AP Going Video p. 12

By: George Garneau

Board reaffirms strategy for cooperative news
organization's move to establish a video news service
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ? which started with the written word in 1848 and expanded into photographs in 1927 and voice in 1974 ? plans to report the news in moving pictures.
At its semiannual meeting in New York in September, AP's board reaffirmed a strategy, approved in April, to establish a video news service.
"We are going to be in video. How we are going to be in video is not decided," said AP chairman Frank Daniels Jr., president and publisher of the Raleigh News & Observer.
"If we are going to be a complete news service, as I think we ought to be, we have to deliver [moving] pictures as well as words," Daniels said.
"The board believes it's a logical business for AP to be in, and we believe it will be a profitable business, which in turn will benefit members by holding down the cost of assessments and being in the position if at some point those members want video," he said, referring to the possibility that newspapers may become multimedia information suppliers.
AP tested the market by polling television stations. "There is a need in the field," Daniels said.
He added that there was no dissent on the board of 18 elected newspaper members and four appointed broadcast members.
AP, the world's biggest news agency, hopes to piggyback its video service on its global satellite data-transmission system, an information superhighway that moves huge masses of data for the wire service and commercial clients.
The not-for-profit news wholesaler currently gets 76% of its $386 million budget from its 1,653 newspaper and 5,900 broadcast members, who receive words, pictures and graphics.
Video operations would join the category of "non-traditional" revenues, mainly from data telecommunications services, which bring in 24% of AP's revenue.
For years, increasing revenue from the sale of telecommunications services has slowed the growth of assessments paid by members to maintain a staff of 3,100 employees and a vast data network.
"This is perhaps the next step in what AP can do to utilize its worldwide organization," Daniels said.
But AP's motives are broader than money. As multimedia communication gains acceptance, newspapers have begun to offer information in new ways: by telephone, computer, compact disk, cable television and, perhaps eventually, as Newsweek magazine already has done, through multimedia's text, pictures and video.
Though no AP member newspapers want video now, Daniels said, "I think there are going to be newspapers who supply video and words sometime in the future."
AP plans to pay for the video operation through short-term borrowing.
It expects to enter the business next year and is "moving as quickly as we can," Daniels said.
AP spokeswoman Wendell Wood Collins said no entry strategy had been set.
Particulars aside, AP is aiming at a market that is booming ? but so is competition.
Dave Bartlett, president of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, said the demand for video news tape is growing as news markets fragment and more smaller stations offer news.
Reuters, the for-profit financial information and news supplier, saw the potential and invested heavily in video news. Last year, it bought out NBC's minority interest in the television news agency Visnews, merged it into its traditional news-gathering operations and expanded video activity in its 118 bureaus throughout the world.
Sept. 29, Reuters announced a national and international service designed to furnish U.S. television stations with morning and afternoon video feeds.
AP and Reuters are following the market leader, Ted Turner's Cable News Network, which sends 180 items in 11 feeds a day to 350 U.S. stations ? more than any of the broadcast networks, which have expanded services to affiliates dramatically, Bartlett said.
"CNN has proved that there is a big domestic market for news video, national and international, and I think AP is getting into that business. And it looks like a very good business," he added.
"It's a competitive market," said Gary Anderson, vice president of CNN Television. "We welcome the competition."
Other competitors include the Conus service and Worldwide Television News, formerly Fox Movietone, which is 80% owned by Capital Cities/ABC Inc. and supplies international news.
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