ANN ARBOR, Mich., January 10, 2008 - ProQuest has signed an agreement with Critical Mention, Inc. to distribute its real-time TV and radio search engine , Critical Mention, exclusively to public library and education market segments and non-exclusively to corporate and government market segments worldwide.  Critical Mention Basic and Critical Mention Pro will provide real-time aggregated, indexed televised and radio news available for the first time to libraries on one search interface.  Critical Mention Basic provides access to U.S. network and cable broadcast news.  Critical Mention Pro provides not only U.S. broadcast news, but also access to Middle Eastern, European, and Canadian channels and broadcasts, real-time radio, estimated Nielsen® audience and publicity data, and additional reporting capabilities. Both products will be available in February, 2008.

"ProQuest understands the distinctive and changing needs of students and researchers," said Rod Gauvin, senior vice president of publishing for ProQuest.  "We are pleased to partner with a proven leader and innovator serving leading companies in every sector of the economy with real-time intelligence gathered from broadcast news coverage. Our agreement with Critical Mention builds on ProQuest's comprehensive news offering, and focuses on meeting the evolving needs of researchers." 

Doug DeSimone, SVP Operations of Critical Mention added, "The partnership with ProQuest simply makes sense. Internally, CriticalMention focuses on delivering our services in the corporate communication, public relations, investor relations and news rooms markets. Understanding there is a very large market for our services in the general business intelligence and research markets we looked for the best partner to open that part of the market with. As a market leader in the delivery of research products to the libraries within the Education Corporate and Government verticals, ProQuest is an ideal partner."

Critical Mention provides continuous monitoring and gathering of more than 300 US network and cable stations, as well as more than 100 international networks from the Middle East, Europe, and Canada, searchable on one interface using basic or advanced searching.  Users can track companies, people, and issues in real-time, viewing news clips and reviewing transcripts. 

Critical Mention gives academic libraries the ability to provide access to multimedia content of particular interest to political science, journalism, communications and media studies departments.  Corporate libraries can continuously monitor their organization and competitors' coverage on broadcast media in real-time. 

Critical Mention Basic and Critical Mention Pro compliment ProQuest's current news offerings including ProQuest Newsstand, NewspaperDirect PressDisplay, U.S. Hispanic Newsstand, and more.  Now, researchers can start with ProQuest for coverage of both print and televised news mediums.