More quirky and obscure content: ITN Source announces Diagonal View Joint Venture

London, UK, Oct. 27, 2008. ITN Source today announces the creation of Diagonal View, a leading digital production business. ITN Source and Matt Heiman, founder Mobix Interactive and digital entrepreneur, formed the joint venture six months ago as an incubator business. Diagonal View packages quirky and obscure content from ITN Source’s vast archive and syndicates it to a range of commercial partners including MySpace, YouTube and MSN.

Market appetite for the Diagonal View content during the trial period has proved insatiable. In less than six months, Diagonal View has become one of the top five channels of all time on MySpace and YouTube.

To date, Diagonal View has over 40 million views and more than 300,000 comments from an active community of supporters.

This joint venture represents a key component of ITN Source’s digital growth strategy which includes the re-launch of portal itnsource.com with full e-commerce download functionality. It follows the launch of Education Clip library, a global business that allows education publishers download video content for inclusion in digital media learning products.

ITN Source is home to one million hours of video footage with representation deals in place with Reuters, Channel 4, Granada, British Pathe and FOX Movitone amongst others. Matt Heiman is a former financier with founding shareholdings in JustGiving.com, Mobix Interactive and mySapient. Heiman works in an advisory capacity with many media and telecoms companies including Channel 4, The Cloud and O2.

Matt Heiman, Founder of Diagonal View, said: “It’s been a fantastic experience working with ITN Source. The archive is extremely rich in video content that online users are only too keen to watch. We’re looking forward to delving further into the library and partnering with other multimedia platforms in taking our business forward.”

Asha Oberoi, Content Director at ITN Source, said: “It’s an unprecedented move in the world of commercial archives to create an online business that delivers content directly to the end consumer. Diagonal View has proved very successful platform for our video content and has potential to become a really strong revenue stream for our business.”

 

About ITN Source

ITN Source is the gateway to over 1 million hours of iconic footage and creative moving imagery captured over three centuries. From news to drama, celebrity, comedy, music, wildlife, natural history and film, to an inspirational stock footage section and growing collection of HD material, ITN Source is the media industries’ first choice for professional video content.

ITN Source represents the world’s largest and most diverse catalogue of moving image libraries including, Reuters, ITN, Channel 4, Granada, UTV, Setanta Sports News, British Pathe, Channel 9 News(Australia), FOX News and FOX Movietone, and other specialist collections. An advanced digital website offers customers the convenience of searching for, viewing, downloading and purchasing broadcast quality content at the touch of a button.

With headquarters in London, ITN Source has sales offices in New York, Berlin, Paris, Sydney and Tokyo. For further information, visit www.itnsource.com.