Associated Press Migrates APTN Live Video News to Online Delivery

The Associated Press and Streamworks are collaborating to migrate APTN Direct (Associated Press Live Television), a live video news service to online delivery. Until now APTN Direct has only been available via satellite, limiting subscribers to large broadcasters with satellite infrastructure. With the move, APTN Direct is poised to deliver live video news to any online/mobile publisher or platform looking to enhance their service offering with a live video news feed. Events range from breaking such as the Amanda Knox courtroom appeal or scheduled such as this past summer's British royal wedding.

AP's Mark Davies and Markus Ickstadt, plus Streamworks' Ray Mia, told me in an interview that publishers subscribing to the APTN Direct video feed can choose between delivering the video in raw form or with AP's or their own commentary. Publishers will receive schedule information of APTN Direct's live video coverage as well as updates for breaking events.

The AP has 240 bureaus globally, of which 85 have fully dedicated APTN video crews. In non-video bureaus, many journalists are also video-enabled with portable equipment, and AP is making a significant investment in HD and 3G capture and delivery. All of this is augmented by stringers and reciprocal relationships with broadcasters who supply video feeds to the AP for broader distribution.

Streamworks is handling the encoding, workflow and distribution through multiple CDNs for APTN Direct, as well as offering an embeddable video player to APTN Direct subscribers as needed. In addition to desktops, APTN Direct can also be delivered to mobile devices and tablets.

APTN Direct is a valuable service for news-hungry consumers who have evolved beyond tuning in for preset news "cycles." Publishers gain far greater flexibility to provide up-to-the-minute video coverage of breaking news events across a wide variety of devices, and to build in sharing through social media hooks.

Categories: Live Streaming

Topics: Associated Press, Streamworks