IF YOU thought ITN was just a news provider, Mark Wood, ITN’s chief executive, wants you to think again. The former Reuters reporter hopes to safeguard ITN’s future by branching out — into broadband and mobile, and even stealing the clothes of stock photographer Getty Images.

When Wood arrived in 2003, ITN was under intense pressure — under-resourced compared with the BBC, and under attack from Sky, which had helped to bid down the value of the ITV contract. “The company wasn’t going to generate major profits; the shareholders wanted to see a growth path,” he says.

Historic regulations mean that ITN is independent.Wood’s company is owned by four shareholders: ITV with 40 per cent, and UBM, Reuters and Daily Mail and General Trust with 20 per cent each, a situation that has left ITN weak. The most likely scenario remains that ITV will eventually take control, with Charles Allen threatening to take ITV’s next news contract in-house when it comes up in 2008 if he is not allowed to buy the others out. However, no talks, Wood says, are going on between shareholders. “ITV has other things going on at the moment”, while the other investors “support the business”, and he claims that they are “happy to fund it”.

To emulate Getty, Wood wants cash. “I looked at Getty and thought there must be room to bring their business model to video.” Under Wood, ITN has begun to develop a news archive; it runs its own, but takes on the job for Reuters, Fox News and historic providers such as British Pathé. Clips are available for 50 cents or $1 on Google Video. Wood says: “History is popular, as is wildlife footage, and news about UFOs.”

Wood believes that in future people will buy routinely “video clips in Power Point” although that is a “much bigger issue for digital rights management”, and believes that Getty and its rival Corbis have been slow to react. “Getty only has a business aimed at the corporate video market, but in time they will start to compete.”

With all this in mind, Wood is putting together a business plan to build the archive arm and “expand our sales business in the US and also Japan”. The archive generates about £12 million in revenue, out of ITN’s £103.5 million, and is “profitable”. However, the early investment in it has meant shareholders have forgone dividends for 2005; ITN’s trading profit last year was a modest £3 million.

Wood has also found himself courted by “more than one American investor” who, after the deal with Google, found out about ITN for the first time. How keen they are is unclear, but the current shareholders have said: “Let’s look at what plan you develop and we’ll decide if we want to fund it.”

It’s all one step removed from the business of daily news. Wood goes most days to the 10am planning meeting, but the daily bulletins are the responsibility of David Mannion and Jim Gray for ITV and Channel 4, respectively.

ITN scored two big scoops last year, with the truth behind the death of Jean Charles de Menezes on ITV and the Attorney-General’s advice on the legality of the Iraq war on Channel 4. “We’re trying to bring in more exclusives, to help build an audience, and generate an appointment to view,” Wood says.

With only £55 million of resource against the BBC’s £110 million-plus, the ITV bulletins compete reasonably. However, the timing in the late evening does hurt, leaving ITV well over a million viewers behind. “Everybody thinks that giving up Ten O’Clock was not the greatest brainwave,” Wood admits.

The loss of the ITV news channel was also a blow — “we lost a shop window” but Wood tries to console himself with the view that “news channels have not attracted the numbers of viewers as in the US, and I’m not sure why”. ITN has created a rolling service for the internet, as the next step in its push into new media, where its sells clips for mobiles, and video on Greengrass TV as well as Google.

It’s hard to get viewing figures for the clips — “in the tens of thousands” — is all Wood says, but there is demand for entertainment news. Every day ITN has a crew out filming something for its new media audience, as it chases fresh viewers.

The resources of the BBC remains a threat, but under Wood ITN has stabilised, and if his homage to Getty Images works, it could create the corporate stability without which journalism struggles to thrive.

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