Vice Media and Rogers team up in $100 million content creation hub in Toronto

Rogers Communications and Vice Media have entered into a $100 million joint venture partnership to create a multimedia studio in Toronto that will produce content for mobile, web and TV, starting in 2014. The focus is the 18-34 market, according to a story in Marketing magazine, creating news, drama, documentaries and original programming built around food, sport, fashion and tech.

The two companies say the Vice Canada Studio is intended to address the “dramatic shift” in media consumption, with nearly 70% of adults 18-24 now receiving news and entertainment from mobile and digital devices, compared with only 30% of adults 40+.

The content will include

• Daily mobile blasts of Canadian-made news and information, including exclusives for Rogers and Fido customers;
• Vice TV Formats, a new slate of TV formats developed, produced and made with Canadian talent;
• Vice Plus, mobile adaptations of Vice’s new and best-known franchises, including the environmental show Toxic and F*ck That’s Delicious, starring rapper and former chef Action Bronson;
• Pilots for new Vice shows

Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith said in a release

 “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." 

Vice got its start in Montreal in 1994 as an alternative magazine and has since become major international media player.