SendtoNews Profile in The Globe and Mail: Breaking News Quicker Than a Cab, Cheaper Than a Satellite
Back in 1998, when TV was emerging from the dark ages into the bright new world of digital media, Keith Wells had a vision.
A sports reporter for BCTV at the time, Mr. Wells was covering the Winter Olympics in Nagano, an assignment which, due to budget constraints, consisted of a live two-minute report each day, beamed back to his newsroom in Vancouver via satellite at a cost of $750 a minute.
Meanwhile, he noticed other journalists were shooting footage with miniature DV cameras and using desktop software to edit their stories on-site, but lacked a quick and cost-effective way of delivering that content to their newsrooms.
“They couldn't feed video easily because of bandwidth limitations,” he recalled. “But with the new mini-DVs and programs like Final Cut Pro, I saw the possibility of being able to shoot, report, edit and feed a completed story from anywhere in the world.”
Thirteen years and several quantum leaps in technology later, Mr. Wells is the founder of SendtoNews, an Internet platform that allows journalists and other content creators to deliver high-definition, broadcast quality content cheaper and faster than ever before.
The backbone of the company’s business is a high-speed file transfer utility, capable of uploading massive wireless data feeds in minutes. The technology was originally developed to deliver trailers for major movies studios.
The news clips, press releases and background footage uploaded by SendtoNews clients are linked to Amazon cloud “server farms” around the world and made available free of charge to newsrooms.
SendtoNews clients – universities, government institutions, media relation firms and sports organizations – are charged $50 each time a newsroom uses the materials, up to a maximum of $200.
Breaking News Quicker Than a Cab, Cheaper Than a Satellite
By Brennan Clarke , The Globe and Mail
