Vice Television is going through a shuffle at the top, with head exec Morgan Hertzan set to exit next week and Pete Gaffney replacing him on an interim basis. The move was just announced internally by Vice Media Group CEO Bruce Dixon in a memo to employees.
Vice was once promised to become the brash young voice of news. But wild expenses, shady deals, and greed turned it into “a fucking clown show.”
Lang is a former CEO of Miramax, was part of the team that launched Hulu, where he was a founding board member, and has worked for companies including Disney, Fox, Universal Music and Discovery. He was most recently CEO of Pixel United, a mobile games business and joins Vice from the role of operating partner at Fortress, the company that acquired it out of bankruptcy earlier this year.
The first night of the 44th annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, honoring the winners in the News categories, was held Wednesday in New York City.
Vice has repeatedly blocked news stories that could offend the Saudi government, leaving its reporters unsure if they are still able to report freely on the kingdom’s human rights abuses, sources have said. The media company recently signed a lucrative partnership deal with the MBC Group, a media company controlled by the Saudi government, to establish a joint venture in the Middle Eastern country.
Exclusives
The digital media company Vice filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May, and new documents disclosed in the proceedings offer a rare glimpse into the financial maneuvering that led the privately held company to insolvency.
According to former employees, internal documents, and others familiar with the business, one of the company’s biggest and most important bets has been — and continues to be, post-bankruptcy — its rich and incentive-heavy contract with Shane Smith, Vice’s co-founder and former CEO. Now executive chairman, Smith is on track to be paid around $8 million in salary and potentially far more in bonuses and commissions under the terms of a five-year deal scheduled to end in 2024.
VICE, the documentary TV series that launched on HBO in 2013 and in more recent years called Showtime home, is the latest program to be “disappeared” from the Paramount+ With Showtime streaming service. VICE previously had been available on the Showtime app, and then for a hot second moved to Paramount+ With Showtime (after the Paramount+/Showtime merger).
An installment delving into the Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate’s time as a U.S. Navy JAG officer at Guantanamo Bay was quietly shelved without explanation.
Subrata De, who oversees all news coverage at Vice Media, is staying with the youth-focused company. De, who is EVP, news and global head of programming and development at Vice, has extended her contract for another two years. It comes after Vice won 10 Emmys at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards Wednesday night.
The company is in talks to develop a content partnership with MBC, a Saudi Arabian media giant partly owned by the government.
The digital media companies that once seemed to have a lock on the future are making plans to get bigger and pay back their investors.
Marsha Cooke, SVP of impact at Vice Media, on Wednesday blasted advertisers for demanding their ads stay clear of sensitive topics online, including the words “George Floyd,” “Black Lives Matter” — and even “Black people.”
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.
Digital publishers have taken their knocks in the media ecosystem, but their strong brand identities and carefully honed audience relationships are worth study by broadcasters. One example is Vice’s panel of 40,000 people it taps for feedback on content. “We develop [material] off the back of them,” says Vice’s Tamara Howe.
After layoffs and a move toward video, two editors left Vice.com.
This week’s NewFronts saw TV companies getting more serious about selling their digital inventory and setting the stage for a battle between advertisers’ TV and digital video budgets. The event also saw publishers like Conde Nast and Vice Media talking up their own TV studios.
It’s also rolling out its own audience measurement and new blacklist policy.
Vice, Vox and BuzzFeed, among other companies that once heralded the dawn of a new media age, are now grappling with decidedly old-media problems.
A&E Networks president and CEO Nancy Dubuc is leaving the company effective April 16. She has been in talks with Vice though it is unclear whether she would end up there. A+E Network’s former CEO of A+E Networks Abbe Raven, who retired from the company in 2015 after 33 years, will return as acting chair to oversee the transition until a replacement is named.
Vice Media employees producing video — some 300 of them — have unionized with the Writers Guild of America East and the Motion Picture Editors Guild, the unions said Thursday. The union will cover employees working for Vice.com, Viceland and Vice’s HBO programming.
Vice CEO Shane Smith says the company will wait until its January board meeting to decide on the timing for an IPO. “I’m looking at all the options right now. The good news is we had a great year and we’re going to have a better year next year, so we decided to hold off until we could post our results.”
Viacom CEO Bob Bakish unequivocally squashed the rumor that Viacom was interested in buying an interest in Vice. Speaking Monday at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, Bakish said Viacom has “no interest” in the pursuing a deal. “We’re not going to do it,” Bakish said.
Viacom’s new chief executive, Bob Bakish, is joining a conga line of big media companies weighing a plan to acquire an interest in Vice, the millennial-focused news and pop culture destination that has been expanding around the globe.
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.
Sunday is a big day for Vice Media, as its new HBO half-hour news show drops, as does a redesign of its news site and the debut of Vice Money, its business news channel. EIC Matt Phillips, a veteran of Quartz and The Wall Street Journal, says the site will feature requisite servings of “youth-splaining.” Phillips will be the primary writer on the video-centric channel, one of a number of new verticals Vice has in the offing.
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.”
Vice may need to recheck its hipster calibrations: Viceland, its TV network that has barely made a tremor on U.S. television, has landed in the U.K. with just as minimal an impact. The channel debuted with an average audience of 5,500 from 8 p.m. until 2 a.m. according to Barb data.
Is Your News Tired? Check Out Vice, Newsy
For the most part, local newscasts were developed a half-century ago. It’s time for a renaissance. The typical newscast no longer resonates with many Americans, especially younger ones. That’s why I’m intrigued by Scripps’ Newsy and am deeply curious about the nightly newscast that Vice is cooking up for HBO. All news directors should be, too.
The AP, Gannett and Vice are suing the FBI to learn how the government hacked an iPhone in its San Bernardino massacre investigation, specifically who it turned to for the solution and how much it spent. Eric Tucker reports on the lawsuit looking to get to the bottom of the “mysterious transaction.”
