VICE & Rogers Establish Canadian Production Venture

TORONTO: VICE Media is partnering with Rogers Communications to set up a new state-of-the-art multimedia production studio, which will be dedicated to delivering Canadian content for mobile, tablets, computers and TV screens.

The studio will be operated under VICE's creative direction. The VICE Canada Studio will produce Canadian-focused content, including news, drama, docs and programming surrounding food, sports, fashion, tech and more. The companies will be partnering and collaborating with Canada's best young directors, producers, journalists, editors and filmmakers, providing them with the tools and guidance to create fresh new content out of Canada. The partnership also includes an incubator featuring programming and workshops intended to develop and foster students and budding journalists from across the country.

The VICE Canada Studio will deliver content such as daily mobile blasts of Canadian-originated news and information. With VICE TV Formats, a new slate of TV formats will be developed, produced and made with new Canadian talent to air on the VICE TV Network. VICE Plus will see new mobile adaptations of VICE's latest and best-known franchises.

VICE Canada properties will form part of a $100 million joint venture between Rogers and VICE Media. The partnership also sees a dedicated VICE TV Network being distributed throughout Canada. VICE's network of digital properties will also feature more Canadian content. VICE Studio, VICE Mobile and VICE Plus will launch in Canada in 2015.

"We wanted to build a powerhouse for Canadian digital content focused on 18- to 34-year-olds," said Guy Laurence, the president and CEO of Rogers. "VICE was the obvious choice to partner with. They started in Canada but then moved to New York to prove they could build a global media company, which they've done. However, they've never forgotten their Canadian roots and have always wanted to open a Canadian production studio. I'd worked with Shane's team on small projects before but this time we sat across the table and said let's do this and let's make it big. We're going to shake up Canada with exciting, provocative content and we'll export it around the world."

Shane Smith, the founder of 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."

Smith added: "Our partner on this ambitious project will be Rogers. We'll build something truly special, deeply innovative and dedicated to the youth of this country. Rogers and VICE will program the content created out of our studio on its mobile platforms, its online outlets and its television properties. This revolutionary idea puts us not only at the forefront of tech/media space in Canada but we believe our bold experiment will be followed by media and tech companies around the world. Why? Because this is the future of media. We are excited as hell to be doing this with them and excited as hell to build our most ambitious project to date in Canada."