Thomson Reuters unveils video service for financial pros

Thomson Reuters will announce on Tuesday an ambitious new video service for financial services clients, with videos and transcripts on a range of topics, hoping to become a one-stop source for business people, repots Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times.

Perez-Pena writes, “The Web-based service, which will be introduced in the next few months, differs significantly from existing sources of financial news video reports. It has no television outlet and no programming schedule — each piece is viewed only on demand — and it will not be open to the general public.

“‘We’ve created something completely new here,’ Devin Wenig, chief executive of the company’s markets division, said in an interview in his office above Times Square, where he demonstrated the service. ‘This is meant for the 550,000 financial professionals who have a Thomson Reuters screen on their desks.’

“The hope is not to compete directly with established sources like CNBC or Bloomberg Television, but to create a new niche — and make the company’s core business of financial data and news more attractive in the competition with Bloomberg and Dow Jones Newswires. The Thomson Reuters service has features that allow especially fast access to specific pieces of video, whether produced in a studio or recorded at a conference or a hearing. Each video is accompanied on screen by a searchable transcript, with a set of key words highlighted at the top. Clicking anywhere on the transcript causes the video to jump to that point.”

Read more here.