Appointment of Chris O’Hearn as Commercial Director strengthens ITN Archive team

ITN announced today that it has appointed Christopher O’Hearn as Commercial Director of the fast-growing ITN Archive business. O’Hearn joins ITN from APTN (Associated Press Television) where he was Head of Content.

At APTN, he directed the Library and Entertainment services, achieving sales growth of 50% in the past three years and establishing APTN as one of the fastest growing businesses in the video clip sales market. O’Hearn had previously held journalistic and commercial posts at Reuters Television, Sky News and ABC, Australia.

ITN has rapidly built its archive business in the last two years and today manages the world’s largest collection of archive images and video, containing over 650,000 hours of content, dating from 1896 to the present day.

The ITN Archive is the fastest-growing business in the ITN group and has trebled its turnover since 2001.

Commenting on the appointment, Mark Wood, chief executive of ITN, said: “Chris is a formidable operator and brings with him a wealth of experience in both the production and management of content. His appointment adds enormous strength to an Archive team which is rapidly building a world-beating business and opening up wholly new markets for ITN’s historic footage and moving imagery.”

Sue Thexton, managing director of ITN Archive, said: “As Commercial Director, Christopher will be responsible for building our archive partner relationships, content development, marketing and operations. His success at APTN and expertise in this area is going to be of enormous benefit to us as we grow our business over the next five years. I am absolutely delighted to have someone of Christopher’s calibre joining our management team.

“The Archive remains the fastest growing business unit of ITN and is uniquely placed to continue this trend as demand for content increases in our new markets.”

O’Hearn takes up his post at ITN in September.

Enquiries: ITN

020 7833 3000 Mark Wood

Kathryn Holland Financial Dynamics 020 7831 3113Tim Spratt / Charles Palmer

Editor’s note:

· ITN Archive is an international company and the largest commercial archive in the world, holding over 650,000 hours of moving imagery from all over the world. · With footage from 1896 to the present day, ITN Archive represents exclusively the collections of ITN; Reuters Television including VISNEWS and British newsreels - Gaumont Graphic and Gaumont British, Paramount, Empire News, Universal News and British Pathe; Granada; Channel 4; Film Four; Fox News; and Fox Movietone. · The depth and breadth of the archive images is now enormous, ranging from celebrity and entertainment to politics and current affairs; from wildlife to history to fashion. · ITN is one of the world’s leading and most efficient news producers. From its main production studios in London, where most of its 800 plus employees are based, ITN provides news programming for ITV1, the ITV News Channel, Channel 4 and Independent Radio News (IRN). ITN’s combined news broadcasts reach over two-thirds of the population, making it one of the leading news providers in the UK. The company has a strong reputation for the efficient use of modern technology (winning the Royal Television Society’s 2004 Innovation Award) and optimizes the use of its IP through ITN Archive – which is both the biggest commercial news archive and TV-based video archive in the world with a library of over 650,000 hours of footage - and through producing factual documentaries and programming, and streaming news and entertainment content to 3G phones.