ISLAMABAD, Nov 30: The chief executive officer of the Associated Press Television Network (APTN), Ian Ritchie, said the increasing interest of the international viewers worldwide as well as those of the South East Asian region, the APTN has decided to expand its network in Pakistan.

Mr Ritchie was in Islamabad in connection with the formal launching of the Islamabad Bureau of APTN, which has started working independently for the last few months.

In an exclusive interview with Dawn, Mr Ritchie said the APTN was not a US media company like CNN, or Fox or even a UK company like the BBC.

“We are not a television channel. We do not intend to create a television channel or establish anything like that. Our business at the APTN is to provide raw material and footage for the news events to broadcast clients around the world. We have 500 broadcast customers from NHK in Japan to CCT in China to PTV here in Pakistan. And, we provide global news pictures to those customers. That is our business and that is all we do. We satisfy the requirements of our customers,” Mr Ritchie said.

He said it was entirely upto the customers to decide how to use it. “It is for the broadcasters to decide how to use the material, it is for them to editorialise the situation, it is for them what they use, when they use it and how they use it. It is not our business. That is our business. We don’t compete with the broadcasters. We don’t want to be one,” he said.

“As far as Pakistan is concerned, here we have an APTN Bureau since 1997,” he said adding the Associated Press, the sister organization for text and photos, is here for many a years.

He said there was a long-established pattern of having an interest in this region for many months, many years and the APTN intend to look at this in a long-term basis.