European News Exchange

The European News Exchange (short: ENEX) is an association of commercial TV broadcasters.[1] Coordinated by the ENEX Centre in Luxembourg,[2] ENEX members share their news content and news production resources to gain competitive advantages in newsgathering.[3] ENEX began as a technical service platform and has developed into a news provider that gathers daily news video stories from its members in a news pool. All ENEX content is available to its members for free.[4] To ensure exclusivity, usually only one channel per territory is allowed to join.[5]

History and Membership

On 14 December 1993, managers from RTL Television, RTL Belgium, RTL Nederland, M6 in France, and corporate parent of the latter CLT (Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Télédiffusion, 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, then 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.[6]

Full list of ENEX members

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 material from this pool for their programmes, free of charge.[12]

Live operations

ENEX organises live stand-up coverage of major planned and breaking news events on behalf of partners. The Greek financial crisis of summer 2015 saw ENEX deploying satellite trucks to Athens but also to each of the long-running string of governmental meetings in Brussels, Strasbourg, and Luxembourg City such as Eurogroup, Ecofin and full council.

The Germanwings 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 shooting, 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 children and the election of Pope Francis in 2013.