APs workflow, from newsgathering and production to content distribution.
Sports news, via its joint-venture with Sports News Television (SNTV), converts in January of 2012. The completion date for the main breaking news service will be June 2012, just in time for the 2012 London Olympics in July and the U.S. presidential elections in November. New HDTV OB trucks and satellite fly-away vehicles have also been purchased.
The move to HD will see AP change the way it gathers, produces, and distributes news to its customers, involving a series of upgrades. In addition to HD cameras, it is upgrading mobile satellite trucks and enhanced backhaul capabilities to handle the HD signal.
Video news bureaus around the globe have also been upgraded to the latest generation of video editing, compression, and transmission technologies. Additionally, state-of-the-art HD Master Control Rooms (MCR) are being constructed in more than 20 locations, including London, New York, and Washington.
Hoad adds, The magnitude of this project is such that we are upgrading all our infrastructure right from the camera lens to the distribution technologies and everything in between. We recognize in todays information driven world its all about choice and getting the information you want, when, where and how you want it. As such, were upgrading our technology to make it simpler than ever for customers to receive and use our video footage.
Baker said there had been an explosion over the past three or four years in their clients demand for celebrity-led video footage. You cannot imagine the number of people who seem to want Paris Hilton stories every day! This has seen us enlarge our entertainment supply, and clients can now benefit.
AP has always been focused on being first, fast and accurate but nowadays broadcasters want absolute immediacy, live footage no matter how raw, and this is reflected in AP Direct which started out as a live channel back in 2003 covering events in Iraq. It has been hugely successful, even though some editors do not push the footage to air as live they nevertheless want to see events unfolding so as to get a better perspective on the story, and to make their own decisions on their own editorial line.
These technologies, as well as more conventional video feeds, were used extensively in the recent Libyan uprising to great effect. We were the first with a satellite uplink truck into Tripoli, says Baker, and broadcasters used that facility via our Global Media Services unit and where broadcasters pay us on an ad-hoc basis.
AP is also digitizing into HD its complete video and celluloid archive, including that acquired when it bought WTN (the old UPITN news agency) in 1998 and rolled the content into is AP Archive division. That business, says Nigel Baker, has seen a seven-fold growth in revenues over the past 10 years. However, one of the problems with the archive was its poor cataloguing. That is being remedied, as you can imagine. We started with the most popular footage first, but we have some 20,000 film cans to plough through containing everything from reports on the Nixon/Watergate era to very old footage of Colonel Ghaddafi. The resource is of key interest to film researchers and documentary/factual producers.
Chris Forrester is a well-known broadcasting journalist and industry consultant and has been reporting on the broadband explosion for more than 25 years. Since 1988, Chris has also been a freelance journalist who specializes in content, the business of television, and emerging applications on all delivery platforms. He founded Rapid TV News and has edited Interspace and its successor Inside Satellite TV since 1996. He also files for Advanced-Television.com. In November 1998 he was appointed an Associate (professor) of the prestigious Adham Center for Television Journalism, part of the American University in Cairo (AUC), in recognition of his extensive coverage of the Arab media scene. He wrote High Above the untold story of Astra, Europes leading satellite company, in 2010.