The European News Exchange (short: ENEX) is an association of the world’s leading commercial TV broadcasters. Coordinated by the ENEX Centre in Luxembourg, ENEX members share their news content and news production resources in order to gain competitive advantages in newsgathering. ENEX began as a technical service platform and has over recent years transformed itself into becoming a news provider that gathers daily news video stories from its members in a news pool. All ENEX content is available, exclusively to its members, for free. To ensure exclusivity, only one channel per territory is allowed to join.
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Company’s History
On 14 December 1993, managers from RTL Television, RTL Belgium, RTL Nederland, M6 in France, and CLT (Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Télédiffusion or CLT, later to become RTL Group) met in Luxembourg to found the European News Exchange. The initial goal was to combine the resources of the different TV channels and to reduce costs by sharing news footage, technical facilities and satellite space. ENEX started operating in 1994.
In 1996, ENEX merged with the "News Consortium" consisting of CBS, Sky News, VTM Belgium and TBS Japan. The members of the News Consortium joined ENEX, now operating one digital and one analogue satellite channel. Ten years after its inception, 30 ENEX members were making tens of thousands of bookings on 10 satellite channels and exchanging more than 5,000 news stories per year.
In 2003, ENEX digitised the picture exchange; all news stories were now recorded on a server. The following year the number of items nearly doubled when footage from CBS Newspath was added. In 2005, ENEX introduced News Link, a system for the transmission and exchange of content via the internet on a file-sharing basis. Today, ENEX has 52 members and operates 14 digital satellite channels on Eutelsat 16A. All ENEX members contribute and receive content from all over the world via News Link HD. In 2013, ENEX members delivered the all-time high of over 27.000 items of video content.
The Members
The association currently has 54 members and is present in more than 40 countries. The geographical reach and news expertise of its members contribute to the value of ENEX content exchange. ENEX strength is the collective strength of some of the world’s most important commercial and news channels. ENEX members contribute more than 24,000 news items per year to the content exchange that is facilitated by the Coordination Center in Luxembourg. They share live signals over the ENEX satellite whenever there is breaking news, often being the first on the spot. Members contribute with live coverage of breaking news that becomes instantly available to the ENEX network through their satellite. As a general rule, ENEX members are No.1 or No.2 commercial channels in their regions, or No.1 News channels with a broader appeal.
In the summer of 2012, ENEX welcomed Sky News Arabia, expanding the association’s coverage to the whole of North Africa and the Middle East. Later the same year, the first members from Latin America joined. One of the most recent members is LNK, one of the major commercial TV channels in Lithuania. Since 2012, ENEX has expanded its membership base by 25 per cent. At present, the organization is in discussions with channels in Asia, Africa, additional partners in South America, as well as further partners in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Full list of ENEX members
The Business Model
All ENEX members pay a yearly membership fee – the amount depends on the size of the channel, the size of its market, its contribution to the ENEX content pool, and the use of satellite time. Each member submits material from their own-produced news programmes to the ENEX content pool without receiving any financial compensation. In return, they can use all material from this pool for their programmes – free of charge. This way, it is possible to keep the membership fee low, resulting in significant cost savings for the channels compared to a classic agency model.
Live Operations
ENEX organises live stand-up coverage of major planned and breaking news events on behalf of partners. These services are designed to provide a more cost-effective way for members to cover significant stories when it is not possible or necessary for them to deploy their own live newsgathering operations. The Greek financial crisis of summer 2015 saw ENEX deploying satellite trucks not only to Athens but also to each of the long-running string of governmental meetings in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg such as Eurogroup, Ecofin and full council. The German Wings plane crash saw ENEX have live camera positions in Seyne Les Alpes, France, Dusseldorf Airport and Haltern Am See in Germany. Over the course of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, ENEX used three SNGs to provide positions in five locations, including the magazine’s offices on the first day and the Paris supermarket for the final hostage-freeing. Pre-planned events have included the British royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the birth of their two children and the election of Pope Francis in 2013.