Vice/HBO Reinventing The (News) Wheel

HBO and Vice Media will try to muscle into broadcast television’s traditional news turf next Monday (Oct. 10) when they launch HBO’s first nightly newscast, Vice News Tonight.

It’s a half-hour newscast airing at the same time every weeknight — 7:30 p.m. Eastern. But if that sounds like a typical TV newscast scenario, the creators of Vice News Tonight are designing their show to be anything but, beginning with their decision to do away with a central anchor — a traditional feature of TV news.

“One of the quickest ways to differentiate yourself is to not invest the entirety of your show on one finely combed head,” says Josh Tyrangiel, EVP of content and news for Vice Media, who is overseeing the new venture. “Fairly or unfairly, Americans’ trust in anchors has gradually eroded over the years.”

Tyrangiel is a former print journalist who worked at Time magazine from 1999 to 2009, first as a staff writer and music critic and then advancing to London correspondent, national editor and finally deputy managing editor. He left Time in 2009 to become editor of Businessweek after its acquisition by Bloomberg. He led the magazine’s rebranding to Bloomberg Businessweek. By August 2014, he was overseeing content on all of Bloomberg’s media platforms. He left Bloomberg in 2015.

In this interview with TVNewsCheck reporter Adam Buckman, Tyrangiel shares his views on news anchors and reveals details about what kinds of stories will form the bulk of the content on Vice News Tonight.

An edited transcript:

What is your philosophy about the anchor’s role and why not have one?

There are a couple of reasons. As we started out talking about format and the fact that the network format hasn’t changed in a really long time, one of the quickest ways to differentiate yourself is to not invest the entirety of your show on one finely combed head. No. 1, it’s a lot of weight to carry. 

On top of that, I think that we’re in a different era when a plurality of Americans don’t necessarily invest their trust in a single person. Americans’ trust in anchors has gradually eroded over the years, fairly or unfairly, but you can’t ignore the fact that that has been a change. That is not what it used to be.

Why was 7:30-8 chosen as the nightly time period?

It’s a time when there are traditionally no other news shows on. We’re aware that lots of people are getting home much later than 6:30 these days. It gives us an opportunity to get a little bit more news in. It wasn’t rocket science. We just kind of looked at the calendar. We also love the idea of being a lead-in to HBO’s primetime programming.

You’re quoted in one of the HBO press releases as saying, “The nightly news hasn’t changed its format in 60 years,” and you go on to say that the way viewers are consuming news has changed dramatically. What is your critique of TV news as it is practiced and produced today?

I think there is a lot of good work out there on an individual basis and even on a network basis. When I said that the format hasn’t changed, I mean, quite literally, from the beginning of network news until now, you’re looking at a person behind a desk with graphics over their shoulder throwing to the field.

And media as a whole has changed dramatically. People are getting their information in so many different ways and yet that format hasn’t changed. If you want to reach younger viewers, the challenge is that you have to reach them where they are. They came of age in a moment where they are holding in their hands devices that are pure streams of information and they don’t understand the satisfaction that can come from the bundled-up news if presented properly.

So we need to move off of where news has historically been and at least meet them halfway. 

If your target audience is getting their news on smartphones and not from watching news on TV, then why launch a mothership newscast of this type at all?

I think there is still plenty of audience for a linear newscast. HBO has been very smart about this in the sense that it’s not just on linear, it’s on HBO Go, it’s on HBO Now. There’s a recognition that people are going to want to consume what they want when they want to consume it. So we’re very aware of people existing on those platforms and, in fact, we have actually programmed additional material for those platforms.

But coming up with a touch-enabled news show that recognizes that a viewer may be watching on their phone, on their app, on their iPad or tablet, is a way to signal that we know you’re there [and] we know you want a slightly different experience. We are not in any way suggesting that we’re trying to change decades of user behavior. We want to be there for them wherever they are.

Please define your target audience. What is their median age, if that is possible to say?

The benefit of doing a show for HBO, and [the fact that it’s a Vice Media product] is that we don’t really have to think that way. The way I approach the problem of “who do you want to reach” is “how do you structure your staff.” And we have a younger and more diverse staff, and many users.

Generally speaking, we follow their interests and their passions and that’s a pretty good way to insure that the people who make the show are a proxy for the audience. But I don’t have a defined, traditional demo in my head. We want everybody. Anybody who wants to watch the show is welcome. We want them all. That’s just the way we’ve thought about that.

What are your goals in terms of viewership? How will success be measured?

Success is really measured qualitatively. From the very beginning, both Vice and HBO have said, if we make a great thing, we’re going to be successful. And so that’s where we’ve really focused. The benefit of being on commercial-free television is that you really only have to think about the audience and that’s great. It frees you up in a way that we really want to take advantage of.

What will a typical show be like? How many stories will there be? What areas of news might you emphasize?  Local? National? International?

For clarity’s sake, we have sort of divided it up — our staff and our coverage — into five big areas.

