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LiveU and Associated Press partner on live video exchange platform

AP Live Community is the first of its kind aimed at the global newsgathering community

Associated Press (AP) and LiveU have announced they are collaborating on new live video exchange newsgathering platform, AP Live Community.

The platform is the first of its kind aimed at the global newsgathering community and will launch on 15th September.

AP Live Community is free to access and aims to make booking a freelancer or production company at a specific time more straightforward and cost-effective.

All service providers registered to the platform use LiveU’s technology for cellular bonded transmission with automatic pairing through the AP Live Community platform, ensuring seamless live broadcasting directly into the live video publisher’s LiveU server.

Paul Shanley, director of business development and partnerships at AP, told TVBEurope the platform is designed to serve both those in a breaking news situation and broadcasters or other media companies/brands who are looking to plan event coverage in the future.

“Broadcasters simply go to the site and post a service request for the event they are looking to cover. Service providers and production companies in the right location, with the right equipment for the job will then get in touch,” he explained.

“Alternatively, they can search for and find service providers in the area where they need coverage, review their profiles and contact their preferred provider directly.”

Shanley said LiveU and AP have spent a considerable amount of time ensuring that the process is “fast and flexible in a breaking news situation, with a streamlined booking process and automatic streaming connection its simple and quick to go live. Indeed, the whole platform – and LiveU’s cellular bonding technology is key to this – has been designed to allow those requiring live content to cater to modern news-viewing demands.

“What we mean by this is that we have seen a sea change in what viewers now expect, almost regardless of what screen they are watching on: they want video very, very quickly from as close to the scene of an incident as possible. AP Live Community expands upon the inherent capabilities of LiveU’s technology, adding AP’s editorial expertise to technology that is absolutely fit-for-purpose.”

LiveU’s VP of marketing, Ronen Artman, explained that the company felt it was important to work with AP on the new platform: “LiveU has established a huge user base with many thousands of units out there globally. But as we grow, so we have begun to move into developing services around those products, with one aim being to further develop user communities.

“We have a strong relationship with AP, who have used our products for many years, and the news market is of course very significant for us,” said Artman. “AP has the editorial expertise that we don’t and AP Live Community is a perfect combination of the two companies’ skillsets; a combination that we believe satisfies a real demand in the market for increased, highly responsive, news coverage.”

“This platform brings people together and provides a safe, secure and flexible solution to increasing live coverage of events and breaking news.”