Reuters takes the ITN archive from Getty

Reuters has ousted Getty as the exclusive agency partner for ITN's 70-year video archive, one of the world's most valuable collections of historic broadcast footage, more than a million clips spanning royal weddings, the release of Nelson Mandela, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Reuters will digitise an additional 10,000 hours of ITN film and enrich the whole archive with AI-generated metadata: transcription, shot listing, and translation, searchable through the Reuters Connect marketplace alongside Reuters' own content and 100-plus other partners. The pitch from head of Reuters news agency Alphonse Hardel is that the combination of "technology, content management and global distribution" unlocks archive value. ITN's Tim Forrest frames it against "an era defined by AI," arguing Reuters shares ITN's trust values. Getty had held the archive since 2016.

The crux

The archive-licensing business is being remade by AI enrichment; the value is shifting from simply holding footage to making it discoverable and licensable through modern metadata workflows.

Sell-side read

This is a concrete, monetisable signal for any publisher sitting on a deep archive: AI transcription and shot-listing turns dormant footage into an addressable licensing product. The Reuters-ITN template is the proof point.

Watch

whether other broadcast archive owners follow ITN into AI-enriched licensing deals, and whether syndication marketplaces consolidate around Reuters Connect.