Vice News Tonight celebrated its 1,000th episode this past March, and now the award-winning weekly news program is being canceled. The cancellation, which will officially take place in May, comes as Vice Media Group begins layoffs within its Vice News unit.
Vice is to relaunch its nightly news show, Vice News Tonight, in a new hour-long live format on March 4 on Vice TV. Vice has named TV news veteran Nikki Egan as executive producer of the newscast, which will air live, Monday through Thursday. Prior to Vice, Egan was at MSNBC for 17 years.
However, CBS’ 60 Minutes is the show with the most nominations for the 40th annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards, with a total of 23. HBO’s Vice News Tonight follows with 18 noms for the awards, which will be handed out Sept. 24 at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York.
Exclusives
How Vice News Plans To Attract Millennials
Vice News Tonight on HBO and Viceland is a mix of the short documentaries that people have come to know from Vice as well as a daily news package in the beginning of the program. Vice’s team is hoping the mix appeals to a younger audience. Michael Gruzuk, Vice director of news, digital and special programming, talks about why Vice is investing in a newscast and how it plans to reach its target audience.
Vice News Tonight is getting its legs underneath it in the first weeks with an audience of “hundreds of thousands,” according to HBO CEO Richard Plepler, adding ambiguously that it’s doing well on digital, too. “I’m not running a business based on CPMs,” Plepler said. “I’m running a business based on brands.”
A ton of hype preceded Vice’s nightly news premiere on Monday, but not everyone is buying in. New York Times TV reviewer Mike Hale unfavorably compared the debut to even the most “hackneyed, shallow and formulaic” network newscasts, and blasted the new HBO offering as “mostly a canned, feature-heavy affair presenting news that was a day old or more.”
Monday’s debut of of the younger-targeted Vice News Tonight featured a correspondent in a nose ring who tied Hurricane Matthew to climate change. Vice, an upstart media company known for its in-your-face international reporting, is looking to shake up television’s daily news diet. Its newscast is airing weeknights on HBO at 7:30 p.m. ET. That’s after the more traditional newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC, which attract primarily an older audience.
In the works for months, the premiere of Vice News Tonight was pushed back for three weeks to make sure all of its technology worked properly. The pay cable service is airing it at 7:30 p.m. Monday through Friday starting tonight.
Vice/HBO Reinventing The (News) Wheel
Vice Media’s Josh Tyrangiel details the philosophy and strategy behind its new Vice News Tonight that will air weeknights on HBO at 7:30 p.m. beginning next Monday, Oct. 10. “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.”
HBO and Vice Media are delaying the launch of their evening newscast until Oct. 10 to make sure its creative elements work.
The first promo from HBO’s Vice News Tonight says the newscast will shake things up with “No Anchors. No Sponsors. No Censors.” Amid a cavalcade of street protests, explosions and cautionary words from Edward Snowden, the 50-second spot pledges news with a whole new perspective. It debuts on Sept. 26.
Vice Media plans to join TV’s nightly news game, and is gearing up to launch a new competitor to Lester Holt, David Muir and Scott Pelley with a program on HBO set to debut on Sept. 26. Vice News Tonight will be a half-hour nightly newscast, and will air weeknights on HBO. It will also be available on the Time Warner premium-cable service’s HBO Go and HBO Now streaming services as well as on demand.
