ITN adds British Pathe to empire.

ITN has swelled its archive division after signing a deal to take over the running of the prestigious British Pathe News archive.Under the terms of the five-year deal, agreed between ITN and Daily Mail & General Trust - owner of British Pathe - the news broadcaster will take over the management and marketing of the archive, which is the only video collection in the word to have been completely digitised. Last year British Pathe became the first archive in the world to be made available online.The collection includes the 1966 World Cup final in colour and the coronation of Elizabeth II in colour, as well as footage from the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Somme and the Hindenburg disaster.There is also early footage from Iraq, dating from the 1920s, including allied forces fighting in the country during the second world war, the opening of the Basra oilfields in the 1950s and the Iraqi revolution of 1958. There is also a 1950s documentary on the country called Ageless Iraq.The deal will mean that the ITN Archive now contains half a million hours of historical material dating back to the 1890s. ITN now claims to control four of the "big five" classic cinema newsreels, including Gaumont British, Universal News and British Paramount.ITN Archive also sells the entire Reuters catalogue, Channel 4, al-Jazeera and its own material which stretches back to 1955.- ITN has acted as consultant to help launch an English language news channel in India called Headlines Today owned by TV Today Network. The project was run by ITN's new international consultancy arm - part of ITN International.