• One is world news and we’ve got bureaus around the world and stringers around the world as well.
• One is U.S. news, which we break out into politics and policy, economics, civil rights, civil liberties, national security and national defense.
• We do technology, which I think is a huge area that’s undercovered on most newscasts — anything from coverage of the big companies that impact our viewers lives to advanced technology, gene-splicing, automation, things that are going to change people’s lives in the future.
• We do climate — again, an incredibly important area that oftentimes is treated without too much expertise.
• And then lastly, we do culture, and that’s everything from high culture to pop culture [in] countries all over the world.

Those are the areas of coverage that we have. 

You said recently that Vice audiences “are very engaged with the headlines of the day, so Vice News Tonight isn’t obligated to provide what viewers already know.” How then will your nightly news list be formulated? Will you have an editorial meeting in which you look at the top stories of the day and then say, “We’re not going to cover those?” How will it work?

When we’re sitting around the table, the question we keep asking is, how do we add value? So if somebody knows a thing, can you explain the root causes of it, can you explain the downstream impact of it or do you just have better footage, better visuals of that thing that are more impactful? But I do think that that’s the primary question: What can we do that keeps drawing people back into our show?

News networks such as CNN and Fox News, as well as the broadcast networks, rely on TV stations across the country for raw material and sometimes reportage for domestic breaking news. Is Vice also participating in such news exchanges with local television?

We don’t currently [participate]. No.

From some of the descriptions of the Vice News Tonight that one can read in stories about the show, it is easy to form the impression that the stories might be considered to be more topical features than actual news stories. Is this accurate?

Well, yeah, some of them are. Some of them are deeper dives into stories currently going on around the world. As I said, our goal is to create value and impact, and so sometimes, you want to allow your producers and correspondents a little bit of a break from the day to day so that they can get under the skin of the story and really make something memorable for your viewer.

That doesn’t mean we don’t do news coverage. It doesn’t mean we won’t do breaking news. But I think that we need to be able to scratch both itches frankly, and that viewers are looking for that.

If there is no anchor, how will segues be accomplished between stories? Will you have a voiceover introducing an upcoming story, or will you do it with graphics?

I hate to say watch and see, but part of the magic is the visual pacing. It’s something that we spend a lot of time on. We want to make sure that you’re surprised by it. I think that it’s challenging when so many people already know the ‘rhythm’ of a newscast. Once you understand the rhythm of a thing, it loses its ability to spring a surprise on you.

You never would have heard this in a newsroom 40 years ago, but part of our job is to be seductive. It’s to surprise people with stories they didn’t know about, get into stories in surprising ways and to earn the trust of the audience so that they will stick with us when they don’t always know exactly where we are going. So we have spent a lot of time thinking about how do we hold their hand properly? Is this the right place for a different kind of visual that [serves as] a transition or a segue that they wouldn’t have anticipated?

Call it old-fashioned, but wardrobe, hair and makeup are still elements that preoccupy TV newspeople. Are these things to be thrown out the window at Vice News Tonight where the show’s reporters are concerned?

I wouldn’t say they are being thrown out the window. I just think they’re a lower priority. I’m comfortable with people who look the way they look provided that they’re very good reporters [and] that they have magnetism on screen. I just think that part of what audiences have become uninterested in is the sense that the news is a ‘show,’ right? And that everybody is getting dressed up for it when, in fact, people just want the information in the story.

So it’s not that we don’t care about it, we don’t want to be lazy about it, but it’s just not as important as being our authentic selves. We don’t want anything that gets in the way of our audiences and a great story. If you’re distracted by the fact that a particular correspondent has meticulous hair in the middle of a wind storm, that’s a problem.

 You said recently that Vice News Tonight is being inspired in part by Sesame Street and Saturday Night Live. What did you mean by that?

What I meant is that they are multi-format shows and that they never lose sight of what their goal is. So, to elaborate, Sesame Street’s job is to educate your kids, and everything that they do is in pursuit of that goal, but they have many, many ways to approach that visually. Sometimes it is really as simple as drawing two plus two equals four on a chalkboard or on a white screen. Sometimes there’s a real ethical question or a moral question and they can rope characters in. What I’m saying is that whatever the challenge when it comes to educating your kids, they have some moves.

Saturday Night Live is the same thing. Their job is to make you laugh, and when those writers show up Monday morning, the first thing they’re doing is throwing out funny ideas and then the producers help them situate those within certain formats. Is it a monologue joke? Is it a desk joke? Is it a digital short?

So what I mean by a ‘visual inspiration’ is that our job is to help our viewers understand the world, to inform them and increase their understanding. How many ways can we do that? How many different formats can we create so that when we have a great idea that’s maybe harder than usual to visualize, we don’t throw the story out? That’s really what I meant.

Last month, you delayed the premiere of Vice News Tonight by two weeks, saying that you wanted to test it on its various platforms. Does that mean the show will be different or look different on the various platforms?

When I was talking earlier about touch-enabled, you will have a different experience if you’re watching us on an app in two ways. One, if you’re watching the entire broadcast on an app, there will be moments when we will prompt you if you want to be able to see extra additional video, to interact with a graphic [or] examine a document that we’re talking about.

So that’s one way. And the other is that, again, in recognition that our viewers are in charge of their content, on the app, if you want to watch, if you want to fast-forward through or to a story, if you want to save a story, if you want to watch it out of order, you can do that.

Our job is to get it in front of them in a way that pleases them.