AP Announces Enhanced Election Services for '04 Coverage

WASHINGTON -- The Associated Press announced today that it has launched a new series of expanded election news packages and hosted Web services for 2004 to provide customized pre-election and election coverage for TV and radio broadcasters.

The expanded election packages are offered to complement existing AP election services and will be available in January 2004, or earlier if necessary to cover the first caucuses and primaries.

The new, customizable choices offer turnkey packages and are available in flexible delivery formats, including satellite feed, XML, and hosted Web, which make it easy to integrate with TV, radio, print and online news services.

"No other news organization covers elections as thoroughly and accurately as The Associated Press," says Tom Jory, AP's director of elections tabulations.

"We've expanded our election services to offer members more options in how they receive election results. The broadening of our services comes at a good time, with a wide-open race for the Democratic presidential nomination already under way, and both houses of Congress up for grabs.

AP's pre-election coverage includes candidate bios, headshots, political daybooks, campaign finance information, voting records and more. Pre-election coverage also includes breaking political news and photos. Pre-election content will be available from the first causes and primaries through the general election in November.

AP's election results coverage offers timely results from general elections, presidential and state primaries and runoff elections where they occur. Trend tables will track shifts in party composition for Congress, state houses and state legislatures. Results from newsworthy races that are not traditionally covered will be included. Full results from every national race, all presidential primaries, and all statewide and state legislature primary and general elections, will be provided beginning in January through the 2004 general election.

With a daily reach of 1 billion people around the world, The Associated Press provides content to more than 15,000 news outlets around the world, including more than 5,000 television and radio stations and 1, 000 U.S. media Web sites. They depend on AP for text stories, audio, video, graphics, and photo services for building their on-air and online products and services. AP offers coverage of news, sports, business news, political news, technology news, entertainment and weather. AP's multimedia services are distributed by satellite and the Internet to more than 120 nations.

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