CNN cooks up more than alphabet soup
The new appointment of David Sheehan at CNN Imagesource is bringing a new approach to managing a news archive and the tricky business of handling legacy formats.
For David Sheehan, newly appointed VP for Content Licensing, Sales at news supplier, CNN Imagesource, it is a pretty exciting moment in the business. He has been brought in to drive the digitisation and global sales expansion. We talked to him as his business strategy got into gear.
“We have to adopt an aggressive digitisation policy at CNN because there are new companies moving into this space”, he says, “people like Thought Equity - which are making a major impact.” He has applied a new broom to the approach to sales that has seen Atlanta grow into an important port of call for web forays for content. He clearly wants to enhance its presence on the horizon: “the brand is key, no question. With offices in places like London and Tokyo, there is a recognition factor here that has stood news companies like CNN in good stead down the years. We can guarantee a comprehensive coverage of events that other broadcasters find difficult without extensive syndication of footage shot by other parties.” He is not against developing strong representation deals with sources that are complementary to CNN’s, but he senses that the company might not always have exploited its core values to maximum effect. “It depends on the product portfolio” he says. “The variety of content we can offer means we start from a position of strength and would only look at partnerships that enhance our inventory in a qualitiatively different direction....but we start from this core.” There are clearly trails to be blazed in this territory, but only after comprehensive analysis of the current holdings has shown the best direction to take.
David Sheehan has been recruited as a high profile figure to oversee this effort, for the archive to step up a gear. He has joined the CNN News Services executive team as vice president for content licensing and sales. Susan Grant, executive vice president of CNN News Services said on his appointment: “David’s vast understanding of the video licensing market provides focus to CNN ImageSource.” Grant emphasized the importantance of anticipating the needs of the full range of broadcast, corporate and commercial clients.
Sheehan moved from ABC News VideoSource which had achieved record sales of ABC News’ stock footage on his watch. There he established key partnerships with a range of content partners. Sheehan had been with ABC News VideoSource since 1995 and he also
serves as co-president of the Association of Commercial Stock Image Licensors, the nonprofit association dedicated to promoting and advancing the professional interests of the stock footage industry. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Kenyon College.
The CNN ImageSource online catalog contains more than 480,000 items.The collection comprises footage owned by the network and material from sources it currently represents, at present includeing more than 700 US news affiliates and the French news agency AFP. The newly video-enabled CNN ImageSource website offers registered users access to close to 130,000 digital items for browsing and provides features such as online ordering, saved searches and FTP delivery of non-watermarked, high-resolution files.
CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, has a reach extending to nine cable and satellite television networks, one private place-based network and two radio networks. CNN Newsource claims to be the world’s most extensively syndicated news service.
Like other key news suppliers like ITN, AP and NBC, the strength of the source is also a potential weakness. It’s one thing to have such a comprehensive coverage of world events, but news is by its very nature a high churn instant hit low shelf-life product. Some of the big developments in the archive world are in the premium sector - that means High Def - not a habitat that news suppliers find a natural pasture. For Sheehan, this a question of carefully managing a transition. “It’s churning are right now. Players are looking for position. We can’t rush at it because inevitably much of our stock is held on legacy formats like Beta and Beta SP tape, but we will deal with the issues in a progressive way. CNN’s first base will always be to get the news out there, so inevitably the studied high end market is for more specialist suppliers.” However, the scope to supply the burgeoning pro-sumer market and other non-broadcast users of content is a crucial focus for the archive, especially the use of video on the internet.
In terms of reaching those increasingly dispersed customers, CNN Imagesource is placing great store on its upgraded website. “It’s a good site getting better” says Sheehan. “More visual elements and just more content to browse with bigger better search capabilities - that’s what everyone wants and it’s central to all our efforts.” In common with competitors like AP and ITN, the archive is looking to the site to drive not just preview but full ecommerce sales eventually.
David Sheehan won’t be pushed into chasing fashions on all this....he knows from his years at ABC that building a solid performing business is more important than flash visuals. The move from New York to Atlanta has brought a raft of new challenges. He knows the value of reliable systems, knowledgeable staff and speed of turnaround. “Listen, CNN started in 1980, but we’re still talking in terms of managing a large amount of native assets” he emphasizes. “Essentially the task is about managing a flow, it’s an upgrade channel that takes all of this material and makes it as widely available in the appropriate format of the moment, as we can.” Building from such a solid base at CNN, where the attitude towards the customer was always friendly and helpful, Sheehan should be able to steer the supplier expertly along that route. When he defines his mission in terms of managing an “on demand” provision, you will not find many archive bosses disagreeing with the sentiment.
