(S.R.Seshu)
In an attempt to step up coverage to attract youth, Times Group entered into a partnership with VICE Media, a popular American-Canadian digital media and broadcasting company. India is one of the 49 new markets that VICE, famous for tailored local news and lifestyle programming, is planning to step into.
The tie-up will see VICE opening a news bureau and production hub in Mumbai to generate original content to be distributed across television, mobile and digital platforms in the region. As part of the deal, the company’s multinational television channel brand Viceland will be launched in India as a paid TV network, the partners said in a press release.
The market leader, Times Group, gives VICE access to knowledge and understanding of the local market.
Additionally, the joint venture will see the launch of Virtue India, Vice Media’s in-house creative services agency, to develop branded content for the Indian market drawing on relationships with advertisers and taking an innovative approach that seamlessly weaves content, audiences and brands across multiple platforms.
Shane Smith, Founder of VICE, says:
“I couldn’t be more excited to partner with Times, not only to bring VICE’s content to the largest millennial population on the earth but also to create domestic content to India’s rich cultural fabric and bring it to our networks in the rest of the world. India is perhaps the most fascinating and dynamic country in the world today and this joint venture allows us unique access to this fast growing media market.”
Times Group managing director, Times Group, Vineeth Jain is also equally happy.
He says: “We are excited to partner with VICE, which brings boldness and edginess to covering stories that India has never seen. Jointly, we will capture the attention of India’s millennials and provide them a deeper understanding of events and their implications to society.”
VICE was in fact launched in 1994 as a ‘punk zine’ as Voice of Montreal. Two years later, the magazine dropped the letter “o,” changing its name to Vice. By 2014, the operation—having since relocated to New York and now known as Vice Media—has become a platform-spanning news and entertainment group valued at more than $2.5 billion. It is a leading global youth media company with bureaus in over 30 countries. VICE operates the world’s premier original online video destination, vice.com, an international network of digital channels, a television production studio, a magazine, a record label, an in-house creative services agency, a consumer insights and research services department, and a book-publishing division.
VICE’s digital channels include The Creators Project, dedicated to the arts and creativity, Motherboard, covering cultural happenings in technology, and Noisey, a music discovery channel. To date, VICE boasts over 60 established shows that cover everything from current events to sex to investigative reporting to music to kittens, according to its website.