LONDON – Reuters has begun a “major” program to digitize 25,000 hours of analogue video content it hopes to license to content-hungry brands and to publishers eager for material to serve ads against.

“It’s sitting in a basement,” Reuters’ global multimedia head Greg Beitchman told Beet.TV in this interview. “If you want that content today, you’ve got to wait three to four days.

“We’re going to bring to bear in the market a lot of stuff over the next two to three years. This is going to help digital publishers and brands tell stories and reach audiences. Publishers want inventory.”

The BBC is also digititizing its vast video archives.