AP began offering Spanish-language video content this past summer, and the offering has apparently been well received. According to Jaime Serdan, manager of sales and marketing for AP’s Mexico and Central America operations, the newswire has already negotiated agreements with Mexico’s El Universal, Terra U.S., Terra Latin America, and is about to close a deal with StarMedia.
The service produces five clips a day, Monday through Friday, that include neutral Spanish-language voice-overs. Approximately half of the clips are general news items, while the other half are entertainment, celebrity-related news.
The folders are then made available to subscribers in an FTP folder in their desired format. “While AP Television News produced the content itself,” notes Serdan, “we have partnered with a Swedish company called Kamera to handle the technical management of the material, such as formatting it into different file types for our customers.”
AP charges a monthly fee for the service: a flat rate of $2,000 per website. For websites such as Terra that have multiple-country editions, the rate is multiplied by the number of different sites that will be making use of the content.