Viceland Canada (in its current form) to end March 31st
TORONTO – Rogers and Vice Media today announced the end of their joint venture in a deal which will see Vice take 100% ownership of all Vice Canada assets, which is primarily the library of content and the Vice studio in Toronto. No financial terms were disclosed.
The JV was part of the splashy entrance made by former Rogers Communications CEO Guy Laurence who invested $100 million of the company’s money into Vice Media in 2014. Then, the partnership was supposed to be a pillar around which the company would “build a powerhouse for Canadian digital content focused on 18 to 34-year-olds," Laurence said at the time.
The Rogers-owned Viceland specialty service will cease broadcasting in its current form on March 31st. A Rogers spokesperson confirmed to Cartt.ca the channel will not be rebranded (it was Bio for years before switching to Viceland in February of 2016) and that the broadcasting license for the channel will be returned to the CRTC.
According to the latest public CRTC filings, as of August 31, 2016, Viceland had 1.5 million subscribers, down 24% compared to August 31, 2014 when it was still Bio.
In its press release on the announcement Vice remains bullish on its content models and Canada – where it employs a little over 200 people creating content and running the Canadian arm of Virtue, its global creative agency.
"Vice will continue to grow in Canada in 2018. We have a lot of opportunity ahead of us and will be announcing some new exciting partnerships soon," said Ryan Archibald, president Vice Canada, in its press release.
The company has no plans to pull back from what it’s doing here and Vice also plans to keep Viceland alive as a brand in Canada, although it’s not yet saying how it will do that. The company may well partner with another Canadian broadcaster, or it can find a sponsor to have the Viceland U.S. channel added to the CRTC’s eligible list of foreign specialty services available for carriage here.
Bell Media airs Vice News Tonight on Much and HBO in Canada and Vice has a documentary production partnership with CTV’s investigative news show W5, so Bell would seem the partner most likely to us, but probably not with the $100 million investment Laurence gave them. Plus, Bell has a few existing specialty channels which would benefit from new direction along the lines of a recently forged a deal to rebrand its business channel BNN Bloomberg. The company already has a playbook for such arrangements. However, that’s just speculation at this point.
Vice says its partnership with Rogers Media produced over 130 hours of original Canadian programming, including a dozen Canadian Screen Award nominees, which is nice, but not a lot of new content when you consider that’s spread over two years.
“In this crowded content universe and as audience habits change, we continue to evolve our strategy to deliver unique content to Canadians,” reads Rogers press release explaining the move, which also added the company will redirect resources “to other Canadian content initiatives that better align with our portfolio and brands.”
That said, the release did also reassure that “content ownership remains a core part of our strategy and we will be actively exploring new content opportunities that appeal to a broad audience.”
