Sale of British Pathe

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Thursday 24 April 2003

(London - 24 April 2003) Under a deal announced this morning between Independent Television News Limited (ITN) and DMGT, 100% owners of British Pathe, ITN will take over management and all marketing of the film archive of British Pathe. The deal will create the world’s biggest commercial source of news and history footage, containing half a million hours of historical material dating back to 1896.

Under the exclusive five-year deal ITN will operate and represent British Pathe’s film archive business, selling its unique content around the world through ITN Archive’s network of international offices.

Julian Aston, managing director of British Pathe, said: “Last year we completed the digitisation of the archive, which has made it uniquely accessible throughout the world and the first archive to be available online in a fully viewable and searchable form. Since then we have been exploring ways of accessing and expanding our appeal to the global broadcast market.

The ITN archive provides us with access to traditional broadcast markets and is deeply committed to developing new markets via the world wide web.”

DMGT has a 20% interest in ITN.

*Enquiries *:
Julian Aston, British Pathe - 020 7307 6256
Peter Williams, DMGT - 020 7938 6631