From a media release:
After 20 years of traversing the globe to create the gold standard in print, photojournalism and video, VICE Media will return home to Canada to team up with Rogers and establish a state-of-the-art multimedia production studio. The new Toronto studio, which will operate under VICE’s creative direction, will be dedicated to producing the very best Canadian content for mobiles, tablets, computers and TV screens and will be exported around the world.
The VICE Canada Studio will address the dramatic shift in Canada’s media landscape, as young people increasingly consume news and entertainment from their mobile and digital devices (nearly 70 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds receive news and entertainment from their mobiles, tablets or a computer, versus only 30 per cent of 40-year-olds and over).
Shane Smith, Founder, VICE Media, said: “It was 20 years ago, deep down in the port of Old Montreal that we set out to try and make a magazine that didn’t suck. This year we return to the homeland, all our hard lessons learned, to build from scratch a completely horizontally and vertically integrated ultra-modern media entity. Essentially we are building a content creation hub that will generate premium video for a cutting edge media company that will program – simultaneously – the holy trinity of convergence; mobile, online, and TV.”
VICE Canada properties will form part of a $100 million joint venture between Rogers and VICE Media that includes:
- The VICE Canada Studio, a multimedia, state-of-the-art production facility based in Toronto, will:
- Produce Canadian-focused content including news, drama, documentaries and programming covering food, sports, fashion, tech, and more, for all screens;
- Partner and collaborate with Canada’s best young directors, producers, journalists, editors and filmmakers, giving them the tools and guidance to create the next wave of great content coming out of Canada;
- Include an incubator featuring programming and workshops intended to develop and foster students and burgeoning journalists across Canada.
- The VICE TV Network, a dedicated Canadian TV channel distributed throughout Canada;
- Mobile content, including exclusives and adapted content;
- VICE’s network of Canadian digital properties, featuring more Canadian content.
The VICE Canada Studio will make a range of content including:
- Daily mobile blasts of exciting Canadian-made news and information including exclusives for Rogers and Fido customers;
- VICE TV Formats, a brand new slate of television formats developed, produced and made with new Canadian talent to air on the VICE TV Network;
- VICE Plus, mobile adaptations of VICE’s new and best-known franchises, including the environmental show TOXIC; and F*CK THAT’S DELICIOUS starring the rapper and former chef Action Bronson, as well as pilots for new VICE shows.
VICE Studio, VICE Mobile, and VICE PLUS will launch in Canada in 2015.
