Reuters and AWS show how cloud-native collaboration and interoperability can change how news is created, exchanged and monetised, accelerating content sharing and lowering costs.
Visualisation of TwelveLabs models’ video understanding.
The need to capture, verify and give real-time access to breaking news occurring throughout each day to global viewers across a range of platforms and device types puts news organisations and broadcasters under pressure. In an activation coming up at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) 2025, Reuters and AWS will demonstrate live content captured from the floor of the UK Parliament, and replicated simultaneously in near real-time to multiple news organisations.
Reuters and AWS plan to show how cloud-native collaboration and interoperability can change the way news is created, exchanged and monetized, in order to reduce the time needed to share content, and lower associated costs. The demo will make use of the open-source Time-Addressable Media Store (TAMS) API, developed by the BBC R&D team, with AWS services including Amazon S3, AWS Elemental MediaConvert, which encodes content into live stream assets, and AWS Step Functions, used to automate distributed functions when building data and machine learning pipelines.
AWS will also show how TAMS can be integrated with Amazon’s Bedrock, a service that connects users to foundation models and tools for building generative AI applications and agents, and the two AI models Marego and Pegasus from TwelveLabs, who develop video-native AI. These models watch and understand video in a way similar to how human being sees videos. This integration helps to enable embedding of news content into programming.
Live UK Parliament Feeds
In a live demonstration, Reuters will ingest UK Parliament feeds produced by the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit, transmitted using TAMS to AWS, and then make the content available almost immediately to broadcasting and distribution partners. The demonstration can be viewed at the AWS IBC Stand, 12-15 September at the RAI in Amsterdam.
"Speed, accuracy and trust are the pillars of Reuters visual journalism. By working with AWS, the camera-to-cloud concept becomes practical, moving high-quality footage from the field to our producers and customers in only seconds," said Mahesh Ramachandran, Head of Technology, Reuters.
"Not just faster, this process shifts how we gather, edit and distribute video. With AWS's TAMS-based cloud architecture, Reuters producers and Reuters News Agency customers can access breaking news content instantly, getting verified visuals to audiences sooner, at lower cost and with the flexibility to scale for any story, anywhere."
Chris Swan, Principal Solutions Architect for Content Production at AWS, noted that, according to AWS’ cost modelling, TAMS can significantly reduce fast-turnaround workflow costs as well for organizations like Reuters. "Since content in these frameworks is moving between Amazon S3 buckets in short segments, transfers can be done in parallel instead of linearly. What took two hours can be done in a few seconds, and metadata updates happen instantly."
How TAMS Works on AWS
Led by the BBC Research and Development (R&D) team, TAMS is based on the idea of storing short segments of media in an object storage service like Amazon S3, with an API to describe the segments and how they relate to each other. TAMS addresses issues associated with a lift-and-shift approach to running fast-turnaround media workflows in the cloud. In contrast to file-based workflows that duplicate content and are difficult to scale, adopting TAMS uses timing and identity as key primitives to describe media in the store, allowing organisations to build more content-centric workflows.
TAMS implementation at IBC2024.
Currently, news agencies and broadcasters covering the same major news item must each deploy their own teams and resources. Interoperability through TAMS means that one recognised organisation can operate as the source of truth for content, increasing efficiency and freeing time and resources for elements that differentiate programming.
Quick Adoption
As an open-source standard, TAMS can be adopted quickly. Its API-driven functionality potentially cuts weeks or months from development timelines. It may also increase audience trust and expand reach through wider, faster distribution of verified video content and reliable information. The real-time demonstration from Reuters and AWS shows the possibilities of practical TAMS applications, which are attracting users in the broadcast industry.
"With TAMS, broadcasters can make more content available to end users faster, using the same internal resources," John Biltcliffe, Senior Solutions Architect at AWS said. "TAMS can also help update the viewing experience by supporting self-serve features and deeper personalisation, making it simpler for media organisations to use AI for richer audience experiences."
Cloud-Native Collaboration
TAMS was first implemented by AWS for a fast-turnaround workflow at IBC 2024 as a proof-of-concept supported by the Cloud Native Agile Production (CNAP) project. CNAP is a collaboration between companies (including BBC, Sky, Adobe, Cutting Room, Drastic Technologies, Techex, and Vizrt) to advance the development and adoption of the TAMS framework.
After seeing the demonstration at IBC 2024, Reuters wanted to test out TAMS in its own implementation for real-time distribution between companies. Reuters and AWS began collaborating in February 2025, and then enlisted BBC, CNN, Sky and Elliott Media. Elliott Media represented for the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit as part of a small working group to ensure the developed workflow would be effective industry wide. The resulting setup enables Reuters to make content available almost instantly to any broadcast or distribution partner.
Record Once, Access for Everyone
"News broadcasters record everything just in case, and much of this content will be discarded," Chris Swan said. "There will still be a need for live contribution for certain events, but using a TAMS approach with the cloud is much more efficient. Reuters records once, then its broadcast partners can access what they need after the event. Moving this workflow to the cloud also enables Reuters to produce more, or less, content as the news cycle dictates. It brings true flexibility and scalability to fast-turnaround workflows."
The demonstration will use TAMS to store, query and access segmented media over HTTP. By working directly with the BBC, AWS teams built an interoperable framework that provides a single virtual store for live content. Creators will be able to speed up and simplify the process of creating video highlights clips and packages for integration into live content, social sharing and other applications using their preferred tools and the AWS Cloud.
Visitors to the AWS stand will be able to see a complete, fast-turnaround media workflow running from low-latency video ingest through to playout—with file import and export, and web-based editing.
New implementation coming to IBC2025
IBC2025 TAMS Implementation
As one of the world’s top news agencies, Reuters has been dedicated for many years to supplying journalism with speed, precision and global reach. Ahead of IBC2025, Reuters joined AWS to prepare and modernize live fast turnaround workflows.
Live video feeds from UK Parliament, with Reuters’ live feeds and in-house short-form VOD content will be ingested directly into the Reuters TAMS store. From there, content is instantly and securely federated with an AWS TAMS instance, acting as a customer of the Reuters store.
The goal is new options for how news can be produced and shared collaboratively across organizations in real time without file transfers or duplicated storage. The demonstration also features AWS Partners Mimir, Adobe, Techex, Matrox and CuttingRoom.
"TAMS can also help the broadcast industry advance AI understanding for live video," noted John Biltcliffe. "It brings all the pieces together by serving as one ingest for all purposes, whether for social media, content production, archive or syndication."
The Reuters live, fast turnaround workflow will be hosted at the AWS IBC Booth during the IBC2025 show, 12-15 September at the RAI in Amsterdam. aws.amazon.com
