Vice, Rogers go separate ways
Jobs will be cut in Canada as Viceland future in doubt
Rogers Media and Vice Canada’s business partnership is over and the future of their channel, Viceland, is up in the air.
The telecommunications giant released a statement Monday cutting ties with the edgy media brand. The companies signed a $100-million joint venture in October 2014, creating a studio in Toronto and launching Viceland, a specialty TV channel showcasing the content.
“In this crowded content universe and as audience habits change, we continue to evolve our strategy to deliver unique content to Canadians,” the announcement from Rogers said. “We plan to redirect . . . funding to other Canadian content initiatives that better align with our portfolio and brands.”
Rogers’s 30-per-cent interest in the Vice Studio Canada is being transferred completely to Vice Canada; Rogers says Viceland will stop broadcasting in Canada on March 31, but a Vice Canada spokesperson says that might not be the end of the channel.
“We are committed to Viceland,” said Chris Ball, head of communications for Vice Canada. “It’s a home for stories that no one tells and something more is coming soon.”
The decision will result in some job cuts at Vice Canada, affecting those primarily working on Rogers-Vice co-productions and projects, but the company would not confirm how many will be impacted.
Ball adds that the joint venture with Rogers leaves Vice in a much better place, having moved from a digital business to one with a full studio and rights to more than 130 hours of content, which the company can now leverage through new partnerships, through both broadcast and online.
Vice content will still be available in Canada on the company’s website at vice.com. There’s no immediate word on what impact this will have on Viceland in other countries; there are versions of the channel operating in the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere.
The termination of the partnership comes after a report last November in the Globe and Mail, saying that Rogers Media was considering cutting off support for the television station. One impetus was that the partnership — which featured Vice content on mobile phones — was one of the legacies of Guy Laurence, the former Rogers CEO who was ousted from his role in October 2016. A Rogers spokesperson says that the Vice investment was driven by the company’s content business team.
“Vice will continue to grow in Canada in 2018,” said Vice Canada presi- dent Ryan Archibald on Monday. “We have a lot of opportunity ahead of us and will be announcing some new exciting partnerships soon.”
Vice has been no stranger to controversy as it grew from its start as a youth-culture magazine in Montreal, and then moved to New York City to grow into a media empire, involving television and online content. Shows included Vice Guides, which covered topics such as sex and drugs, as well as more interesting news and current affairs programming covering such youth-oriented topics as marijuana legalization.
The company received $450 million (U.S.) in investment, which gave it a reported a $5.7-billion valuation. In 2014, Rogers Media joined other media companies including HBO in investing in Vice, with the hopes that the company could draw a younger audience.
Vice’s ratings have reportedly never been good, however. The company has refused to give ratings to Nielsen, usually saying as a new network, it would take time for it to grow, but another firm, Rentrak, reported that the U.S. version only averaged 55,000 viewers a day six months after it launched.
As well, some of the deals arguably hamstrung Vice. Rogers wanted exclusive content for phones, so much of the Canadian content was not available in the U.S.